PotPlayer this player is truly outstanding among PC-side video players in the past.
But the invincible PotPlayer in the PC field is not omnipotent. It is more than enough to watch videos or live broadcasts on the computer by yourself, if you want to be a home entertainment center, PotPlayer has some shortcomings. The other video player to be introduced today is indeed the king in this regard, its name is Kodi.
Kodi (formerly XBMC) is a free and open source media player application developed by the XBMC/Kodi Foundation, a non-profit technology consortium. Kodi is available for multiple operating-systems and hardware platforms, featuring a 10-foot user interface for use with televisions and remote controls. It allows users to play and view most videos, music, podcasts, and other digital media files from local and network storage media and the internet.
Kodi (formerly known as XBMC) stands for XBOX Media Center, as the name implies, it is the media center of the XBOX platform. For XBOX players, if XBMC is not installed, at least half of the fun of playing XBOX is missing. It is no exaggeration to say that XBMC is the real purpose of many players buying XBOX.
With the increasing requirements for video clarity, XBMC is limited by the XBOX’s hardware performance gradually declining, but recently XBMC has finally launched a real Windows version, under the Windows platform, we can regain the familiar feeling on XBOX.
Kodi was originally developed as a media software for Xbox. Due to its open source, many excellent developers have participated in the development of Xbox, making this player very powerful, capable of almost all formats of video and audio, and also Browse and watch videos, pictures, and listen to radio and music from hard drives, CDs, local area networks and the Internet.
In addition to the powerful playback functions of Kodi, another highlight is the plug-in.
Kodi has a wealth of official plug-ins built in, and powerful third-party plugins can be installed easily. These plug-ins include but are not limited to:
- video
- music
- subtitle
- game
- program
With these plug-ins, you can accomplish many things that are unimaginable in other players. Moreover, through these plug-ins, Kodi has become far more than just a player.
Aside from music, subtitles, and games, this article focuses on the Kodi playback function.
Kodi is also different in video playback. Now most players are suitable for PCs and mobile phones, while Kodi is more suitable for TVs and home theaters. Its operation and design are very suitable for remote control operation. In addition, Kodi supports Linux, OSX, Windows, and Android operating systems. If your set-top box falls within the scope of these systems, you can install a Kodi player in the set-top box, and then combine a wealth of plug-ins and live sources, so you don’t have to worry anymore. The number of programs is limited, program charges, etc.
This article will introduce how to use the Kodi player.
- Download and Install
Take Windows as an example. The download and installation method of Kodi is no different from other PC-side software. Download the package and double-click to install it. Here, I won’t go into details about installation and download.
- Language Settings
After Kodi is installed, the default language is English. It is a video player that supports multiple languages. You can modify the language through settings.
However, it should be noted here that Kodi modification needs to be carried out in 2 steps. If it is directly changed to other languages, garbled characters will occur.
(1) Select Interface, enter the interface settings
(2) Select Skin, click Fonts, select Arial based
(3) Select Regional, click Language, change the language to the language you need
Remember! Step 3 must not be ignored, otherwise the other language will appear garbled after changing the language.
3. Video Playback
The language has been changed, and the next step is the video player.
There are many plug-ins from official and third parties. These plug-ins include Youku, Station B, PPS, YouTube and other audio and video platforms. However, after my investigation, I found that many plug-ins are essentially Python projects that apply crawler technology. After a long period of exploration, I found that most of the plug-ins are not stable or even unusable.
Therefore, regarding video playback, I personally recommend choosing the way of using live sources.
Now, let’s introduce the steps of Kodi to set up the live source.
a. Install the Plug-in IPTV
Back to the main interface of Kodi, go through the following steps to find the settings interface:
- Plug-in
- My plugin
- PVR client
- PVR IPTV Simple Client
- Install the PVR IPTV Simple Client plug-in.
Install the PVR IPTV Simple Client plug-in.
b. Add live Source
Repeat the previous 4 steps to find the interface below.
- Click Settings, select the local path for the location, and then select the downloaded offline m3u live source file.
- After confirming, the software will prompt to restart.
- After restarting, enter the main interface and select TV -> Channel.
- Then you can see the live source list,
- Kodi can also add content from movies and online video platforms by installing plug-ins.
The things to note here are:
There are countless live sources that can be found on the Internet, but most of them are either outdated or fake. After a lot of effort to download, you will find that many are unusable, and there are only a few live sources that can play videos. It’s very lagging and can’t watch.
So Kodi is really a very good video player!
