Well, a few days ago, on 28 Jan 2024, Xenon Plus updated from 2.1 to 2.2, and I was just going to do this post to let everybody know that everything looks good with it.

However, first thing this morning, there was an update notification for version 2.3.  Everything appears stable with this update, and I’ve been watching Fox News for the last couple hours.  It kept the Debrid and Trakt settings.  You should make sure that the Advance Settings are intact.  If you don’t know how to do that, you can reset them if you just poke around.  So, moral of the story is to ask if you need to.

It’s not uncommon to get a second update right after an update.  There could have been a bug which got released that needs fixing, etc.  The one thing I haven’t checked is the ivue tv guide sync, but if it’s like previous updates, it will now grab SEVEN days worth of the EPG.  So, you may need to set that to what you want.  Once again, if you don’t know how, don’t hesitate to ask.

Well, I’m done rambling.  Enjoy Xenon Plus v. 2.3!!

Well, I had begun work on a friend’s android box that had crapped out over the past weekend.  I was getting ready to ‘sideload’ Kodi 20.3 that had been released a week or so before.  However, I noticed that 20.3 had been put in the Google Play store. This shall be the last stable bugfix release of the 20 Nexus series.  If you remember, all the way through the 19.x Kodi release series, the Play Store wouldn’t put any updates to 19.0 in their playstore.  This was all due to the fact that Kodi will work all the way back to Android OS 5, and Google didn’t wish to allow that.  I think it had to require at least OS 9 or something.  Glad to see that Google pulled their heads out of their asses, and just got over it.  At any rate, it’s much easier to update now for the casual user.  😉

First off, let me mention a correction from the last post (posted on 16 Mar 2023):  Kodi 20.1 had been released, not Kodi 21.  (I think 21 is still in beta)

Now, let’s address issues that may be plaguing users.  This is primarily surrounding watching tv shows and movies rather than live tv.  Couple issues….. sometimes you have to wait several days for the sources to actually allow you to watch it. When you do, even though you tweaked the advancesettings.xml, the cache doesn’t seem like it fills up and you end up with buffer over runs and videos freezing.  Well, here is the solution:

Head on over to https://real-debrid.com/ (click the link on the left) and set up a free account.  But, that’s not all, as with a free account the source links are only active for a small window of time, like midnite to 6 in the morning.  So, you need to subscribe.  It won’t break the bank though, as it’s only $16.88 for 6 months. (That comes out to less than $3/month).

After that, you need to head back to your XBMC/Kodi build and input your real debrid account info.  So, look for Debrid Logins and input your login info to the Real Debrid settings.  Then, restart your android box.  After that is done, you should be getting results like these:

This is the initial scrapers progress window in the pic just below: At the very end of the progress, you will notice a Real Debrid info message that it’s reading the cache.

This is the found sources in the pic just below: (Of course, sometimes, you might get torrent sources 20 or 30GB or more.  I prefer so select ones that are .5, 1, or 2GB or so.  That way, there’s enough room in the cache.) I also prefer to select the ones that say CACHED TORRENT.

And, this is the cache, in the pic just below: (Notice how fast it filled up just in the time that I paused it and took the picture.)

Once you get this all set up, you could get good links for shows that air on the same day that you want to watch them.  This should explain things well enough to get it going, and once you do, that will fairly end any buffer over runs and freezing issues on tv shows and movies.  😀

(Oh, one thing to keep in mind: Real Debrid links sometimes don’t work, and you have to restart your android box. I have found, at least here, that things work a bit better all around if I restart my android box daily.)