[pushpop]

I’ve been running it since the earliest beta versions when it was literally Xbox Media Center - a media center for modded Xboxes (original).

I’ve ran it on all kinds of hardware from laptops, Android phones and tablets, Raspberry Pis (version 1 through to 3), Intel NUCs, etc. And obviously not forgetting the Xbox. Until very recently it was my go to media center.

I even went as far as to write some plugins for it. But they were for version 8 or something. It was probably 10 years ago and hasn’t been maintained.

I’ve never used a media center - free or non-free - that was as easy to set up nor ran as flawlessly as XBMC / Kodi did

[kelnos]

As a (former) plugin developer and long-time user and community member, I don't think you're exactly the best person to evaluate today's install usability for a non- or even somewhat-technical new-ish user.

[pushpop]

I'm really not sure what the point of your post is but what I can tell is you've completely misunderstood my post (and possibly Kodi too?) because several of the conditions you highlighted (eg "todays", "non-technical") wasn't even in the scope of my monologue.

Besides, non-technical users wouldn't be ripping DVDs to a NFS / SMB share in the first place (or using a home server / NAS for bittorrent / usenet / etc if that's how one prefers to accumulate their video archive). So why would they want a Media Centre that's designed for playing local or networked content?

Maybe what you're referring to is the stuff that has been in press a lot in recent years; the stuff incorrectly named (imo) as "Kodi-boxes" (or similar). I say "incorrectly named" because they used 3rd party plugins for illegal streams but those really have naff all to do with the Kodi media centre itself. It's like calling illegal downloading "Windows-boxes" because someone uses a bittorrent client on Windows 10.

I guess you could argue that Kodi now fills a niche that is dying out - that's certainly the case for me as I tend to use Netflix et al on my smart TV. But for playing local / mountable files, Kodi still leads the pack in terms of ease. Which is hardly surprising when you consider that's what the media centre was built to do.