What good is a super player if it cannot watch anything?

Feature Requests
66

Dolby Vision logically has a limited life span. As domestic screens improve towards displaying the entire BT2020 gamut and dynamic range becomes indistinguishable from mastering monitors, dynamic metadata should become irrelevant. Then Dolby will have to develop some new snake-oil to maintain their cash flow - like DV IQ which only seems to add what TV manufacturers have offered for decades.

Supporting different systems in players and TVs is just a matter of adding a chip and signing a pledge to the IP owner. But AIUI DV is dominant in the studios who are not going to grade for more than one format as that costs time and money for very little gain. DV won’t die because of competition it will just become less relevant.

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67

Hey, I hear you on that. It’s frustrating when you own content but can’t easily access it due to software limitations. Fingers crossed that the next OSMC update—or the new VERO V—will include better support for various video formats and sources. Here’s hoping they listen to user feedback like yours!

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There is no “format” at discussion here that OSMC and any of the Vero are not able to play. The OP wants first tier support for a third party service on a platform said third party doesn’t provide for. It isn’t that OSMC can’t play the movie in question, it is that when someone purchases a movie streaming subscription on some particular service there may be limitations imposed by that provider. If OSMC became some closed media player then what would be the point of it existing as yet another in a sea of Android boxes? If OSMC just said F the law we’re going to do whatever we want then it would be sued out of existence in a heartbeat.

Honestly I don’t know why it is so difficult for some people to grasp the concept that media companies want to protect their investment and maximize profit regardless of how shit the end user experience would become. Thus if you want to use certain services the easiest way, and perhaps the best way to use them, is to purchase a player that said company openly supports. If we are talking about Netflix, Disney+, Amazon, or Google, then the player you want is going NOT going to be an open source player. You want one player, and one player only, use one running Android or iOS and your sorted. Nobody here is making the claim that OSMC is a good fit for streaming or similar paid services. OSMC excels at playing media that isn’t locked down or hidden by a paywall. The Vero’s are a fantastic choice for people who want to play that. So figure out what you want and purchase accordingly. Maybe this means you use two devices, maybe this means you don’t go the OSMC route.

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69

Thread closed?

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We generally reserve that for when a topic has devolved to something ugly. This is just annoying in that its rehashing a well worn topic which is a bit of a thin reason to stop discussion IMO.

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71

I would like to suggest that someone create a new topic and thread with a title like “Vero, Netflix and other streaming services, what can I watch?” In this thread it should be made clear what the various processes and requirements are to watch a streaming service on a box like Vero, difficulties with open source software and the like. I did a search for Netflix here on the Vero forum website but did not find much information. I think this information may be of value to many.

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And did you do a search on the Kodi forum where these topics would be most appropriate? If you were running Kodi on a Galaxy Tab would you be looking for someone from Samsung to provide this support?

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I do not know why you ask that question. My point of view is this, since I am using a Vero, let us see what the makers of Vero say about accessing Netflix on their device. I am not sure what you are trying to say with your question, in any case it does not answer much. It would be most helpful if you can direct me to a place where I can find that answer.

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The intent is in the question. You seem to be intentionally acting obtuse. OSMC is an operating system that runs Kodi. If you want to know something about Kodi they have a help forum and a wiki, and there exits countless YouTube videos, blogs, and web pages that cover all manor of Kodi topics. Searching one section of a hardware support section and saying I couldn’t find anything and you people should do more is disingenuous and insulting.

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My question was not about Kodi. My question was about the Vero, and what the makers of the vero say about running Netflix on their device. I have a bit an idea now why that is not possible (at present at least). I do not know the inner or finer workings of neither OSMC and Kodi. I look at the Vero as one would look at a TV device. (essentially a black box) What I knew about the Vero was that it is a better platform than the raspberry Pi 3 that I have. I used the raspberry pi mostly for watching (local and international) TV. It was nice that in these days it was also able to view google videos (but not anymore). So I got the Vero, and the Vero is the main device that I use for TV . I also watch Crackle and Vimeo. It is unfortunate that open source software does not have access to all streaming services, it would be great if Netflix was also available alongside Crackle and Vimeo. I searched on the Vero website because it is there where I learned the most things about the Vero. Since the Vero can install other software I thought that may be there is some solution for watching streaming services, today or perhaps in the future. As I said before, all we want in the end is to enjoy our devices. I am not here to insult anybody. I am here to learn what there is to learn about the Vero, streaming etc. You learn by asking questions.

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The Vero is just a device, for OSMC itself it should (~95%) functionally not make a difference whether it runs on the Vero or on the RPi.

It looks a little bit like you don’t know what you’re looking for and are frustrated because you consequently can’t find someone to give you a concise answer, so I’ll try:

  • The Vero is a built-for-purpose device for OSMC. There is nothing more special to it.
  • Running Crackle, Vimeo, Youtube, Netflix, etc. on the Vero is thus not a Vero question, it is an OSMC question. The “makers of Vero” are also the “makers of OSMC”.
  • The primary purpose of OSMC is to provide a made-for-purpose OS for running Kodi - hence, your question of whether the Vero can run Netflix/Crackle/Vimeo implies asking whether Kodi can run Netflix/Crackle/Vimeo.

That answer is “yes/maybe/not optimally”.

First of all, this is an OSMC forum, this is of course also very focussed around Kodi but there is Kodi topics to be discussed outside of the scope of OSMC (and hence Vero), f.e. how to set up Kodi on Windows and so on.

Second of all, as already mentioned and as you can find by searching in this forum (top right is the search function…), there are Kodi-addons that support streaming Netflix and so on. Those also run on OSMC and thus also on your Vero. Those work. It’s not the primary usecase for Kodi, which is in itself a media player for files on disk, not a streaming player but that can work. I also might use my Vero as a Netflix player with the Add-ons I find online. I primarily use it as a media player.

Third of all, why is there no full, endorsed support? Because Netflix has no interest and does not want you to play Netflix on Kodi. They provide a player with which you can play your rented content from them and that’s it. The same goes for Youtube, Amazon Prime and whatnot. You’d have to pay a pretty hefty licensing fee and your Vero would cost maybe 500 Euro then, all because it comes pre-loaded with software that is licensed properly and supported. The new Vero has some software packages which make the integration of some streaming services simpler but publicly offering an unlicensed streaming solution for money will probably/potentially lead to a pretty hefty lawsuit from Netflix, Amazon, whatever, because that quite surely goes against their terms and services to sell such a service for money.

Last of all, why not do that? Because it’s nobody’s intention, the vast, vast majority wants the best open source media player than can with a bit of sweat and swearing be brought to stream Netflix too instead of a different product. If that is not your usecase and you would rather have a media player whose PRIMARY FOCUS is the seamless playing of streaming services, then Vero, OSMC and Kodi are the wrong choice for you and you’d rather go with an Android or AppleTV solution, which are both solutions where that licensing solution is prepaid in some sense. It is available on this platform and you will find a lot of information in this forum on how to do stuff with it but you need to understand why that is not the primary focus of this product.

You’re complaining why the fast F1 car is so shitty offroad and propose to change the suspension and the tires - while everyone involved actually wants the F1 car. It is in that case simply not the right car for you and you need to get a different car.

Is that understandable, @cornelisfb ?

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77

Thank you for your answer. Perhaps you can turn it into a topic on the forum at a later time. (A good title may be : Vero and streaming services. What can I watch?)

The Vero, as I said before, for me is a replacement of the raspberry pi 3 that I used before. On the raspberry pi in those days it was even possible to watch google movies. I knew it did not run Netflix, and I did not buy it primarily to run Netflix or other streaming services. I bought it primarily so I could watch TV, (especially our own local channel, but also others) TVheadend did not work optimally on the raspberry pi 3. So that is why I got a box with more horsepower. Since the moment the Vero arrived I noticed that some things have changed. I got the Vero on Jan 19 2022. Youtube was working different and you could not watch google movies anymore. Movies used to be viewable thru the kodi youtube plugin. I normally watch all streaming services like google movies , youtube and Netflix on my Samsung tablet. It would have been nice if it were possible to watch those services on the Vero but I knew that was not the case. I am not trying to watch streaming services on the Vero as perhaps some of you may suppose. For me the Vero is basically a superior version of the raspberry pi 3. I expected that things would have remained the same, that the YouTube plugin would still be able to stream movies on the Vero. Unfortunately things changed. But as I said before, movies and streaming I watch mostly on my tablet. I hope that someday it will be easier for makers of a box like Vero to incorporate also streaming services like YouTube and Netflix. I think that someone who makes an open source operating system must not be hindered to access streaming services with that OS. In the end it is the streaming service itself that wins. The more viewers you have for your content the more profitable it will be.

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OSMC just runs Kodi.

For info on, and help with the various addons (including the various unsupported ones, which the majority of addons for the paid streaming providers falls under), you can search the kodi forums, as those plugins are not specific to OSMC. In many cases, you will need to add a non-official add-on repo to get them, or the maintainer’s beta repo. By convention, the 1st post in the addon thread generally explains what you need to do to install.

https://forum.kodi.tv/forumdisplay.php?fid=154

for example:
Netflix addon: Netflix Add-on [input-stream]
Disney+: Disney+
Amazon: Amazon VOD [plugin.video.amazon[vod|-test]]

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You’re more than welcome to search Kodi and OSMC forums for the douzens and potentially hundreds of add-ons that there are (in varying functionality and scope) and maintain such a thread, I have little use for it since Google and the search functions are better than that.

You’re also correct in what you’re saying that things have changed and that from a content perspective it just shouldn’t be that hard. There is at least one youtube addon that still works (as of… May? June?) but that took a bit frickeling to set up IIRC with logging into Google’s account, setting up a developer profile and so on but it worked. That is no limitation of Kodi or of OSMC or the Vero or the RPi. That has nothing to do with it. It’s Google who does not want you to stream Youtube videos without their own player, which interlaces the video with advertisements and gets them revenue. To get them to agree you’d have to pay them the lost income from those ads which, as I have mentioned, would lead to a big price bump so that Sam can finance this license. And all people who wouldn’t want to watch youtube would also have to pay for that and potentially live with other limitations, maybe ads on the frontscreen, collected user data and so on. Hence nobody would support that.

There are engineering ways around that and that leads to those add-ons, which are numerous, as mentioned. If you want to do the work and collect and think other people will profit from it, go ahead.

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It won’t be.

The streaming providers violently disagree with you, and that isn’t going to change.

It must surely be obvious to you that this simply isn’t true?

How do you think Google makes money out of YouTube? They don’t charge a subscription fee; they make money by showing adverts. Devices like the Vero take money away from Google by bypassing the adverts that are compulsory on the official YouTube app.

Similarly, a company like Netflix makes a lot of money by charging the makers of media players to certify their devices for Netflix use; and only certified devices have access to maximum-quality Netflix content. If they allow the highest-quality Netflix content to be accessed from a Vero-like device, they lose a lot of money.

So, no: allowing access to their content on open source devices results in those companies losing money, not making it.

I don’t wish to sound unkind, but I think you probably bought the wrong device for your needs. If you want a device that is a black box and “just works”, you bought the wrong device. If your main goal is a device that does a good job of supplying content from commercial streaming providers, you definitely bought the wrong device.

The Vero is hardware designed to run OSMC; OSMC is a software distribution which consists mainly of a recent version of Kodi and an operating system that is optimised to run Kodi, and that is completely open source. Kodi is a piece of software designed to run locally stored video and audio media; it has the ability to stream remote content as well, but that is very much a secondary function, and it doesn’t do a particularly good job of it compared to Android and Apple devices.

It’s also important to understand that the OSMC guys don’t control Kodi. They make some tweaks to it, but Kodi as a whole is outside their control - they simply redistribute it. So, regarding where to ask questions: these forums are the place to ask questions about OSMC - the operating system part of the distribution - but these forums are not the place to ask questions about Kodi. If you have a Kodi-related question, then the Kodi support forums are the place to ask it.

And your question very much was about Kodi. The question “How do I run Netflix on a Vero device?” is not an OSMC question, it’s a Kodi question. The question you should be asking is “How do I access Netflix content from Kodi?” And the Kodi forums are the best place to ask about that. There are one or two extra things you need to do to get the Kodi Netflix add-on running under OSMC that you don’t have to do on a generic Kodi device, and it’s reasonable to ask about that here. But it’s not the responsibility of the OSMC guys to support Kodi; it’s not their product. They simply provide an environment to run Kodi in. If you have a question about the environment, ask here; questions about Kodi belong elsewhere.

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81

What about APT packages, can these extend the capabilities of the Vero?

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Yes, they can, after all OSMC is based on Debian.

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Sure. It runs fully-fledged Debian Linux. But any additional application you install on it likely won’t be able to access hardware acceleration for video playback, which is quite limiting. (You can’t, for example, install a web browser and play videos in the browser with hardware acceleration; and decoding in software means you’re pretty much limited to standard definition). And its CPU isn’t really powerful enough for it to be viable as a general purpose computer. People do use it for other things, but its primary intended function is as a Kodi box; if you don’t intend to use it as that, it’s probably not the right product for you.

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To add to the confusion, you probably can install a webbrowser, but since you don’t boot into a desktop environment… :slight_smile:
There is no modern gerneral-purpose webbrowser for OSMC (that can play netflix, amazon, youtube, whatever).

@cornelisfb again, I’m asking, have you understood the problem and that there is little that OSMC, Vero, Kodi or else can do to solve this and that if that is your primary concern you’re betting on the wrong device and that (wherever that question came from but I also bet you’ll be asking whether or not just to install a browser) additional Debian packages do not solve this? It does not seem so.

However, to not close this off completely, I remember vaguely the idea of embedding a browser into OSMC being discussed quite a few times and the limiting factor is that OSMC is not using X as a backend. I remember too that while X is tricky to embed, wayland might look a bit better there but then I have zero knowledge about the architecture of OSMC to comment this. In either way it would be connected to a hell lot of work for little gain. You can also spend a lot of time getting doom to run on your smartwatch and that will probably work but do you want to pull the ressources of this project into something like this? Probably not. Then again, if you are able to, build it up, create a pull request, I’m sure Sam will be delighted to discuss it. But then again… you’re probably better of just connecting an old laptop to the TV with an OS that has a desktop environment or use a made-for-purpose device like the Apple TV.

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We are waiting for the browser to come to Kodi. That’s been discussed for some time now…