Kodi guide. Part 1. The basics.
Note: this guide will only work for computers. While Kodi is available for mobile and other devices, the screen reader addon which allows blind and visually impared people to use it, is not available for those platforms.
Hello and welcome to my Kodi guide. This series of tutorials will walk you through how to use Kodi. By the end of these tutorials you should have gotten a grasp on Kodi and should be able to use it as an advanced user.
This first part will explain what Kodi is, help you download the correct version of Kodi for your operating system and installing the screen reader addon.
But now, without any more delays. Let's jump right into it.
What is Kodi?
Kodi is an all in one solution for your media playback and organizing. It can play both local and online content, works with video, music, picturrs, games and many more. The program is fully open source and can be customized fully to your liking. Kodi can be controlled with a keyboard and mouse, keyboard alone and gaming controllers. Kodi is also extendable via addons, which ads aditional features. If you want a feature, Kodi most likely have it.
Downloading Kodi
Kodi can be downloaded from Kodi.tv. When you get to the website navigate to the download link and press it. Now you will be on the download site. Here you can select what operating system you wish to download Kodi for. In this guide we will use Windows as an example. From here press H until you get to the "select your platform" heading. From here you can press K and find your OS as a link and click it. From here click the recommended button and it should say "Kodi v20.1 (Nexus)". This might change over time, but this is the newest version as of me writing this guide. If your OS have an installer go ahead and press that and Kodi should install.
When it's done execute the setup file and follow the on screen instructions to install it.
We are now entering the hardest part of the hole guide, so it's very important that you follow the instructions down to the letter. First off go to this link. Click on code, then download zip.
Now open Kodi. From here press shift +A and press enter. Go one up and press enter. Press shift +I and go one down, press enter. Go one right and press enter. Press enter and go one right, then press enter again. Now you can close Kodi.
**note** You do not have to close Kodi, but it can be a bit easier to do so, as Kodi remembers where your menu curser position, so it can be a bit easier just to restart.
For this next part make sure you have your zip file downloaded earlier saved to an easy to find location and that it is the only file starting with the letter S. If you have any other file or folder that starts with the same letter, either move them away from the folder or delete.
**note** This is also not tecnickly needed, but it makes the installation process easier.
Now let's get the screen reader installed.
Open Kodi. Press shift +A. Press enter. Go one up and press enter. Press shift +I, go one down and press enter. Now navigate to the path you saved your zip. I saved mine on the root of my C drive, so I will press shift +C and press enter. From here I press shift +S to select the zip file and press enter to install it.
You will not get any speech and that is normal. We will fix this now.
Close Kodi and go to this link. Click on code and download zip. Extract the file you just downloaded and copy all the files inside.
From here go to your Appdata folder. You can do so by opening up your run dialog and typing %appdata% and pressing enter. From here navigate to the Kodi folder. From here go to addons. Here you'll se quite a few folders, but you are looking for service.xbmc.tts. Find that and enter it. From here go to the lib folder, then the backends folder. This folder should be empty. Now you just paste the files inside.
Now you can open Kodi and if all goes well you should have speech, if not make sure to read over all the steps again to make sure you didn't miss anything.
In the next tutorial we will go over how to navigate Kodi, configuering the screen reader, what the different sections mean and installing a better skin for ease of use.
I am sorry for any spelling mistakes. English is not my native language, but I tried to make everything understandable.