KODI, Kore - Small transformation into a large TV theater. Installing and setting up Kodi on Android

I haven’t written or responded to anything for a long time. And it’s not a matter of laziness or “there’s nothing to say,” it’s just there! It’s just that some events dragged on and spun out... And I said about these events, since they are directly related to today’s hero. So, some time ago, I stopped paying the subscription fee to Viasat (a satellite TV provider), and not because of greed, but because of the insanity of the provider - from the package of channels to which I subscribed, a third was replaced by an incomprehensible indescribable shnyaga and to all requests about connecting me to normal channels for the same fee, Viasat remained silent. That’s how I was - a year and a half before the end of the contract, I was offended... The offense, it’s worth saying, was mutual and my television was completely turned off... Oh, and their tuner is not flashable, by the way. So the question became: where should I watch cartoons?

The option to buy a new tuner was postponed - for a while, though. And all because a year ago I actively used torrent TV. Why not? Many channels, delay of up to a minute from broadcasting, everything is convenient. There is only one minus - mandatory advertising in the free subscription, and, despite all my loyalty to it, here I was simply torn: the volume of advertising is one and a half times higher than the base one, and the topic can cause all sorts of nervous disorders and other confusion. Especially in children. But I didn’t want to pay, again, not so much out of greed, but out of a sense of natural justice - I watch what they show me, so I pay as much as I think is necessary. In a word, in this complicated way I got to IP-TV and KODI. By the way, KODI- this is our hero! Let's get acquainted, shall we?

Once upon a time there was an XBMC player, and then it became known as KODI - I don’t understand such a drastic rebranding, but it’s a fact. And now there are as many as fifteen versions of the program, the last one today is called Isengard, the 14th version is Helix, 13-1 is Gotham, and the twelfth is Frodo (or vice versa, I don’t remember). Which raises the question: who is Helix? Everything else clearly fits into the general comic-fantasy paradigm.

So, the application is a cross-platform media center program. So, with its help we can view any types of media content (photos, songs, cartoons), television (including torrent and IP-TV), organize a media library and automatically search for missing data on Internet resources, organize broadcasts to media clients. Again, translated into Russian: we watch and listen to absolutely any format of absolutely everything (with very rare exceptions).

So, the first launch will greet us with a somewhat strange interface for a phone. Moreover, everything is in a foreign language.

To translate all this incomprehensible into human language, we need to go to “System” - “Appearance” - “International” - “Language”. Where to choose the language we need, there are many languages, so, in addition to Russian, there is Ukrainian and Magyar. Here.

Now that we've gotten to the settings, let's tweak things a little. So, in the same tab we can select the text encoding (there are different moments) and the keyboard layout. This point is worth remembering - you won’t have to type text often, but it’s important, and you can only change the input language here.

Immediately switch to the “Expert” mode - tap on the type of settings at the very bottom - nothing bad will happen, but we’ll expand the possibilities.

The time and date settings are somehow not surprising, but the same cannot be said about the temperature and speed settings. More precisely, what is surprising is not the settings, but the very fact of their presence - as it turns out, KODI can also predict the weather.

In the file lists everything is clear - we mark what we need and that’s it. I advise you to note this all.

But the point about the screensaver is an interesting thing. So, by default, we have access to two forms of it - darkening the screen or completely blacking it out. In the settings, we configure and preview them accordingly.

But if you tap directly on the word “Screensaver” and select “More,” then everything becomes much more interesting! You can install a leapfrog of pictures from an anime site, you can install an RSS news aggregator, but I advise you to familiarize yourself with “VideoScreensaver”, which can put any video on the screensaver, but, what is much more interesting, it offers to download very high-quality screensaver videos with fireplaces, aquariums, falling snow and other popular things.

Or the Enterprise...

And now to the very first category - “Cover”. Simple? Yes, - the font type is simple and useful (note that here, along with Arial, there is also an enlarged font - I highly recommend using it), “increase” is an equally necessary thing (all elements are enlarged). Sounds? I turned it off. Well, the start window.

Here I select "Weather" - it looks nice.

Now for the interesting part. By clicking on “Cover”, we will move on to their selection. Yes, all additional things are installed through the "More" button. There are many covers, and they are all fundamentally different - this is not just a change in color or design, it is, first of all, a change in the logic of presentation. I am sure that everyone can choose the best one for themselves and not put up with any shortcomings.

However, there is one point: the themes, except for the two pre-installed ones, are not friendly with Russian fonts. That's it. Or maybe it's just me.

Let's go below and go to "Video". Well, there's just an outrageous amount of settings! What is this all for?

No, of course, you can switch to the basic mode, but that’s not interesting.

Actually, all the descriptions are absolutely clear and do not require any description on my part - you just choose the one you need.

In "Playback", by the way, there is a forced stereo image mode (3-D, that is, in Russian).

Well, and so on and so forth:

Music - almost everything is the same as in a regular player. Just a little more serious. So, by checking the “Get additional information...” checkbox, we activate the option to automatically search for information about our artists and albums, and in two paragraphs below we can select the update source.

Unfortunately, the choice is not very large, so I left "Universal Scraper". But you should be careful with the next checkbox - activating “Prefer online information” will not only display this same information, but will completely replace the tags. Of course, if you, like me, can study chaos theory using tags, it won’t be any worse, but if your media library is in good shape (and this is true for iPod users in 90% of cases, as well as for Windows Phone connoisseurs, - Zune - she is like that...), then think twice...

During playback, we can set the rewind step and auto volume, both according to the album level and the composition level.

In the “File Lists” level we just indicate whether the application should read tags and how to display song names (it only looks complicated).

We will miss out on audio CD and karaoke due to the lack of a CD drive on my phone and my fierce hatred of karaoke.

The photos have only basic viewing settings (and I don’t need more - it’s not Photoshop, right?).

And here is the Weather (You remember, we chose degrees and speeds?), So, here we need to select a weather provider. By default, there are none, in the familiar “More” item there are as many as five. I recommend choosing either Met Weather or OpenWeather.

Well, after that you need to configure it. First and foremost, this concerns location.

There is nothing particularly interesting in the “Advanced” and “Expert” items - feel free to skip them.

And smoothly move on to the “TV” item. This tab concerns IP television specifically. So, having activated our television at the top point, in principle, we were faced with a message that was still incomprehensible:

So, having already clicked on “More” more than once, you probably guessed that the entire functionality of the application is built on additional modules. By default, the application can do a lot, but not everything, and with add-ons - almost everything...

Here too, TV operation is carried out using PVR modules. There are many of them here. Each one has a description, and we don't need them all. Except for one thing - "PVR Simple Client".

We found it, clicked it, and pressed the “Enable” button. That's all for now (but there is no TV yet - more on that later). For now, let's go back to the settings.

“Menu/OSD” - this is when we switch channels, their name is displayed on the screen, so we choose how long it will be displayed, and whether it will be displayed at all.

"Program" is also an EPG. The number of days is all clear, the update period is also clear. I just recommend increasing it to 700 minutes. Well, why do we need to update the program every two hours? We buy TV Guide once a week and the entire program is already in it. This way we’ll save some battery power by reducing the number of calls.

Here is an interesting option "Continue from last channel" and its variations.

So, if we do activate this, then when we start the program in the background (or not in the background), the TV will automatically start, even if we went to listen to music...

And the channel switching delay (as well as the confirmation button) is useful when we don’t just scroll through channels in a row to take time, but purposefully scroll through to the one we need. For example, with both checkboxes inactive, pressing channel switching (up/down) on the 5th channel will take us to the sixth. If we activate the confirmation button, then we will switch exactly to the channel we want (scrolling through the 6th, 7th and others, at least up to the 100th), and if there is a delay, then the switching will occur at the moment we stop flipping (or we slow down , which happens).

By the way, we can also record the broadcast - it’s not that difficult... True, I think it’s useless - there are archives of programs, there are torrents, there is recording of channels... But if we want, we can!

This is all with media settings. Now to our functionality - “Add-ons”.

Please note that a sort of bookmark has appeared on the right - you can drag it out, select the sorting principle in the pulled-out one and try to update the add-ons (you need to update them - their functionality is constantly expanding. Although, automatic updating does an excellent job of this).

So, in “My Add-ons” there are all those that we have already installed or pre-installed.

But to install new ones, we need to visit the “Install from repository” item. But the developers threw in some vague repository, not ours, not Russian. I suggest you use this.

This is an absolutely official thing, a repository of supplements adapted and specially designed for our conditions. So, download it to your device and select “Install from ZIP file.”

Now, when choosing a repository, select Seppius and rejoice!

In video add-ons, everything is not so obvious, since there are incomparably more of them. So, I like my-hit.ru and the Ukrainian server fs.ua (which works great in Russia too). On FS you can find almost any series in any voice acting and in any quality, and there is also the ability to create an account with favorites and deferred ones. And this is not advertising, but a fact.

There are also modules for torret TV, youtube and fifty other useful things.

The source of information is an extremely useful bookmark. Let's go and install KinoPoisk. Now we will always have complete information about our film collection.

Software additions will slightly expand our functionality.

But photo additions will add jokes and demotivators and cats from VKontakte.

And we are still in the settings. Let's take a quick look at the system settings - there's nothing special here.

Well, something like this. Now let's see how this miracle works. Here are our photos. We can install add-ons and look at pictures of different sites and storages, or we can specify our own folder.

Viewing is simple, tapping on the title takes you to full screen, scrolling with a swipe, and swiping up/down changes the orientation of the picture.

The video is completely similar. Select the folder with our contents.

Only now, we have to additionally specify the type of content: clips, TV series or films.

Based on this, Kodi will look for additional data and create beauty. In my case, I select clips. And that's it - click, agree, wait, enjoy...

Information about the song and album cover have been updated.

But not everything was found: Kipelov and Spleen - no problem, but Sukachev and BG - not so much. They are not lost - they can always be launched through the file menu.

And this is what the fs.ua add-on looks like:

We just need to find what we need and run it.

Music. Here the idea is good, but the implementation let us down - either there was no information about the Earring and the Prince on the server, or it turned out to be too difficult for Olvi, but something with the search for information did not work out. But "Ivan Tsarevich", a much less popular group, was very determined and set an example of how it should be. And in general, it reads information from tags, and not from the file name, what is this metadata craze?!

Programs - all kinds of extensions. For example, an email client.

Or forums (based on Tapatalk), or something else...

But let's return to what everything was intended for - television. So, as we remember, we installed the PVR Simple Client module.

Now it needs to be configured a little. Or rather, download the channel table and specify the path to it. You can download my list from my own disk - I don’t mind (here is the link), or you can use the always guaranteed working one from https://edem.tv/ (you just need to register there and download the playlist of channels - of course, everything is free ).

Kodi is a full-fledged platform for playing video and music, watching TV shows, IP television and even streaming, which can be installed on various devices, from a computer to a Raspberry Pi or Android. This is a very powerful and multifunctional environment and new users may not immediately understand what and how to do and configure. What is Kodi?

Imagine a world where you can watch all your favorite TV shows, sports and movies anywhere, anytime, in a beautifully designed app. And all this is completely free. This is real, this is exactly the opportunity Kodi provides.

Kodi, formerly known as XBMC, is a software or application that functions as a media player. The program is open source, so you can download it completely free of charge. Kodi can play all types of digital media and all media formats. It is also possible to listen to music and even manage photos. Next we will look at how to set up kodi and install it on the system.

1. Install Kodi

You can get the program on the official website. There are versions for all supported platforms.

For Windows you can download an installer, and for Linux you can find installation instructions in various distributions. For example, to install the latest version of a program on Ubuntu, you need to run the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:team-xbmc/ppa
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install kodi

You can also install kodi from the official repositories of most distributions by simply installing the package of the same name. Immediately after installation, you can use Kodi. The program can be launched from the main menu or through the terminal:

2. Interface setup

After the first launch of the program, you will see a beautiful interface but in English. But I would like the language to be Russian. To enable the Russian language, click on the gear in the upper left corner:

Then select "Interface Settings":

Just select the desired language from the list, for example, Russian. Immediately after clicking on the menu item, the program language will be changed.

3. Watch videos in Kodi

The most common way people want to use Kodi is to watch videos, as the program provides a single and easy-to-use interface for watching videos, TV shows, and movies. The program can open videos in two ways. You can watch videos saved locally or view recordings from the Internet. Let's look at how to set up Kodi to work with video. To open a video that is saved in your file system, select the menu item "Movies", "Series" or "Video", then open the files:

The program will display folders with files known to it, you can select one of them. For each video file, detailed information about it is displayed:

If the folder with your files is not yet known to the program, then you can add it by simply selecting "Add a video":

This will open a file system viewer where you can select the desired folder. At this stage, you also need to indicate that the folder contains a video and enter the source name.

After that, it will appear in the list and you will be able to see the video that is in it. The answer to the question of how to watch a kodi video is very simple, double click on it:

If you want to open a video from the Internet, the process will look a little different. You need to choose not "Files" A "Extras" from the main menu, and then go install the add-on for the desired resource. We'll look at working with add-ons below.

4. Play music in Kodi

In addition to watching videos and TV shows, you can listen to music stored on your computer in Kodi. Everything here is similar to the video. Only you need to select an item "Music", then "Files". Next, select the desired track or folder with tracks:

When adding a folder, you need to specify a name for the source:

Immediately after this, the source will be integrated into the library and you will be able to view your favorite tracks, sorted by name and artist. To get tracks from the Internet, you can install add-ons, such as Spotify.

3. Kodi extensions

You already know how to use the kodi program, but extensions are ways to greatly increase its capabilities. Kodi has quite a lot of features by default, but add-ons allow you to expand this list even further. With the help of add-ons, you can change the appearance, open sources from the Internet, both for video and audio tracks, and much more. For example, you can watch Kodi TV or play content directly from torrents. To install add-ons, select "Extras" in the main menu:

There are several ways to get add-ons, you can install them from a ZIP file, folder, remote site or Kodi add-on store. We will consider the last option. Select an item "Install from repository":

A list of add-on categories will open in front of you. Here you can choose audio add-ons, video add-ons, games, programs and much more. For example, let's install one of the video add-ons. To do this, select it from the list and click the button "Install". Very soon a message will appear that it has been installed.

Then you can find this add-on and open its menu in the section "Additions". Add-ons for Youtube, LastFm, Spotify and other services are installed in the same way. In addition to the official store, you can install add-ons from third-party repositories. To do this, first open the settings, go to the section "System Settings":

Then go to the tab "Extras" and turn on the checkbox opposite "Unconfirmed sources":

Confirm the action:

You can now install additional Kodi extension repositories on your system, as well as the extensions themselves. Let's add a repository. Go to section "File manager" in settings.

Then double click on the item "Add source":

In the window that opens, click on No and enter the repository address. For example, to add a Fusion repository you need to specify the address http://fussion.tvaddons.ag:

Then enter a name and click "Ok". Now the source has been added, but it is not ready to work yet, next you need to install the repository. Click on the program installation icon in the section "Extras":

Select "Install from ZIP", then select not your file system as the source, but the added network source. For example, Fussion.

Now you need to select a repository from the list. We need exodus:

Only after this the repository is installed on the system and you can use it. Return to the package installation menu and click "Install from repository". Now select your new repository:

One of the most comfortable ways to watch IPTV television is Kodi. This is open source software for Android smart devices, thanks to which users can easily view a huge amount of content. The media player is suitable for new technology in television, where video transmission occurs on the same principle as the Internet. This technology is called IPTV, but to access it you need to configure Kodi IPTV.

The process of installing and configuring Kodi is within everyone’s control; you just need to find clear instructions and follow them unquestioningly. By the way, the instructions are not universal for every device, so if you encounter difficulties installing Kodi on your computer or Smart TV, it is better to find a link to work specifically for your device.

Preparing to Set Up Kodi

The preparatory stage is no less important than the work itself. This is due to the fact that we will have to download several programs that will help us in our work, and we don’t have Kodi himself.

We determine what OS is on the device and where the TV signal will be sent:

Personal computer based on Windows, Linux or Mac OS X;
Android set-top box or TV based on Android;
Smartphone, tablet or Raspberry Pi board.

We are searching for m3u. This is a very important moment, which directly affects how many channels will work and whether they will work at all. By the way, the format is also not specified by chance, since Kodi works with it. A playlist is a text file with specified links to channel broadcasts. You can find it on our website.

Choose which version of Kodi is suitable for your device. Option 17 is the newest version so far, but setting up Kodi 16 IPTV is considered one of the simplest. So the choice of which version to install depends on the user.
To download and install the program, go to the official website of the media center, or use any of these links:

For Android on Google Play – https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.xbmc.Kodi;
For other systems, you can use the link to the official page https://Kodi.tv/download.

By the way, be careful, since the minimum version of Android that Kodi will run on is Android 4.2.

Setting up Kodi 17 IPTV

Now we’ll talk about the most important stage – setting up Kodi. If you do something wrong here, then all the previously made efforts will be wasted. But the developers understand that few people will want to work with a program that is too complex, so they have simplified the process as much as possible. The instructions look like this:

We launch the media center and enable the TV function in it. This is done like this: "System-Settings-General-On". Next, a message appears, and you need to click on "OK". Select “PVR IPTV Simple Client-Enable”;
Connecting a playlist to Kodi. Go to the menu "Tune", indicate the location of the sheet (via a link from the Internet or locally). IN "Path to M3U" insert the playlist link;
The next step is to add a program guide. Go to “PVR IPTV Simple Client properties”, then in "EPG Settings", So "Path to XML TV", entering the address there without brackets;
Reboot Kodi and wait a few seconds for the result. But you need to close all windows that are active on the device, otherwise the procedure will not be possible.

At the end of this procedure, information will appear on the screen, or rather in the upper and lower right corners, that programs and channels have been loaded. Then you can go to the main menu, where you will open a new item that was not there before - the TV item.

Kodi as a media center for all occasions

Even at the stage when this media center was known as XBMC, users had already managed to appreciate it due to its omnivorous nature. It can play almost any video or audio format. Here are just a small part of its capabilities, both related to IPTV and not.

Kodi is a full-fledged platform for playing video and music, watching TV shows, IP television and even streaming, which can be installed on various devices, from a computer to a Raspberry Pi or Android. This is a very powerful and multifunctional environment, and new users may not immediately understand what and how to do and configure.

In this article, we'll look at how to use Kodi, how to get started with the program, how to install it on your system, and discuss everything you should know before using it. But let's start with a short introduction.

1. Install Kodi

You can get the program on the official website. There are versions for all supported platforms.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:team-xbmc/ppa
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install kodi

2. Interface setup

Then select "Interface Settings":

Just select the desired language from the list, for example, Russian. Immediately after clicking on the menu item, the program language will be changed.

3. Watch videos in Kodi

The program will display folders with files known to it, you can select one of them. For each video file, detailed information about it is displayed:

If the folder with your files is not yet known to the program, then you can add it by simply selecting "Add a video":

This will open a file system viewer where you can select the desired folder. At this stage, you also need to indicate that the folder contains a video and enter the source name.

After that, it will appear in the list and you will be able to see the video that is in it. The answer to the question of how to watch a kodi video is very simple, double click on it:

4. Play music in Kodi

When adding a folder, you need to specify a name for the source:

3. Kodi extensions

There are several ways to get add-ons, you can install them from a ZIP file, folder, remote site or Kodi add-on store. We will consider the last option. Select an item "Install from repository":

Then go to the tab "Extras" and turn on the checkbox opposite "Unconfirmed sources":

Confirm the action:

You can now install additional Kodi extension repositories on your system, as well as the extensions themselves. Let's add a repository. Go to section "File manager" in settings.

Then double click on the item "Add source":

In the window that opens, click on No and enter the repository address. For example, to add a Fusion repository you need to specify the address http://fussion.tvaddons.ag:

Select "Install from ZIP", then select not your file system as the source, but the added network source. For example, Fussion.

Kodi is an application for the Android operating system, but at the same time, it has almost all the properties of an independent operating system. XBMC is an outdated name for Kodi, or rather Kodi is a rebranding of XBMC, which means that starting from a certain version, XBMC began to be called Kodi. Before starting work with Kodi, I would like to talk a little about the organization of its work. Let's compare Kodi and Android from a user's perspective. On Android, users use applications such as: YouTube, Twitter, VKontakte, etc. In Kodi, instead of the term “application”, another term is used – “add-on”. As a rule, the user installs Android applications from Google Play, or directly from application developer sites or pirated resources. In Kodi, Google Play and developer sites are Repositories. These are a kind of collections of additions. After installing Kodi on a smartphone or set-top box, as a rule, a certain number of such repositories are already connected. The term "connected" in Kodi means that the user can "enable" add-ons from connected repositories. Consequently, a certain two-level system is obtained - first you need to connect the repository in which the required add-on is located, for example, fs.to, and then enable this add-on fs.to, finding it in the already connected repository.

Installing Kodi

Different set-top box manufacturers install different versions of Kodi with different connected repositories. So, in order not to understand in each specific case how this or that version of Kodi is configured correctly, let’s simply remove the pre-installed Kodi, and then install it from Google Play or from our website. You can delete it in different ways. Below is one option.

From the Android settings menu.

Follow the list down and select Kodi

Open the desktop and find the Kodi application on Google Play or download

The process of installing Russian/Ukrainian language in Kodi

System- setting- appearance- international- language

Follow the list down and select the desired language.

Installing a playlist

Before you start installing a playlist with the m3u extension, you need to place it in the console’s memory using any file manager. When you connect a flash drive to a USB port, ES Explorer is automatically launched, which also allows you to do this. Let's return to Kodi.

System – TV – Are common – On.

You need to change the location of the playlist from the remote path to the local path.

You must specify the path to the playlist.

Now you need to log out of Kodi and log in again for the changes to take effect. To turn it off, you need to exit to the main Kodi screen.

Press the power off button.

And agree to leave.

Launch Kodi. A new section will appear on the main screen - TV; by going into it, you will be taken to the playlist.

By selecting the desired channel, you can expand the image to full screen. Switching channels is done using the remote control in one “click”, and for this you do not need to leave the playlist. If you use the mouse, the playlist will be displayed by clicking on the icon shown in the screenshot below.