[Meta] Widget/Setup Ideas

[Demonseed-jpg]

Feature description

This isn’t a skin request, but more looking to find ideas on how to improve the discovery of Movies and TV shows on Kodi. I’ve been using Kodi for well over a decade now, and have tried skin after skin, and one thing that has always plagued my setup is discovery of new titles to watch. If I know exactly what I wanted to watch, Kodi is fantastic, but if I didn’t… well Kodi isn’t great at surfacing new content. Apologies if this isn’t allowed, feel free to delete it if not!

I think with the advancements you have made in Arctic Fuse, TMDb Helper, and some other addons like Autowidget, I think this can be vastly improved to close to official streaming service levels. I think it won’t ever be at that level without some kind of service that tracks user statistics and curates lists for widgets like they use, but I think we can get close.

So I was hoping you, jurialmunkey (and others, please!), if you were comfortable doing it - share what you have setup! How have you improved discoverability? What kind of widgets do you use? How do you take advantage of TMDb Helper’s Discover feature? How do you use nodes? Any cool ideas that can help surface great content that doesn’t always feel static to the Home Screen, all ideas welcome!

[DROIDshield]

Following. 👍

[jurialmunkey]

Yes, I think this is a great idea!

With the 4.0 changes to using skin variables, it should also be much easier to share shortcut setups as these are now self contained json files which can be found in addon_data/script.skinvariables/nodes/skin.arctic.fuse/

The only thing I ask is that people don't post any "fully-loaded" setups focusing on banned addons. I'm not going to be a narc and stress about a couple of links to 3rd party addons but please stay on topic and focus on discussion of content discovery.

[jurialmunkey]

I'll go first...

Currently I'm actually enjoying a quite simple setup using classic mode with side menu entries for Movies, TV, Add-ons, and PVR. I'm still working on my movies and tvshows hubs setup, so for the moment I'm trying to avoid annoying people in my house too much with my tinkering and just linking those shortcuts directly to TMDbHelper base directory until I have the hubs setup again.

Here's my sidemenu setup (which contains the widgets for classic mode)
skinvariables-shortcut-sidemenu.json

Basically I have:

Home

This has all my in-progress and watchlist content, since 90% of the time I'm either continuing a tvshow I'm in the middle of or watching a movie I've added to my watchlist -- so I want to see that first up.

• Your Next Episodes - My most used list goes first!
• Still to Watch - This uses TMDbHelper's "trakt_towatch" list to combine my TV In-Progress with Watchlist.
• On Deck - Same as "Still to Watch" but for movies.
• Last Fortnight - Episodes from my Trakt calendar.

Movies

• Trending - I use Trakt's trending list since as it is much better than TMDb's imho.
• Best Movies Last Decade - This is an autogenerated MDbList which shows movies released in last decade with RottenTomatoes 80+ and IMDb 8.0+ with at least 50 critic reviews and 1000 IMDb votes
• IMDb MovieMeter - This is a Trakt list showing Top 100 IMDb moviemeter which is basically the currently trending movies on IMDb
• Your Recently Watched - Self explanatory. The reason I have this list is to do some stacking for recommendations
• Stacked: Movie Recommendations - Get recommendations based upon a recently watched movie above
• Stacked: Movie Genre - Get movies in the genre of the recommendation for the recently watched! Nice way for discovery
• Based on Recently Watched - Basically the same as above but one recommendations list chosen at random by TMDbHelper
• Stacked: Movie Recommendations - Get a recommendation for the recommendation!
• Recommended for You - The recommendations list that Trakt gives me

TV

• Trending
• Highly Rated TV Shows - Another autogenerated MDbList of mine. This one is RottenTomatoes 85+ and IMDb 8.0+ with at least 2000 votes as I find tvshows need a bit of a higher bar to get the good stuff.
• Shut Up, And Watch - One of my favourite Trakt lists by someone else. Always has good recommendations.
• Your Recently Watched - Same idea as for Movies but with TV shows. Used as the seed for stacked recommendations below
• Stacked: TV Recommendations
• Stacked: TV Genre
• Based on Recently Watched - TMDbHelper recommendations list randomly chosen from recently watched
• Stacked: TV Recommendations - Recommendations of the recommendation!
• Recommended for You - The recommendations list that Trakt gives me.

Add-ons

Straight forward enough. Access to my addons if I need something specific. Has widgets showing my Video and Music add-ons.

Live TV / PVR

Also straight forward. My Live TV setup. Has widgets showing recently played and my recordings.

[irresistibl]

I'd love this

[FuriousNutSlaps]

• Your Recently Watched - Self explanatory. The reason I have this list is to do some stacking for recommendations
• Stacked: Movie Recommendations - Get recommendations based upon a recently watched movie above
• Stacked: Movie Genre - Get movies in the genre of the recommendation for the recently watched! Nice way for discovery
• Based on Recently Watched - Basically the same as above but one recommendations list chosen at random by TMDbHelper
• Stacked: Movie Recommendations - Get a recommendation for the recommendation!

I'm really sorry for reviving this old discussion @jurialmunkey, but is there anyway to create this stacked recommendations widget in AH2? I've been tinkering for hours and can't for the life of me figure out how. Please just put me out of my misery 😭.

[jurialmunkey]

These are different skins. This is not AH2

[FuriousNutSlaps]

@jurialmunkey - yes I realize that, I was wondering whether this is a feature exclusive to arctic fuse or there is a way to do it in AH2 as well?

[FuriousNutSlaps]

@jurialmunkey ?

[DROIDshield]

So this is my setup, not in full but just an idea, using categories and Spotlight where required. I've gone for a easy use so the members of the family don't get confused in what they are looking at. The more simple the better for them.

HOME, The main and has 23 widget rows ranging from Xmas to War in between is last watched, Movies trending, Top 10 box office, finish watching, Your in progress, etc etc...this is a combo of TMDB and Trakt. Also with trakt following everything I can switch on in the bedroom and whatever was being watched downstairs can carry on upstairs...

MOVIES, This contains my personal library of movie's. I don't have a major library but building up slowly as I only want 4K UHD and 5.1 or 7.1 Atmos as I have a very big pioneer receiver and large Tannoy speakers and subs to give the very fearse cinema sound.

TV, this section has all tv shows once again in personal library and again slowly building up a mixture of old and new shows as above.

MUSIC, This section comprises of MP3 music of all genre's the I have Internet radio from around the world and finally a list of favourites, jazz

LIVE TV, this one is as it says but I won't elaborate...

[Separr]

Can you share how you did that local files list to show like that and to be able to sort ?

[jabir15]

@jurialmunkey Very much similar setup, inspired by your doubly stacked recommendation widgets. Wow!

Regarding that, could you please add the film Leo (2023) to "Your Recently Watched" widget, and see if navigating down creates a focus issue.

kodi.log

Line 411 error <general>: XFILE::CDirectory::GetDirectory - Error getting plugin://plugin.video.themoviedb.helper/?info=recommendations&tmdb_type=movie&query=Leo&nextpage=false&fanarttv=false&cacheonly=true&length=1
Line 412 error <general>: Control 1604 in window 10000 has been asked to focus, but it can't

As you say, it is an experimental feature, so don't want to bother you with creating another issue.

[jurialmunkey]

There are no recommendations for this movie. Go to TMDb website page for it and scroll down and you will see https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/1075794-leo

Recommendations

We don't have enough data to suggest any movies based on Leo. You can help by rating movies you've seen.

[jabir15]

Sorry, maybe I didn't explain it better.

Yes, I understand that there are no recommendations for this movie and so, because of that, when you navigate down to access the remaining widgets (as per your setup "Based on Recently Watched", etc.), the focus goes to the side menu.

Let me post a video and see if it helps explaining the issue. Mark it off-topic if the issue cannot be replicated, and in any case, this is widget/setup discussion thread.

kodi.mp4

Thanks, as always.

[irresistibl]

Similarly to @Separr , I'd be curious to hear how you configured your local library movies list if you're open to sharing?

[adamosborne83]

https://vimeo.com/898103370?share=copy
Basic, but it works for me:-)

[xyzfre]

https://vimeo.com/902574020

[xyzfre]

My Little Set up ,not the best video holding the phone and my remote lol ,loving Arctic Fuse

[jurialmunkey]

@xyzfre - Nice!
Seeing the Rotten Tomatoes best of 2023 reminded me of an idea I had for my own setup to have a "Rotten Tomatoes" category with submenu items/widgets for each year's list -- I think you can find lists of these going pretty far back.

Would be a really cool way to have a sort of "years" category but a bit more curated.

[adamosborne83]

Looking good my friend, this is what I mean, when I say mine looks 'basic' hahaha

[xyzfre]

Thank you @jurialmunkey for sharing this beautiful skin, you can do so much with it,I really am enjoying it, that idea sounds GREAT💯

[heimdall47]

Thank you for posting your setup. I will try that as it is taking awhile to come to grips with a new skin. In the classic mode on Home I find it a bit annoying the statistics "You have watched X amount of movies/tv shows". There should be a button to turn it off as I don't want to be constantly reminded on how many movies and tv shows I have watched.

Also I am having a hard time figuring out how to add widgets. I have changed the contents of the 4 pre-built widgets in the classic mode but cannot figure out how to add more. I can see two buttons - add list in the side menu and new in the drop down menu. Pressing these does not do anything. What are these for?