Essential add-ons for Kodi, 2017 edition
POWER UP THE POPULAR MEDIA CENTRE APP WITH THE MUST-HAVE ADD-ONS.
AS FAR AS media players go, the open-source Kodi ( kodi.tv) remains the best in the business. It’s available on every platform you can imagine — Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS (with Jailbreak), Android TV and more. It’s the primary media player on custom versions of Linux like OpenELEC and OSMC, as well as NAS boxes.
What makes Kodi so great isn’t just that it can play anything from anything — it’s the suite of add-ons that make it a capable streaming platform. It can be messy, since most of the add-ons are community created, but there are some amazing tools available for it if you know where to look. This month, we’re going to show you where.
FIRST, EXPAND YOUR ADD-ON ACCESS
Kodi is specifically designed as an open platform. Anybody can write add-ons for it and many people have. But when it comes to the official add-on repository, the one you see when you look for add-ons within Kodi itself, the list is heavily curated. To protect itself from legal action, the Kodi team prune anything that might possibly be used for copyright violation from the official repository.
The get access to the full range of add-ons, you have to instead use an unofficial add-on repository (called a ‘repo’). That’s a little tricky, so we’ll walk through it here. Specifically, we’ll walk through setting up the Indigo add-on, which will install other add-ons for you from the Fusion repository. The Fusion repo includes a huge number of the most popular add-ons, including things like Exodus and Navi-X. In Kodi, go to ‘System > System Settings > Add-ons’. Then enable the toggle for allowing ‘Unknown sources’. Close settings. Now go to ‘System Settings > File Manager’, then select ‘Add source’. Enter this path name exactly: http://
fusion.tvaddons.ag/. You can give it the name ‘Fusion’. What this does is add the Fusion website as a possible source for add-ons (it’s just like adding any other source in Kodi, like a local hard drive or Windows Share). Now return to the Kodi home page. Click on Add-ons. (On older versions of Kodi, you might find it under ‘System > Settings > Add-ons’, in version 17 of Kodi, it’s located on the main page). In Kodi 17, select ‘Enter Add-on browser’ (or click on the box icon on the top left). In earlier versions, click on Configure add-ons. Select Install from the zip file. You’ll be asked to select your source, hit Fusion — that’s the source we created in Step 3. Select the directory ‘begin-here’. Then choose plugin.program.indigo. 1.0.4.zip (the version number might be updated by the time you read this).
Now go to ‘Add-ons > My add-ons > Program add-ons’. You should see Indigo installed there. Select Open. Select Addon installer. You’ll be able to browse through the different add-ons in the repository, sorted by type (or you can just go to Featured add-ons for the major ones). Select an add-on to install it.
Although Indigo provides an easy way to access most of the major add-ons, you can use a similar technique to install other repositories that might not be included in the Indigo library. You can find add-on zip files at sources like SuperRepo ( superrepo.org) and the many unofficial repos located at kodi.wiki/view/
Unofficial_add-on_repositories. In those other cases, you could download the add-on zip file, then put that zip file on any device that you’ve configured as a source in Kodi.
For example, if you’ve configured a NAS drive or a local drive as a Kodi source, you can just copy the zip file to that drive. Then you go through the ‘Add from zip file’ process in steps 5 and 6, navigating to the source where you saved the zip file.
NOW TO THE TOP ADD-ONS
Now that you can install any add-on, it’s time to get to the top ones that we’ve listed here. These, it should be noted, are just a sampling. There are some great ones like USTVNow, Players Club Beta, Velocity, iPlayer and Music Box that we haven’t listed here because they might require an account or VPN, but they’re worth checking out as well. (As an aside, a VPN is recommended in any case, since some of these services will point to what can best be described as shady sources). VIDEO ADD-ON, AVAILABLE IN INDIGO Perhaps the most popular unofficial add-on for Kodi, Exodus is like a Netflix for Kodi — but we should warn you that it does point to a lot of pirated content. You can browse its list of movies, which are organised by genre and date. Then it will give you a list of sites and services that will stream that movie — select one, and it will start streaming the movie. It works scarily well, although sometimes, you’ll hit a source that might not have enough bandwidth for live streaming.
1CHANNEL, PHOENIX,
VIDEO ADD-ONS, AVAILABLE IN INDIGO We’ve grouped these together, since they all do much the same thing. All these add-ons essentially work like Exodus, collating a library of online streaming sources (not all of them legal) and providing easy access to playback. Just find the video or TV show you want, select the server you want to stream from and then watch.
CATCH UP TV AU
VIDEO ADD-ON, AVAILABLE AT GITHUB.COM/XBMC-CATCHUPTV-AU/REPO This is actually a suite of different add-ons, linking to the various catch-up TV services for Australia. Several of these add-ons are actually available in Indigo, but you can also can go to the above URL and download the zip files for each channel individually. The GitHub repo also includes add-ons for things like NRL and AFL.
VPN FOR OPENELEC AND OPENVPN
PROGRAM ADD-ONS, AVAILABLE IN INDIGO Kodi add-ons don’t get around geoblocked content — you’ll still need to use a VPN. If you’re running Kodi on a PC or mobile, that’s not a problem — you just use the VPN app normally. On consoles and Raspberry Pis, however, it’s not so easy. That’s where VPN for OpenELEC and openvpn come in — these allow you to set up a VPN on OpenELEC and consoles, respectively. We should note that a handful of VPN providers, like Ivacy, actually provide Kodi add-ons for their services.
NAVI-X
VIDEO ADD-ON, AVAILABLE IN INDIGO Navi-X is an odd one. It’s a collection of community-generated playlists and sources. You can contribute your own playlists or view those created by others, and the playlists can include music, movies and TV shows, drawn from a variety of online sources. It’s gloriously chaotic, but you can find real gems here.
UK TURK’S PLAYLIST
VIDEO ADD-ON, AVAILABLE IN INDIGO If you’re looking for British content, UK Turk’s Playlist is the stuff. It links to a variety of UK sources, as well as Turkish sources. Some may require a VPN to access, but much of it does not.
DBMC AND ONEDRIVE
PICTURE ADD-ONS, AVAILABLE IN THE OFFICIAL REPOSITORY (DBMC) AND INDIGO (ONEDRIVE) These add-ons let you view pictures and stream video directly from your cloud drives. Dbmc talks to your Dropbox, while OneDrive grabs stuff from your Microsoft drive. It should be noted that these are not official add-ons — they’re made by third parties.