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> but this most likely isn't quite Kodi just yet.

Kodi is incredibly limited though, and does not come close to the flexibility of Plasma Bigscreen. The latter is just a UI optimized for using a PC from a couch, which means that you can use any regular desktop app, including Kodi, web browsers for streaming content, and Steam for playing games. Kodi on the other hand does not even allow you to play YT videos without using some buggy add-on that requires registering an API key with Google (no thanks).

As a Kodi user, I must say it is very good on its core, and very bad on the addons side (which arguably is the part for which it gets recommended mostly)

It forces its limited model of text-based folders-with-files to everything. Also it's all Python, and I don't know if it's me but I always find quality issues first in Python projects than anything else. Error control is usually very lacking, and it's so frequent to see error pop-ups showing on here and there. You enter a menu and the first entry selected is ".." which is to go back to the previous menu (poor UX). All in all, Kodi for me has always been a player with good tech (it all basically works, surround sound, codecs, integration with hardware, etc), exposed as very amateurish UI experiences.

Also Kodis interface is terrible. I couldn't make a more convoluted and hard to navigate interface for TVs even if I tried.
Well, you can change the UI theme and that can change it radically on the UX side. The global navigation paradigm of Kodi, which is aimed at making every plugin and feature browsable in the same way (drill down menus basically) won't change though
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