I've also been a Kodi user since it was XBMC (I originally bought an X-box purely to run XBMC). In my view, its biggest UX drawbacks are 1. how it works with remote controls, 2. playback reliability, and 3. importing content.
1. Remotes: Most remotes now don't have dedicated stop/pause/play/forward/rewind buttons, so we have to map those functions to a single "do something" remote button, or at best a single "do something" button + cardinal direction controls. So if I push "left" on my remote, to this day, I am not really confident about what it's going to do. If I push the "do it" button, is it going to pause? Bring up a context menu? Bring up some other kind of overlay? Who knows? The whole input system needs simplification and an acceptance of today's terrible remote control hardware. Not just the "back" thing you mention which yes, is terrible.
2. Reliability: Unlike something like VLC, Kodi decidedly does NOT playback everything you throw at it, but it's been getting better. I've often seen it shudder, quit unexpectedly, freeze, and it doesn't seem to handle scrubbing forward and backward in the file very well. When I sit down with my family to watch a movie, I always have that voice in the back of my head that says "Am I going to have to take 10 minutes to try to get this movie to work, awkwardly, while my family sits on the sofa looking at me?"
3. Media content: Kodi's insistence on grafting its own "library" on top of my already-working filesystem is just terrible. I can't just add a file to a directory. Nooooooo that would be too simple. I have to add the file, and then go into Kodi and try to figure out how to get it to re-scan and import these files. To this day, I don't think I can tell you what menu to navigate to to import content. And fuck me if I do something wildly unusual like rename a file.
That said, it's nicer than everything else I've tried. It has an actual TV-centric interface that has all the nice things you'd expect (poster / album art, artist / actor info, genres, and so on). Kodi's flaws are not annoying enough for me to take the time to try something else like Jellyfin or Plex. But with your comment, I might be motivated to try out Jellyfin. It's hard to tell from their web site what they offer that differentiates them from Kodi, but it's probably worth an explore.
1. Remotes: Most remotes now don't have dedicated stop/pause/play/forward/rewind buttons, so we have to map those functions to a single "do something" remote button, or at best a single "do something" button + cardinal direction controls. So if I push "left" on my remote, to this day, I am not really confident about what it's going to do. If I push the "do it" button, is it going to pause? Bring up a context menu? Bring up some other kind of overlay? Who knows? The whole input system needs simplification and an acceptance of today's terrible remote control hardware. Not just the "back" thing you mention which yes, is terrible.
2. Reliability: Unlike something like VLC, Kodi decidedly does NOT playback everything you throw at it, but it's been getting better. I've often seen it shudder, quit unexpectedly, freeze, and it doesn't seem to handle scrubbing forward and backward in the file very well. When I sit down with my family to watch a movie, I always have that voice in the back of my head that says "Am I going to have to take 10 minutes to try to get this movie to work, awkwardly, while my family sits on the sofa looking at me?"
3. Media content: Kodi's insistence on grafting its own "library" on top of my already-working filesystem is just terrible. I can't just add a file to a directory. Nooooooo that would be too simple. I have to add the file, and then go into Kodi and try to figure out how to get it to re-scan and import these files. To this day, I don't think I can tell you what menu to navigate to to import content. And fuck me if I do something wildly unusual like rename a file.
That said, it's nicer than everything else I've tried. It has an actual TV-centric interface that has all the nice things you'd expect (poster / album art, artist / actor info, genres, and so on). Kodi's flaws are not annoying enough for me to take the time to try something else like Jellyfin or Plex. But with your comment, I might be motivated to try out Jellyfin. It's hard to tell from their web site what they offer that differentiates them from Kodi, but it's probably worth an explore.