There are quite a few media center options available these days, and everyone seems to have their own reasons for choosing one over another.
For those of you who have been using OSMC for a while, what keeps you coming back to it? Is it the stability, the interface, the customization, or simply that it does everything you need without getting in the way?
I always enjoy hearing about real experiences because they often highlight things you won’t find in feature lists or setup guides.Looking forward to reading your thoughts and learning what makes OSMC your go-to choice!
It was the first media focused district I tried back when the Raspberry Pi was first released and it did what I wanted, It has been enhanced over the years and has become a better system but my needs are quite basic and I don’t need much.
I’ve been using Kodi since the xBox and I have not run across anything that I thought stacked up to run my own media library. When the Raspberry Pie became a thing it was a no brainer upgrade from the hacked xBoxes (slow) and PC’s (power hungry and they make noise) I was using. After looking around Raspbmc was the top choice and it worked well. When Raspbmc changed to OSMC I didn’t see any reason to look elsewhere and I’ve never run into a situation where OSMC pissed me off making me want to look elsewhere.
One thing I particularly like about OSMC is that it is Kodi sitting on a unlocked Linux distro and it provides both a nice learning ground for Linux, but also you can do whatever you want. There is no jailbreaking, special partitions for user data because the OS partition is locked, hacky workarounds, or anyone telling you to not do whatever you want with your own installs. If you want to install or tweak something all you have to do is google {whatever} howto debian and you can get something that works with OSMC (obviously if you need a GUI that is going to be a bit more difficult).
Thanks for sharing your experiences!It’s interesting to see that, for many of you, it isn’t about constantly looking for the newest option—it’s about having something that just works reliably. I also like the point about OSMC being built on an open Linux system. That flexibility sounds like a big advantage if you ever want to customize things or learn more about Linux along the way.
It’s also nice to hear from people who have been using it since the early Raspberry Pi days. That kind of long-term experience says a lot about how well the platform has held up over the years. Thanks again for all the insights!
I’ve been using Kodi as a media server for probably 15 years. My first leap into OSMC was with a Vero 4k+. At that point I was looking for something that would give me a good Kodi experience and that would allow me to offload the rather large HTPC I was using.
I’ve never really looked at anything else because Kodi (and thus OSMC) allow me to integrate my local library, OTA TV, and streaming in a way I’ve never seen anything else duplicate. I’ve even been able to have Kodi (with the help of Home Assistant) bounce over to my AppleTV 4K for streaming. It’s been a fair amount of tinkering, but my setup has a high WAF (wife acceptable factor) now.
Received this email last night so realise a late reply - Reasons for sticking with the Vero 4 & Vero V.. I started off with the early DragonTech IOBox to play my movie.iso files from a ReadyNas Pro, progressed later onto various popcorn hour media players & started looking around for options as they seemed to disappear. There was a lot of Raspberry Pi type devices at the time but finally found the OSMC/Kodi pages, read some reviews then clicked the ‘Shop’ link for the Vero 4K then later Vero V. I’m completely sold on how well it scrapes movie posters, can run a 4K 126GB movie (merged dual disk). I then found out recently I didn’t need to merge it as I still hadn’t found all of the Vero V’s software potential. Everything is now converted to mkv and still can’t believe the size of this thing and what it can do. The original Vero 4K was still working perfect but gave it to someone else so I could get the Vero V..
It was pretty simple to install and setup and does the main job that I wanted to do - play digital music files through a Pi audio HAT into my main hifi. After that, it can also stream video files to smart TVs and Ipads.
The only thing I’ve not been able to get working is to use it as a Bluetooth audio receiver to play TV sound into the hifi. I’ve never been able to get a Bluetooth connection working.
I started out with RaspBMC and have continued with it, always running on a Raspberry Pi. I appreciate the fact that it’s built on Debian (like Raspbian/Raspberry Pi OS) and that I can do other stuff on the Pi as well as long as I manage the resources appropriately.
Only issues I’ve ever run into have been due to the limitations of the Pi itself (still on a 3B!) rather than OSMC.
Before the era of streaming I used MythTV to record OTA content and play videos. The issue was the front end device … the backend was on a standalone box but the two frontends required a pc. Like @darwindesign , the issues of size, noise and power consumption got me looking around for alternative frontend solutions.
I found out about Kodi from a work colleague, but you still need some sort of PC to use it. After some research, I found out about OSMC and that it could run on a Raspberry Pi. There was a Kodi plugin that would work with my Myth backend. It could also play video files.
From there I upgraded to a V4 and V4+, and replaced those with two V5s.
My Myth setup has deprecated over the years, but is still usable and handy for delayed watching of World Cup games from the other side of the planet.
My Veros can handle, with Kodi plugins, most local streaming services, which means there’s not a lot of switching inputs between the Vero and my TV.
Technical support is great. A few niggling issues have been solved in quick time. It’s rare that you can contact the developers to fix a problem.
The only major issue I’ve had was with a Vero 5, and other bits of network hardware, taken out by a lightning strike. Not something you can complain to the manufacturers about!
Besides the “real Linux distro”-bit and “great support from the team”, I want to say the “community here on the forums” is also a big factor for me. My first introduction to OSMC, was when I came late to the Pi train. Got myself a Pi2 like 3 months before Pi3 released. But I fiddled with it some, made a “user contribution” of a minimal desktop, getting a spigot server running as a service, and a few small Kodi addons. My last “big contribution” was releasing a “headless docker for V4” on github, with a few apps and installer for arm64 dockerserver. As a deb package, I found a few small issues with amlvnc, but haven’t had much user request for fixing it. Or it was a fluke bug for me locally on the 3rd or 4th test. Like most off my contributions here It’s not OSMC supported, but it’s a user2user solution.
All people here can contribute their script/solutions to the forum and help others. As long as there isn’t signs of illegal purposes, most stuff can be discussed. To be honest, even if would stop using OSMC actively, I would keep hanging around here.
I’m also curious what your experience is so far with the Dolby Vision FEL support? At the moment I own an Nvidia shield and I’m serious considering the Vero V.
I got it especially for the DV FEL support, having had no success with Zidoo and Dune HD players - there was always a difference between the disc in the 4K player and streaming the ripped movie on those devices (especially with the brightness levels on some scences). The Vero V solves this for me since the May update.
There were some issues with WiFI, but that has been resolved by the team in the mean time, speaking to the active support by the OSMC team.
I’m now a very happy camper.
What could make the Vero V even better?
While I know Kodi is the general constraint, a more contemporary look & feel would be awesome. The OSMC skin is very nice and light, but pales to what current streamers (Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video) provide in ease of use. Stuff like searching, showing ratings and suggesting content should be front and center, and not hidden in menus.
Media/Codec information when playing (I understand this is coming with a future Kodi 22 update)
Faster releases. While the aforementioned WiFi issue has been resolved, this is only thw case in the staging builds, which I’m still on, as it hasn’t made its way to release yet.
For a long time I was using a cheap media box, I can’t remember the name, which ran on Kodi, and it worked, so long as I didn’t try to play anything fancy. I eventually filled a HD with content and when I tried to install a second, it steadfastly refused to see it… Then along came 3D.. I am a huge fan of good 3D, and my old box, while it would tell me it was a 3D content, it refused to play anything in 3D.
After a search for a 3D friendly media box, I found OSMC, I bought it, tried it, and was very happy with it. I asked if there was any chance of having Full-SBS/OU support, and to my surprise, it was added. OSMC now plays almost any 3D movie I throw at it.
The support is second to none, the hardware is rock solid, and I now have 3 6TB hard drives and it doesn’t miss a beat.
Thank you OSMC and all of the people behind the scenes making it what it is.