Ditching KODI does not mean ditching OSMC. Kodi runs on top of OSMC if I understand things correctly. Creating something that does the job better than KODI is what I have in mind. And that something will run on top of OSMC.
OSMC is a linux distro designed around running Kodi so if you take away Kodi then what is the point of this particular distro? A single simple interface that can be navigated with a remote and runs everything thing you can possibly imagine is a fantastic idea though. I donât know why nobody has ever thought of this before. You should go ahead and write this software yourself. It shouldnât be too hard and given that this is ultimately what everyone strives to own if only they had the imagination to hope for such a product to exist Iâm sure it will be a hit.
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There are probably others who have tried to create such a system. A few weeks ago I had such a software on my windows desktop computer, and it had even options for configuring streaming services like Netflix. But I was unable to make it work. OSMC is based on Debian, I heard. Studying the Debian operating system may be a good start I suppose. It wonât be easy, but where there is a will there is a way.
Netflix are not going to allow direct integration without them getting a cut. They also want to certify the devices that their streaming platform runs on, which incurs high fees and they can drop support at any time. The restrictions weâd have to put in place would mean that OSMC would not be open anymore.
Keep in mind that Netflix even dictate that you must be put a Netflix button on your remote if you elect to integrate their serviceâŚ
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So, Netflix runs the world it seems? That is too much power for one company to handle. (power corrupts they say). They are beginning to look like an empire in a galaxy far, far away.
Better that VHS, hey? Quite the recommendation! 
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To be fair, most of the major services out there do have working unofficial addons available. Netflix, Sling, Disney+, Amazon, Discovery+, etc. âUnofficialâ meaning they are not directly supported by the kodi team, and you need to add various non-official repositories to get them. Those types of services tend to be a bit of a moving target, as the services change their APIs and login mechanisms and the like with no notice, and the volunteer maintainers need to be playing a game of chase to keep up. In addition to the various restrictions they impose on things like allowed resolutions. And the UI usually works differently than the app provided by the services on other devices. (which may be âbetterâ or âworseâ depending on your preferences)
That said up until I canceled it a month ago I ran Netflix on the Vero4k, and still use Paramount+ and Discovery+ quite frequently, and occasionally Sling. Since Iâm still using a 1080p (3D) TV, The restrictions donât affect me much.
Iâve also got a (rarely used) Roku as a fall-back device, for those services not available (or which I havenât bothered to try to install) in kodi, or for those times when the services make a change that takes the add-on maintainers a few days to catch up with.
If you are only interested in on-line services, then something like a Roku (available cheaply at your local Walmart) is probably your better bet.
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Thank you for your information. I do not know if they sell Roku here on Aruba. I asked once in an electronics store but they did not have that kind of thing. For now I will continue to watch Netflix on my Samsung tablet. The Formuler Z 11 Pro max also seems an interesting device for watching streaming services. It has about the same hardware specifications as the new VERO V, but it runs android 11 comes with widevine level L1. I only wish watching something online was not that complicated. 50 years ago we still had outdoor TV antennas, but you could receive only 3 channels. The only thing that bothered us back then were the interruptions by commercials. The quality of the tv image was not that great either, but that was not so bad.
Android they say is supposed to be âopenâ system, but it includes many parts that are not open. A few years ago I tried an operating system called âOpen Solarisâ that system could not watch anything either. Or you had tot get all codecs yourself. With Ubuntu Linux however I had no problems to watch anything. Humanity excels at complicating things for himself and his fellow citizens, that much is sure.
And thatâs why I refuse to use such service and I think others should do the same
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Another solution might be to try one of the NanoPi boxes that can run Android.
You could then run Kodi on there along with the Apps for each provider you pay for, and have the best of all worlds, probably (until they decide you canât).
Solaris was the Unix OS that Sun built for their Spark servers back in the 80âs/90âs. Open Solaris was when they open sourced it after nobody was really buying it anymore⌠Not at all surprised youâd have trouble playing multi-media on it, as it was designed for big-iron server hardware.
Well, good news on that front. Kodi has pretty good support for a variety of DVRs. Just plug a Silicon-Dust tuner to your network and antenna, and you can use the out-of-box pvr plugin for it. Or pick from a variety of usb tuner cards and run tvheanded or one of the other dvr servers directly in OSMC itself. Or drop a hauupage pci tuner into a server (or pc) on your network and run tvheadend or some other dvr there. Thatâs one thing Kodi has really good support for. Assuming you live in a location where you can put up an antennta and get decent reception.
Not to distract from your point but the HDHomerun add-on that is in the Kodi repository actually only allows for live TV. There is an unofficial HDHomerun PVR add-on that works really well but that only works if you have an active subscription to their guide service. The service is cheap though and it works really well IMO.
Well, I actually use tvheadend as my dvr and do the recording there and just use the HDhomerun as a remote tuner (not feeling the need to pay for yet-another guide-data service), so Iâll admit I never bothered to look more deeply at the hdrhomerun plugin beyond that it worked for the live-tv when I needed to test somethingâŚ
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This isnât the fault of the YouTube add-on. Google itself got involved and did their best to interfere with any open-source app that plays YouTube content. Turns out Google â which makes money on its ads and selling user information â doesnât like open apps because they cannot harvest data from them and canât push ads to them as effectively.
Pretty much every complaint you listed about the Vero and OSMC are not the fault of Vero and OSMC. You can lay the blame squarely on the content providers youâre trying to stream from. They want a closed ecosystem they control with an iron fist that they can milk for profit. They see devices like the Vero as a threat to that, and they actively obstruct attempts to bring their services to such devices.
This same dynamic is why you donât see Dolby Vision on Vero. Dolby tries to hide it under the guise of âwe want to certify devices to make sure they show DoVi properlyâ but the reality is they want the licensing fees and control of the displaying platform. I guess they havenât figured out that HDR10/10+ are âgood enoughâ for most people and free of such nonsense, thus cementing DoVi as a âstandardâ that will eventually be buried and forgotten instead of widely adopted. These companies never learn. They somehow forget nearly every proprietary, royalty-encumbered âstandardâ ever made has been utterly destroyed by free, open standards when competition is allowed.
So, what happened to the youtube add-on?
Does google have the right to block anyone watching content that they legally own?
Please explain.
TV antennas are mostly gone now. What you see now are dishes, DirecTV or others. Other people are plugged into the local cable system.
When you pay money to Google for a movie you only purchase the rights to view it within the conditions outlined at the time of purchase which probably included the right for them to change those conditions at any point it time unilaterally. When you purchase a movie on physical disk you are also only purchasing the tangible bits and certain rights to view what is on that disk. It would be legal for you to watch that movie in your home. It would very much be illegal for you to to play that same disc at a movie theater to a group of people as the purchase of that disc does not contain the rights to public presentations. Why? Because you didnât purchase the movie, you donât âownâ the movie, you purchased certain viewing rights.
I pick up something like 60 free broadcast stations from my aerial.
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[EDIT: Posted the original version of this much too quickly and got confused about who I was replying to! 
Have now redone it.]
I honestly donât know how much more widely adopted Dolby Vision can reasonably get. Every brand of TV supports it except Samsung. Every commercial streaming service supports it - Netflix, Apple, and Disney have been using it for years; Prime Video was a hold-out for a long time, but even theyâre starting to use it on premium titles like The Rings of Power. Virtually every high-end, high volume UHD blu ray is DV as well.
Suggesting that DV wonât catch on because thereâs a cheaper, inferior format available makes about as much sense as suggesting that Dolby TrueHD and Atmos will never catch on just because the original Dolby Digital format exists and is widely supported. On the contrary: they are here to stay, and so is DV.
HDR10Plus, on the other hand - that really is a dead format walking.
The decision not to support DV on the new Vero may be necessary, but it is not desirable.