Thrawn

You forgot to mention the dog with its own added twist to the highly unusual family dynamics.

Also a self reply to add that I don't use the downmix because I got lucky and in addition to free old PC hardware which most people in the USA at least can also get free or cheap if you are creative with old business hardware. The addition is I got an AV Receiver just barely new enough to support HDMI so I do have the full range of channels on very cheap speakers.

Having used Kodi elsewhere the downmix seems to work just fine and a lot of current and still fairly cheap sound bars can interpret surround mixes directly.

Nope although it has that as an option as well. There are two options I use. The first is to boost the center channel on surround mixes since the voice is almost always on that channel.

Then more specifically in Kodi there is both a main volume option and a separate volume boot option that if you look into the documentation says that it is able to increase volume differently by moving up the middle of the audio while reducing the dynamic range. In other words reducing the difference between the lowest and highest sounds so it can increase it without clipping.

I basically change the main volume to what I want and then since both main and boost use the same numbers I reduce it by the exact same number I increase the boost level. End result is moving the bottom and middle of the audio volume closer.

In an ideal setup like a literal quiet audience in a full IMAX or with studio monitor grade headphones etc. the dynamic range is nice. Let's you hear talking normally and then get blown away by the action right at the top of the safe listening range. Or for classical orchestra music the quiet solot small instrument then a full booming with the entire band going.

But in reality I have five kids running around. Even in stuff like Pixar I still like having a fairly aggressive setting for the boost. It lets me set a default fairly aggressive one and then only occasionally need to edit it manually from the default for particular movies.

Every time I see a thread like this I feel the same way.

Sure I have to admit there are downsides to it but oh my goodness the number of benefits from running something like Kodi is huge. If you are willing to take a hit to dynamic range of your audio you can fix all but the most extreme cases of audio level problems. I'm sure there are a bunch of other ways to handle it as well.

Control from a phone app once you have Kodi open works great.

Windows or Linux at your preference.

Only ever used old free hardware too so the complaints about the cost of a PC never made sense to me either.

I don't have a link but I swear I saw someone saying they were making a fork with expanded world size similar to what you are talking about.

You are absolutely correct that was a political push he was trying to do. The key thing in terms of kids he never did anything like "you should vote for capitalism or Democrats or whatever when you grow up"

For the kids his show was solely about how to treat other people and themselves as they grow. My kids do still watch his show, at least when they want something relaxing to go to sleep with which is good enough for me.

This isn't to say he was perfect but I would be so insanely happy if we lived in a world with most people living close to the level he did in caring for others.

Depends on what you are looking for but I'm having good results with Unifi branded cameras and storage.

It is technically possible to use the cameras without the branded recorder or the reverse with the Network Video Recorder saving video from other brands of cameras over RTSP.

However in practice it only really makes sense to do that if you already have some equipment. Long term they really are designed to work with their own stuff. Pretty price reasonable and work both wired or wi-fi depending on the particular models you get. Happy to share more details if anyone is interested.

Cron just doesn't exist for Bazzite. I'm sure there technically is a way to add it back but not practical.

Hadn't thought about a user startup file. Not exactly a clean solution but shrug if it works I can live with it. I'll add it to my list of ideas to try.

Can't get an auto shutdown at a specific time working on Bazzite.

I have a few 5th and 6th Gen Intel laptops and mini PCs for my kids with games. Working well enough for the most part and PAM account login time limits what times if the day they can sign in but I want it to auto logout or even better force shut down at the end of the day instead of them staying up all night.

Most guides recommend using cron which is fine in general but it isn't available in Bazzite. Even when I tried installing it since it isn't included by default. Tried two different guides and an AI recommendation to do it via Systemd but that isn't working as mentioned at the top.

Totally valid feeling but also monopoly was designed to intentionally be awful to get across the point that real monopolies are terrible for the world. So arguably it is exactly how you should feel about it.

Yea it is a case of found it years ago and worked so incredibly well I haven't had the slightest interest in using anything else.

Excellent track from CT. How about one extra since you like Mitsuda's work with Chrono Trigger.

This is from an orchestrated reimagining of some of the music of Xenogears. Not some fan project either, made by Mitsuda himself.

Xenogears Creid - 03 Balto https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwnNVOl4fx

I would put something from the Kirite album form him but it is basically not available anywhere for streaming at least not in English searchable websites. I did find a torrent for it along with hundreds of other songs of his but didn't want to go that far in sharing on this sort of thread.

I'll add that I probably should have just posted a Chrono Trigger track in the first place since while I'm unsure of my favorite music the game itself has been my personal number one game for a couple decades now.