privacyguides.org/docs/media-players.md

title	icon	description	cover
Media Players	material/play-button	Alternative Media Players for Videos, TV and Audio.	media-players.webp

Protects against the following threat(s):

• :material-account-cash: Surveillance Capitalism{ .pg-brown }

Kodi

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Kodi is a Free and Open Source (FOSS) client that can replace the interface of the likes of Smart TVs, it supports all variety of entertainment including TV (PVR), Music, Games, Videos (TV Shows, Movies) and Pictures. Kodi relies on content being stored locally or on the internet for things like Youtube or hardware to interface with things like TV (PVR) and you can use add-ons^1. to extend the experience. Kodi is compatible with most operating systems and hardware, including Apple, Raspberry Pi, Linux, and Android, see the requirements here for running Kodi.

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1. Kodi has an add-ons store to extend the out-of-the-box experience, but keep in mind that add-ons are made by the community and the company itself, so be careful what you install, luckily most software add-ons are also FOSS, meaning the code on them can be inspected, but in general be careful what you install, see the addons site for more.

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VLC is a Free and Open Source (FOSS) media player. It also supports all variety of entertainment including TV (PVR), Music and Videos. VLC Also relies on content being stored locally or can stream or play from the variety of hardware capture cards including tuner cards and online or on the local network too. Finally VLC is also fullyl cross-platform.

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Unlike Kodi, VLC is meant to be a software that runs on your PC to open Media locally or streams (eg. TV) so it doesn't cater to the big screen experience like Kodi does and doesn't have native remote control support or other inputs like it. Finally while it supports opening images, it isn't a great experience over using an image viewer and doesn't support Games (which Kodi does do well).

Criteria

Please note we are not affiliated with any of the projects we recommend. In addition to our standard criteria, we have developed a clear set of requirements to allow us to provide objective recommendations. We suggest you familiarize yourself with this list before choosing to use a project, and conduct your own research to ensure it's the right choice for you.

• Must be open source.
• Must support a wide variety of hardware.
• Must have functionality that can replace the likes of Smart TVs.