Home Brew kodi build basics

[Mac6]

I’ve been asking a lot of questions of a lot of people about addons & putting together builds. What I’d like to do here is summarize what I THINK I’ve learned, and make sure it’s correct. The homebrew build I’m using now is strictly for watching movies & tv shows using Real Debrid, with TMDB helper search to find links. No sports, music, or live TV.

1. Almost all video addons using RD scrape the same links (though some of them scrape different non-premium links). The only addons that provide more or different premium links are Seren, Venom/Fen/Ezra/Insomnia and the Oath/Promise. The Venom/Fen/Ezra/Insomnia scrapers are faster than others. Everything else–Nightwing, Shadow, Patriot, Wolfpack, The Crew, and so forth–just connects to the same content which it presents in different ways.
2. The essential difference in the various video addons is in things like artwork, search categories, 1-click movies, etc. None of this makes much difference if you are using TMDB Helper as your movie & tv finder and searching directly from there.
3. However, the way links are presented in some of the TMDB players that the various addons provide are easier to use, include more information, or are more aesthetically pleasing. (Many of them seem virtually the same, with slightly different color schemes.) This is pretty much just a question of personal preference.
4. One of the main advantages of multiple addons is redundancy, for times when either a specific addon is down temporarily for repairs or has been shut down.
5. There are a number of maintenance wizards out there. Openwizard, which I use, seems to do pretty much everything, including backing up builds, and nobody has yet suggested any advantages to using a different maintenance wizard or a combination of wizards.
6. Skins differ by aesthetics, presentation, structure, and customizability, but they are all more or less equally efficient, and equally fast, once you’ve set them up to do what you want. I am assuming this because I haven’t been able to find out anything contradicting it. Is it in fact true? (One person told me that the Amber skin, which I use, gets slower with time, but I haven’t seen any lag and no one else has confirmed it, or suggested any other difference in how well skins do their job.)
7. Finally, for when RD is down, Elementum & Scrubs are two addons that provide good free links, while Asgard & the Promise provide some in addition to their RD links. A VPN is vital for non-RD links. I don’t know whether there is any advantage to either Elementum or Scrubs, or if either of them provides significantly more links than the free sections of Asgard & The Promise.

As I said above, this is what I’ve put together from what I’ve read or been told (or in some cases, not told by anyone). If I’m wrong, or if there is something important that I need to know (in this context–there’s an infinite amount of important stuff that I don’t know and undoubtedly never will), please let me know. And thanks.

[MarkxG]

Wow that’s a lot of detail there! Been using KODI for about 5 years and at the beginning was a real struggle. Addons come and Addons go that’s just the way it is. Things work on KODI 19 so much better and Faster. I use Builds and typically like to have 2-3 working Addons. For me I don’t care about anything else other than this: Can I integrate my Trakt shows and Movies and am I getting consistent working 4K and 1080P sources on the shows and movies I want to watch with Real Debrid. That’s it.