I have a gen2 Chromecast, and like so many others, I refuse to upgrade it to a 99USD AI enabled Google Gemini device just to enable the family to watch their Netflix. So inevitably, I also fell in the blast radius of the Chrome-ocalypse, the negligence-triggered breaking of gen2 devices by Google. I think actually by now, my Chromecast could even be up again, and even if it isn’t (it wasn’t when I last checked, yesterday evening), Google confirmed that eventually it will.
But this actually gave me the necessary nudge to finally clean up my Kodi config to enable Youtube and Netflix on it, and… well, one thing kinda led to another.
- First I enabled Youtube and Netflix, as I planned, but then I thought, what else am I using the Chromecast for? And realised that…
- …I also watch NPO and NOS (Dutch state TV and state streaming services, respectively), which is important: Jeugdjournaal is there, but so is one of the best sources of free live cycling coverage in Europe. After realising the old NOS add-on is not available anymore, and after a quick Reddit Q&A, I learned about the Retrospect add-on, which also made me realise that I’m 2 versions behind on LibreElec/Kodi!…
- …so yeah, I installed the latest version of LibreElec this morning, which by the way also allowed me to…
- …install the Language Preference Manager add-on, which also wasn’t available on my old and neglected LibreElec/Kodi.
(To clarify: my LibreElec box was not neglected because I wasn’t using it, quite the contrary. I’m using it a lot for music, movies, and TV shows, and it just works, so it never occured to me to look at upgrading it. LibreElec and Kodi are great.)
So then, notes on the upgrade:
- If I want to use the Retrospect add-on, I have to install that first; it will auto install the Youtube add-on (and a bunch of other dependencies), and…
- …I’ll have to upgrade the Youtube add-on to its latest beta to circumvent Google’s attempt at breaking it (at the writing of this: via a “sign in to prove you’re not a bot” message).
- Adding media libraries via NFS (rather than SMB) is preferred, library updates are so much quicker.
- Watching Youtube and Netflix through my LibreElec/Kodi setup gives so much better sound quality! This of course is not a surprise, Kodi → HifiBerry+ → (Yamaha) amp → B&O speakers is better than Chromecast → TV → amp → speakers. Either the TV or the Chromecast does something to the sound, I never bothered enough to check which.
- And of course “casting” Youtube to Kodi is easy: using the Play to XBMC extension from the browser, or simply by sharing to the Yatse remote from the Android app.