Devices with the best UI

[hsbrown2]

Ok, I've been doing this a while...

I've been using Mezzmo for several years and have hacked up WD TV Live Plus devices all over my house with WDLXTV. I've got movie sheets working really well for movies as well as TV Series in streaming modes.

But, of course this setup, while it works well, is a bit of a pain.

I'll probably use ThumGen forever to load metadata, or at least fix stuff Mezzmo doesn't grab right or can't find, but I guess this is all anecdotal.

What I'd like is a device that is really new that renders the metadata Mezzmo stores really nicely (as well as being a really good streaming media player). Like my moviesheets do, for example, seeing an MPAA rating and displaying the graphic rather than the text representation.

Of the latest devices, what do people recommend that has an outstanding UX, and streams HD really well?

I've seen some OTT stuff out there that looks good, and what about Kodi (formerly XBMC, and I generate nfo files as well as tgmd)?

Any opinions would be of value. I should add to this that I very strictly us only mkv for video, and MP3 and flac for audio. Photos are all jpg but I'm not interested in metadata for those.

[paulsalter]

I would say either Kodi with the Mezzmo addon or a Roku device which has a Mezzmo app
Both of these display things the same as the web app, so you get the nice display of all metadata

Roku is the easier of the 2 to setup (which i mainly use on my TV), but it is very limited in codec support, so you might have a lot of transcoding (dont have many mkv so not sure how it handles them)
The plus side for using Kodi, it plays virtually everything without transcoding, but you need a pc connected to your tv (i use this for playback on my laptop)

Dont use the Music/Photo feature, but both should be able to handle mp3 without issues

If you are into gaming at all, Kodi have announced they are bringing the Kodi app to the Xbox One, though no date given for release, as i have a One this is a good move as it has better codec support than the Roku

[jbinkley60]

You can run Kodi (https://kodi.tv/download/)on many different devices including an Intel NUC, Raspberry Pi and more. I concur with the Mezzmo addon and Kodi recommendation. I moved off WD boxes to Kodi running on NUCs and Raspberry Pis (leveraging LibreElec (https://libreelec.tv/)) and never looked back. I don't transcode anything. Kodi will play everything I have natively. I've moved to the new Raspberry Pi Kodi cases (https://flirc.tv/more/raspberry-pi-case-ke) for a very polished result.

[paulsalter]

Oops, yes you are right, i keep forgetting kodi is on all those things, my mistake

Kodi + Mezzmo addon would be my main choice, the Roku is very nice, just let down by poor codec support (for me anyway as i play recorded tv in .ts format and still have a lot of .avi files)

[joe33067]

I used to use WD TV boxes, but after having many issues with them, despite the various array of media servers I tried, I decided to go with android devices using Kodi with the Mezzmo add-on. One device is from PigFlyTech, model T-95, and the other is from NextD (don't remember the model off the top). Both devices perform very well - I don't need to reboot them on a daily basis, they don't lose contact with the media server... they do the job and do it well. I also have all of the metadata for every movie and TV show on disk, so it all loads up very quickly (as opposed to the WD TV's support of metadata).

[jbinkley60]

A nice feature of the Kodi addon is that if you are running multiple devices you can share the resume time across devices. So you can start watching a video on one Kodi box, stop it, go to another and resume right where you left off. Peter and team did a great job on that implementation within the addon.

[hsbrown2]

Ok...

I broke down and bought a Beelink GT1. It appears to have come pretty much empty, so I went to the Google Store and installed Kodi 17. I grabbed the Mezzmo add-on from the server in the Kodi folder, installed it, and I can see it, but I have no idea what I'm doing.

Other than "RTFM" does anyone have a link to a stepwise way to get this setup for a n00b?

[jbinkley60]

Ok...

I broke down and bought a Beelink GT1. It appears to have come pretty much empty, so I went to the Google Store and installed Kodi 17. I grabbed the Mezzmo add-on from the server in the Kodi folder, installed it, and I can see it, but I have no idea what I'm doing.

Other than "RTFM" does anyone have a link to a stepwise way to get this setup for a n00b?

In Kodi go to Video --> Addon and launch Mezzmo. It should auto discover your Mezzmo server and then you can browse your videos from there. When you find a video you can hit the info button and see metadata. The Addon configuration lets you set some defaults like views. search parameters etc.. One thing with Kodi 17 is that the default skin has changed and I am not a huge fan of the current skin. I went back to the Confluence skin which has been around for years. I find it easier to use but that is just me. Depending upon which version of the Mezzmo addon you have it may not work with the new skin which may be a problem you are having. You need version 1.20 or higher of the addon or go back to the Confluence skin (http://redeneobux.com/en/change-kodi-krypton-skin-estuary-confluence/).

[hsbrown2]

Here's what I found. Kodi 17 with this device doesn't work. I did get the updated plugin from the source repository for 17, and it worked, but Kodi 17 isn't fully baked, and on Android it basically stinks as there is no Dolby TrueHD, DTS, or DTS-MA pass-through support. This isn't the devs fault, but the device manufacturer. Kodi had some hacks, but I decided to go to what for sure would work. So, I reverted to Jarvis (16.1) and the plugin from my Mezzmo folder, and it works great!

Maybe I should start a new thread, but I am pulling in metadata with no issues, but I can't seem to get artwork from Mezzmo. Individual movies don't seem to have a backdrop setting, only playlists, and dropping fanart*.jpg files in the folders doesn't seem to help.

All in all, WDLXTV, ancient as it is, still seems to present a better UX when you take the time to generate them, but there's no Netflix, no Amazon Instant Video, no Vudu on either one of these boxes. From what I've been reading, perhaps I should've spent a pile of money on an nVidia Shield or something.

At any rate, itvis what it is. Does anyone know how to get artwork pushed down from Mezzmo? I can set fanarts using the Kodi GUI but man, that could take years, haha.

[jbinkley60]

Here's what I found. Kodi 17 with this device doesn't work. I did get the updated plugin from the source repository for 17, and it worked, but Kodi 17 isn't fully baked, and on Android it basically stinks as there is no Dolby TrueHD, DTS, or DTS-MA pass-through support. This isn't the devs fault, but the device manufacturer. Kodi had some hacks, but I decided to go to what for sure would work. So, I reverted to Jarvis (16.1) and the plugin from my Mezzmo folder, and it works great!

Maybe I should start a new thread, but I am pulling in metadata with no issues, but I can't seem to get artwork from Mezzmo. Individual movies don't seem to have a backdrop setting, only playlists, and dropping fanart*.jpg files in the folders doesn't seem to help.

All in all, WDLXTV, ancient as it is, still seems to present a better UX when you take the time to generate them, but there's no Netflix, no Amazon Instant Video, no Vudu on either one of these boxes. From what I've been reading, perhaps I should've spent a pile of money on an nVidia Shield or something.

At any rate, itvis what it is. Does anyone know how to get artwork pushed down from Mezzmo? I can set fanarts using the Kodi GUI but man, that could take years, haha.

I've never run it on an Android only on a Raspberry Pi and Intel NUCs. It could be a limitation of your hardware not supporting the codes and passthroughs. If you want horsepower, longevity and full support the NUC is the way to go but they are pricey. I do 1080P on a Raspberry Pi3 with support for everything for less than $100.

There's another bug (http://trac.kodi.tv/ticket/17304) with Kodi 17 running plugins which is fixed in the upcoming 17.1 version. It causes slowness with addons like you've seen. I've compiled my own build of 17 under LiibreELEC with the fix. The 16.x versions are fine. You can try the 17.1 release candidate which is out. That should have the fix.

I use the Media Info 2 settings in the Mezzmo addon to get the best metadata, artwork and such.

[hsbrown2]

I've tried both Media Info 2 and Media Info 3. No joy. I get great text metadata, but the folder images are grainy (even though they are high res stored on the server) and in Media Info 3, I don't get any backdrop artwork other than the Jarvis default, a perspective of a row of theater seats. It doesn't matter what I set the backdrop to inside of Mezzmo, and Mezzmo has no way to configure backdrops for individual bits of content - only for playlists.

The Mezzmo Add-On wiki page says that it allows you to "View all text metadata, poster and backdrop artwork for movies." but it doesn't seem that backdrops work. I'm not averse to cobbling together my own RP3, but I'm not sure what I can support with one.

The overall goal here is to eventually cut the cord - whatever I do, I want it to do live tv streams, Netflix, Amazon, Vudu... The list goes on a long way. The hardware isn't really the limitation, it's the firmware the vendor has on the box (as far as the sound goes), but I'm OK with Jarvis - I just want Mezzmo to send backdrops, and have them display where it appears that they should. Once I can get that moving, then I can decide on the vNext. I've been experimenting with the Windows version of Kodi as well; it exhibits the same behavior. I *suspect* that if I had Kodi index the content as a file share, it would go scrape themoviedb and thetvdb it would display backdrops/fanart. But since I am connected to Mezzmo, it only gets what Mezzmo serves.

I'm wondering if there is a naming convention I'm supposed to be using or something.

[hsbrown2]

Ok... Wait a minute...

Suddenly I am able to set the backdrops for individual movies. I swear the option wasn't there last night :D AND it will display in Kodi.

BUT

It appears this is a largely manual process. Mezzmo doesn't seem to scrape internet databases for backdrops? I have to do this manually in the Mezzmo UI one at a time? Is there a way to turn this on? I turned on scraping, but nothing changed (I had it turned off, as I don't want it to overwrite my custom text metadata). I unlocked several files and ran "update all content". Ideas?

[jbinkley60]

Ok... Wait a minute...

Suddenly I am able to set the backdrops for individual movies. I swear the option wasn't there last night :D AND it will display in Kodi.

BUT

It appears this is a largely manual process. Mezzmo doesn't seem to scrape internet databases for backdrops? I have to do this manually in the Mezzmo UI one at a time? Is there a way to turn this on? I turned on scraping, but nothing changed (I had it turned off, as I don't want it to overwrite my custom text metadata). I unlocked several files and ran "update all content". Ideas?

You ran the update all attributes option and had the update artwork button check ? That should have updated the backdrops. All of my movies have backdrops and are added at discovery time.

[hsbrown2]

I had to add the backdrops by hand, as they appear to only automatically update from the Internet. Conversely, they don't seem to update when "Update only missing items" is checked, and I'd hate to update and have my carefully curated .nfo data be overwritten by internet data.

Now I sort of have a multi-step process, since it doesn't seem to update from anything stored in the media folder.

I'm curious about RP3 and NUC. is there a good forum where I can research the two? Ideally I'd love to build a box with something really small footprint at the OS level that has Netflix, Vudu, Hulu, etc... native apps, and as many others as possible. Something relatively easy to put together, without having to hack away at code.

[Peter]

Please make sure in Metadata Retrieval Settings that you have the option to get backdrops checked http://www.mezzmo.com/wiki/doku.php?id=metadata_retrieval_settings#other_tab