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Author Topic: Raspberry Pi / OSMC / Free Films  (Read 8296 times)

sheddyian

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Raspberry Pi / OSMC / Free Films
« on: April 28, 2016, 01:42:36 AM »

I've been running OSMC (formerly XBMC or RaspBMC) as a media centre on a Raspbery Pi connected to my TV for several years now, it's very good.  I use it for playing back recorded TV that's on a separate Raspberry Pi powered NAS.

I was recently looking at the addons to OSMC, and found a curious one - Popcornflix.

In OSMC : go to Videos, then add-ons, then browse the list of available addons.  Scroll down to Popcornflix, and add it.

You can now go to videos - pocornflix and it will list genres of films, and then lots of films.  I expected them to be out of copyright films, but they're not.  Admittedly, they're mostly not films I've ever heard of, with the exception of Austin Powers, which I chose to watch.

When the film plays, the quality is good, and there are no adverts, although the picture seems to have a black bar down the right hand side (for ads? - I didn't see any appear).

So the point of this post is 1) it's mildly interesting 2) what's the business model? 3) I presume it's legal?

Ian
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Dray

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Re: Raspberry Pi / OSMC / Free Films
« Reply #1 on: April 28, 2016, 07:26:24 AM »

I couldn't say if it's illegal or not.

Do you manage to stream HD with the RPi?

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« Last Edit: May 13, 2016, 11:17:39 PM by kitz »
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sheddyian

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Re: Raspberry Pi / OSMC / Free Films
« Reply #2 on: April 28, 2016, 11:27:24 AM »

Ah, that's interesting.  I had no idea it was using bittorrent, the video started pretty quickly after choosing it (maybe 20 second delay?) and though I only watched about 15 minutes of it, I didn't see any stuttering or pausing.

I don't know what resolution it was playing the videos in, except that the picture didn't fill the screen - that black border down the right hand side.

With the Raspberry Pi NAS and the Pi with OSMC, it plays back HD recordings fine with no problems, and looks very good indeed.  Until recently the NAS was only running on a Raspberry Pi B+ (ie just the one 700Mhz CPU core) but it still coped with streaming HD video via SAMBA.

The Raspberry Pi running OSMC is still a B+, that also works very well and I don't see stuttering.  Seems very responsive too.


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« Last Edit: May 13, 2016, 11:18:40 PM by kitz »
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gt94sss2

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Re: Raspberry Pi / OSMC / Free Films
« Reply #3 on: April 28, 2016, 11:38:36 AM »

I haven't used Popcornflix and before your posting had never heard of OSMC which appears to be a modified version of Kodi.

However, I recently got a RPi and have been looking at what one can use them for (apart from running DSLstats which is why I got it!).

Like Dray I can't say if it's legal or not - one would have perhaps thought streaming 'illegal/pirated' movies was against the law but it appears it may not be in the UK/EU:

http://kodicommunity.com/streaming-pirated-movies-and-content-is-legal/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_aspects_of_downloading_and_streaming#European_Union
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Dray

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Re: Raspberry Pi / OSMC / Free Films
« Reply #4 on: April 28, 2016, 11:49:57 AM »

Oh I see, Kodi used to be XBMC  :idea:
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Al1264

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Re: Raspberry Pi / OSMC / Free Films
« Reply #5 on: April 28, 2016, 11:54:52 AM »

I can't say if it's legal or not
I'm pretty sure that Popcornflix is perfectly legal: http://www.popcornflix.com/about.html http://www.popcornflix.com/terms-service.html

Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popcornflix
Quote
Popcornflix was conceived in July 2010, and went into live beta in March 2011. The site primarily streams independent feature films, many of which come from Screen Media's library
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Dray

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Re: Raspberry Pi / OSMC / Free Films
« Reply #6 on: April 28, 2016, 12:01:51 PM »

I think perhaps Popcornflix is nothing to do with [removed] my bad  :blush:



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« Last Edit: May 13, 2016, 11:16:48 PM by kitz »
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sheddyian

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Re: Raspberry Pi / OSMC / Free Films
« Reply #7 on: April 28, 2016, 01:46:16 PM »

I think perhaps [that other site] is nothing to do with Popcorntime my bad  :blush:

I hadn't spotted that either though!

Having had a quick look at the Popcornflix website and tried a couple of other films, it seems there's something odd with the Austin Powers that puts the black bar down the right of the screen; the others I tried played at full width.

And I didn't see any ads either!  ???

I'd be interested if anyone has heard of their films, I'm no film buff but apart from Austin Powers I didn't recognise anything else there.

Ian

[edit 13/05/2016 - self censorship to avoid promoting troublesome websites]
« Last Edit: May 13, 2016, 11:44:52 PM by sheddyian »
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NewtronStar

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Re: Raspberry Pi / OSMC / Free Films
« Reply #8 on: May 06, 2016, 12:20:47 AM »

Sheddy hope you don't mind me asking a question relating to RPi i use it for DSLstats the RPi boots to the GUI automatically i'll plug in the HDMI to VGA adapter to see the desktop and run DSLstats but it interferes with HG612 SNRM once connected.

I have putty and Xming installed on PC and can access the RPi via comand line and via the desktop using startxlde but it shows up as a new GUI desktop on PC and can't see the original GUI desktop running DSLstats is there anyway to show the original RPi desktop without using HDMI to VGA adapter.
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sheddyian

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Re: Raspberry Pi / OSMC / Free Films
« Reply #9 on: May 06, 2016, 01:13:46 AM »

Sheddy hope you don't mind me asking a question relating to RPi i use it for DSLstats the RPi boots to the GUI automatically i'll plug in the HDMI to VGA adapter to see the desktop and run DSLstats but it interferes with HG612 SNRM once connected.

I have putty and Xming installed on PC and can access the RPi via comand line and via the desktop using startxlde but it shows up as a new GUI desktop on PC and can't see the original GUI desktop running DSLstats is there anyway to show the original RPi desktop without using HDMI to VGA adapter.

My setup is a bit different, and I'm really not an expert here, but perhaps these points might help.

My Raspberry Pi that runs DSLstats is also running other monitoring software, but doesn't boot to a desktop/X-WIndows.  The pi is headless with no physical display.

I have installed xrdp on this Raspberry Pi, so that I can easily access it from a Windows PC using RDP, thus :

[Windows command line]

mstsc /v:pi-node-name

Once in the XWIndows session via RDP for the first time, I start up DSLStats, then I quit (NOT logout) the remote desktop, which leaves it running on the Raspberry Pi.

Subsequently, when I reconnect using mstsc /v:pi-node-name from the same PC, it reconnects me to the existing session.

However, if I try the same command from a different Windows PC, it starts a new session and doesn't show me the already-running DSLStats.

So, it seems to me that your Raspberry Pi is starting an Xwindows session at startup, and you need to try to reconnect to this, rather than starting a new instance, when you remotely connect.

As to how you do this, I really don't know.  Sorry.

Ian
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NewtronStar

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Re: Raspberry Pi / OSMC / Free Films
« Reply #10 on: May 06, 2016, 12:14:49 PM »

Thanks Sheddy i'll try some of those tips this evening  :)
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kitz

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Re: Raspberry Pi / OSMC / Free Films
« Reply #11 on: May 13, 2016, 11:14:16 PM »

Removing reference to a certain site, only because I am already as it is trying to get a google [wrongly added ] blacklist removed because someone completely and totally innocently mentioned an article about a pirate site.
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sheddyian

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Re: Raspberry Pi / OSMC / Free Films
« Reply #12 on: May 13, 2016, 11:30:35 PM »

Removing reference to a certain site, only because I am already as it is trying to get a google [wrongly added ] blacklist removed because someone completely and totally innocently mentioned an article about a pirate site.

Oops, sorry about that  :-[

[edit]

I've just edited an earlier quoted post of mine that still had reference to that site.
Ian
« Last Edit: May 13, 2016, 11:45:33 PM by sheddyian »
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Dray

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Re: Raspberry Pi / OSMC / Free Films
« Reply #13 on: May 14, 2016, 05:26:19 PM »

Oops me too  :-[
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NewtronStar

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Re: Raspberry Pi / OSMC / Free Films
« Reply #14 on: May 15, 2016, 06:24:02 PM »

Kodi is such a beast to setup but once you have tamed it then it works very well and this is my third attempt to get all things working on it from DTV SD/HD to Films and thousands of channels around the world.
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