Create A Media Center Solution – Thecus N4810

KODI Media Server and Player

Where Emby and Plex server a great purpose streaming the content to all sort of devices, KODI is the perfect companion for direct media output on your Thecus N4810 in up to 4K resolutions. It features a powerful engine capable of handling all your media files and it has more plug-ins and add-ons available than I could mention.

The first two options within KODI are for pictures and videos, followed by the sub-category TV shows. There are also music, programs, and movies categories and settings all the way at the end.

Adding new files to the KODI library is as simple as entering the Files function within the group you want to add to and then select the folder on your NAS or network.

Having added my two folders filled with sitcoms and sci-fi shows, I’m ready to browse and watch it all. KODI can automatically download all the metadata and thumbnails and it does so very fast.

And that’s really it for KODI, we can now play all our content at the convenience of our couch or bed. It’s so simple that anyone can do it. While the NAS doesn’t come with a physical remote control, you can download remote control apps for almost any mobile device and use that for easy control – or you could connect USB peripherals such as a wireless keyboard with a trackpad or a mouse and control it that way.

We can also see that both the background image and folder image changes as we move up and down the available shows. This makes it easy to recognize the show or movie that you’re looking for while you scroll down the list.

You can play TV shows by season or all seasons as a single list. The All seasons list is perfect for bench watching your favorite shows, after all, there’s nothing worse than having to get up and change video when the season ends on a cliffhanger and you just want to watch the next episode.

The season lists will show the downloaded rating for each episode or movie along with the video quality. These old Red Dwarf episodes are for example only in SD quality.

All that’s left now is to watch and enjoy all your content.

In-video controls allow you to control playback, change subtitles, and much more.

Within the the settings you can change all sort of things in regards to how videos are listed and played.

As mentioned earlier, you can download a whole bunch of add-on features too which can turn the KODI player into almost anything media related, from streaming to recording and everything in between.

There’s also a system info tab which shows some stats on the various categories. This way you don’t need to exit KODI in order to enter the normal user interface and check up on that.

We also see the CPU and memory utilization at the bottom and considering all the media players, streamers, and libraries I have installed and have running, we got plenty to spare.