I have Kodi installed now, I will probably test OSMC later today, are there any other programs similar to them that I could test?

What I am mostly interested in:

  • fullscreen mode (dark mode / theme preferably, even if I would have to make it manually somehow)
  • option to navigate my drive or external drive
  • xbox controller support
  • subtitles support

What I want to accomplish is quite simple, every now and then I want to play a movie from my pc on my tv (connected via hdmi) and I don’t want to use mouse or keyboard while watching it to pause or turn the volume up a notch.

Kodi is kinda okay for all that but it feels a little wonky and pretty often makes a mess with my files, creating duplicates or ghost files on lists…

Thanks for any help!

  • somnuz@lemm.ee
    OP
    2·
    4 months ago

    I appreciated your message, like everyone else’s here. It’s still amazing for me that I have my tiny, contrived idea of what I need, a whim, or a problem (that doesn’t exist) on a level of “duh, this button and color scheme doesn’t represent my spirit animal well enough”, and yet — there are people willing to put an effort and their time into replying, sharing their ideas / knowledge with me…

    With Steam Input I once had such a twisted situation — circus would be the word to describe it best. It just somehow stopped working after my Windows updated once and made all my USB ports unusable so I had no input at all… and simultaneously in Safe Mode Steam didn’t want to start — so I just couldn’t untick that hellish option, deleting steam made things even worse, it was my second bluescreen on W10 since installation. Luckily some registry magic did the trick and I am never again touching the Steam Input.

    I will probably continue using and one day get used to Kodi, but it won’t stop me from searching for a player or something that will have the closest functionality to what I am looking for.

    • comicallycluttered@beehaw.org
      2·
      4 months ago

      Ah, good ol’ Microsoft. Always finding ways to “surprise” us.

      I know you can use AutoHotKey to map controller input as well, but I totally understand why you might not want to after that other mess happened (and I imagine you may have actually tried this already anyway).

      Anyway, no prob. I’ll look around as well and if I come across anything, I’ll let you know.

      In the meantime, I hope your search goes well!

      • somnuz@lemm.ee
        OP
        2·
        4 months ago

        Why… Why I haven’t thought about that…

        Thank You! I am using my AHK script for so many different things already but I have never thought that I even could map controller inputs to do anything there… When I was rewriting things from v1 to v2 and tidying everything up, I was reading the wiki a lot but not even once saw controller mapping as an option.

        Or maybe I just don’t remember?

        I always knew AHK was really versatile but it just keeps on coming with yet another pleasant surprise! Plenty of reading ahead of me!

        • comicallycluttered@beehaw.org
          2·
          4 months ago

          Or maybe I just don’t remember?

          Lol, actually that’s on me. I was an idiot and confused AHK with Joy2Key for some reason.

          However, I did find this on the AHK wiki, although it seems like Microsoft, as usual, makes things harder than they need to be:

          For Xbox controller 2013 and newer (anything newer than the Xbox 360 controller), Joy1 to Joy32 hotkeys will only work if a window owned by the script is active, such as a message box, GUI, or the script’s main window. This limitation also applies to GetKeyState for Joy1 to Joy32 and JoyX, JoyY, JoyZ, JoyR, JoyU, JoyPOV (and possibly JoyV), but not for JoyName, JoyButtons, JoyAxes and JoyInfo. To detect those controller inputs for other active windows, use the XInput.ahk library.

          Still, it’s worth a shot regardless. Seems like it does support gamepads but there might also be some tinkering required.

          • somnuz@lemm.ee
            OP
            2·
            4 months ago

            Yeah, got this page opened in my browser already, just for the v2. I will definitely play with that and do some testing on what can be achieved with all that.

            I still have no clue why I didn’t even consider AHK as a solution or at least a partial solution when it was the solution so many times before already…