Your Media Just Got Served | LINUX Unplugged 156

Posted on: August 2, 2016

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Your Media Just Got Served | LINUX Unplugged 156

Take advantage of the Chromecast without Google, extend Kodi with awesome new backends & cast media around your network with free Linux tools. Our panel covers great tips to fully trick out your Linux media setup.

Plus our thoughts on the FCC forcing TP-Link to support open source firmwares, reverse tethering for Android, a quick look at Mint 18 XFCE edition & a lot more!


Ting

DigitalOcean


Linux Academy

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Show Notes:

Pre-Show

Follow Up / Catch Up

Bring Linux apps to the Mac Desktop with Docker

Here are a few reasons why you may want to use Docker to run Linux applications on macOS:

FCC forces TP-Link to support open source firmware on routers

TP-Link agreed to pay a $200,000 fine, comply with the rules going forward, and to let customers install open source firmware on routers.

SimpleRT: Simple Reverse Tethering for Android

Reverse Tethering utility for Android.

Allows you to share your computer’s internet connection with your Android device via a USB cable.

Development is still in progress, bugs and errors can occur.

No root, no adb required!

Linux & OSX are supported! Windows is not, and unlikely to be in the future (ok, maybe in some day).

TING

Win an Ubuntu Linux laptop in the System76 ‘Pop Quiz’ giveaway

System76 is giving away one of its most popular Linux-based laptops — the Lemur.

Linux Mint 18 “Sarah” Xfce released!

Linux Mint 18 is a long term support release which will be supported until 2021. It comes with updated software and brings refinements and many new features to make your desktop even more comfortable to use.

GNOME Maps Is Back On Track Thanks to Mapbox

“With this [3.20.4] release we switch from using the MapQuest open API for fetching tiles. And instead we start using Mapbox API. Using an community API key from Mapbox,” writes Maps dev Jonas Danielsson in the change-log to accompany the release.

DigitalOcean

Chromecast Without Google

Pichai revealed that the company has shipped 30 million Chromecast units since the release of the device back in 2013.

Videostream for Google Chromecast™ – Chrome Web Store

Play your own local videos on your Chromecast or Android TV directly from your computer (PC, Mac, Linux) – Subtitles supported!

castnow: commandline chromecast player

castnow is a command-line utility that can be used to play back media files on
your Chromecast device. It supports playback of local video files, videos on the web and torrents.

You can also re-attach a running playback session (this sentence should belong somewhere else).

Stream Videos To Chromecast From The Command Line Using Stream2Chromecast ~ Web Upd8: Ubuntu / Linux blog

Stream2Chromecast is a command line Chromecast media streamer for Linux. The tool can transcode unsupported formats in real time and play them on the Chromecast.

Stream2Chromecast features:

  • cast audio and video to a Chromecast device;
  • can transcode any formats not supported by the Chromecast in real time (using FFmpeg or Libav), so you don’t have to convert any video manually;
  • provides basic control commands: pause / unpause / stop playback (currently this only works when not transcoding), set or mute volume;
  • allows specifying a device when multiple Chromecasts are connected on the same network;
  • supports passing custom custom transcoder parameters to ffmpeg or avconv (thanks to this, you can set the quality, add subtitles even though Stream2Chromecast doesn’t directly support it, etc.);

  • supports specifying the port to use for streaming media.

  • GitHub – Pat-Carter/stream2chromecast: Chromecast media streamer for Linux

dlnacast: Cast local media to your TV through UPnP/DLNA

Cast local media to your TV through UPnP/DLNA.
Based on thibauts node-upnp-mediarenderer-client.

Kast for Kodi

A bash script tool for casting media to the Kodi entertainment center using a Linux desktop/laptop.

  • https://github.com/MichaelTunnell/Kast

Linux Academy

Making Kodi Great Again

Naming video files/TV shows

Kodi requires each TV show to be in its own folder, and for each file to contain a pattern from which Kodi can determine the season and episode number (e.g. “S01E01”).

tinyMediaManager is a full featured media manager to organize and clean up your media library.

Flirc: Use any remote with your media center

Backend Options

PlexKodiConnect: let Kodi talk to your Plex — Plex Forums

PKC synchronizes your media from your Plex server to the native Kodi database. Because PKC uses the native Kodi database, the above limitations are gone!

  • You can browse your media full speed, images are cached
  • All other Kodi addons will be able to “see” your media, thinking it’s normal Kodi stuff

  • Use any Kodi skin you want!

  • PlexKodiConnect: Plex add-on for Kodi

PKC combines the best of Kodi – ultra smooth navigation, beautiful and highly customizable user interfaces and playback of any file under the sun, and the Plex Media Server to manage all your media without lifting a finger.

Have a look at some screenshots to see what’s possible.

What is currently supported?

PKC currently provides the following features:

  • All Plex library types
    • Movies and Home Videos
    • TV Shows
    • Music
    • Pictures and Photos
  • Different PKC interface languages:

    • English
    • German
    • More coming up
  • Plex Watch Later / Plex It!
  • Plex Companion: fling Plex media (or anything else) from other Plex devices to PlexKodiConnect
  • Plex Transcoding
  • Automatically download more artwork from Fanart.tv, just like the Kodi addon Artwork Downloader

    • Banners
    • Disc art
    • Clear logos
    • Landscapes
    • Clear art
    • Extra fanart backgrounds
  • Automatically group movies into movie sets
  • Direct play from network paths (e.g. “\\server\Plex\movie.mkv”) instead of streaming from slow HTTP (e.g. “192.168.1.1:32400”). You have to setup all your Plex libraries to point to such network paths. Do have a look at the wiki here
Add-on:Emby for Kodi – Official Kodi Wiki

Emby is a media management server that allows you to synchronize media libraries, watched status, and watch progress between compatible devices. Emby for Kodi allows Kodi to use an Emby as a media management backend. This add-on effectively replaces the Kodi built-in media database with Emby. Currently supported media includes Movies, TV Episodes, & Music.

A quick intro video from one of the dev’s: https://youtu.be/IaecDPcXI3I?t=119

Post-Show: What if Apple is intentionally slowing down the Mac platform, to spur iPad adoption?

You think you know what a computer is, but then you see this one. Meet iPad Pro.

Question? Comments? Contact us here!