MEDIA PLAYERS
Best program: Kodi http://kodi.tv Latest major version: 17.0 (Krypton)
Turn your PC into a smart TV, video recorder, music player, photo library and screen-sharing tool without paying a penny or breaking the law. Recent headlines about shop owners being hauled into court for selling set-top boxes with Kodi pre-installed have given it a bad reputation, but Kodi is really just a more powerful version of Windows Media Center (WMC). It’s what you do with it that counts. And provided you don’t cram it with dodgy add-ons that let you watch paid-for TV for free, it’s legal and safe. For an in-depth guide to using Kodi, see our Cover Feature in Issue 498.
Best hidden tools
Are you in the habit of falling asleep in front of the TV? Then set Kodi to shut down your display when it’s been idle for, say, half an hour. Click the settings cog, ‘System settings’, ‘Power saving’, then click ‘Put display to sleep when idle’.
If you share your computer with family and friends, set up separate passwordprotected profiles to ensure they can’t access your content and activity. Go to ‘Profile settings’, then click ‘Add profile’. If you don’t want anyone using Kodi other than you, click ‘Interface settings’, then ‘Master lock’.
Also try: VLC www.videolan.org/vlc
VLC is nearly as powerful as Kodi but much less intimidating. It doesn’t devour your entire screen, for starters. Its proper old-fashioned menus include tools for making screen-recordings, adding subtitles to your videos and quickly converting between formats.
Don’t use: Freemake Video Converter
The good news: download online videos by pasting their URLS. The bad news: you risk PUPS including Yahoo and Wajam.