At this point consumers are starting to wake up to the fact that the cable & dish network industry is changing. The birth of Netflix, Apple TV & Amazon Prime allowed viewers to watch their shows on demand and at a lower cost than traditional cable or dish services. Many people still subscribe to cable or dish and will add a service like Netflix to compliment their cable package. This is all about to change. Enter Kodi™.
This article will discuss the explosive growth of Kodi™ (formerly known as XBMC). We will review the main features of the service which include music, movies, photos & more. If you are curious about utilizing Kodi™ we will explore some of the top devices that run the software. And finally we will cover the future of Kodi™ and how it is at the forefront of the ever changing in-home entertainment industry.
Kodi™ is an award winning free and open source (GPL) software media center. It conveniently runs on Linux, OS X, Windows, iOS, and Adroid. More importantly it has a 10 foot user interface for use with your living room televisions and remote controls. So basically you can run Kodi from the comfort of your own couch! Kodi™ does not provide any media itself. The user must own content or manually point Kodi™ to 3rd party online services. The initial release was in 2002. It was originally produced as a independently developed media player application named Xbox Media Center for the very popular Xbox game console. Currently, Kodi™ is being used in many digital streaming players and has a simple to use interface for the non-techie consumer.
The main features the open source software provides are music, movies, TV shows, pictures & games. Kodi™ can play all of your music inluding AAC, MP3 and more. It has a cue sheet, tagging support, and smart playlists for ultimate control of your music collection. It can stream movies too! It supports all of the major video formats and sources. It can import these movies with full posters, trailers and more. Kodi™ offers the same features for your favorite TV shows as it does with movies. You can import your pictures into a data library and sort and filter them for a slideshow. You can even play and record live TV from the GUI interface. The Kodi™ software is packed with incredible features!
In order to access Kodi™ you will need a fast internet connection and a good quality streaming device. Here are 3 of the top devices that don’t have restrictions like Roku 3 or Apple TV:
The Dragon Box – The Dragon Box Quad Core Media Streaming Device has a sports emphasis focus and offers 8 GB of NAND flash memory.
The SkyStreamX – The SkyStreamX 4 Quad Core Android Smart TV Box comes with preloaded add ons an is an excellent Streaming Internet Media Player.
The DigiXStream – The DigiXStream DX4 Quad Core XBMC Android Media Box is also a great device that is very easy to use.
â¨Its highly recommended to invest in a keyboard for these devices. They all come with remotes but if you are searching for a movie or show your thumb will get tired moving the cursor around!
The cable companies and dish networks do not want the average consumer to understand Kodi™. The software offers the consumer an incredible opportunity to save money. Once hooked up to your living room television it has the ability to eliminate the need for cable or your dish network. Kodi™ is the future and the growth of the company will explode as more and more people learn of it’s amazing features!