[dstealth]

DSTV an Estuary Modified Skin for Kodi 19, 20 & 21 (Abandoned AS OF Jan. 1, 2025 - READ UPDATE POINT BELOW)

DStealthTV (DSTV), an Estuary-modified Skin, was designed to be light-weight, easy on the eyes, and customizable for an easy to use "TV streaming service" like layout (eg. Netflix and Prime). This skin was originally just a personal project for my own use but it quickly became popular with friends and family and eventually made its appearance on the Kodi forums where it received a warm welcome. Thanks to the support and encouragement I received I decided to polish it up as best I could with my original light-weight-and-efficient goals in mind. Really the only big changes (or any) are to the Home screen. I've modified the layout to be a dynamic and customizable Main Menu with customizable widgets. There are a few visual and behavioural settings that you can play around with in the Skin Settings page for a better experience tailored to your liking.

If you encounter any bugs please respond to this thread or DM me directly with as many details and instructions as you can provide for me to replicate the bug so that I may fix it.

NOTE: Kodi 21-Omega update will break previously set menu's for DSTV. This is because i've renamed the skin from "skin.dstealthtv-matrix" to "skin.dstealthtv" and thus Kodi will consider it a separate skin. Sorry for the inconvenience but this change will prevent this from happening again in the future!

Download/Install:
1) Add DStealth Kodi Repo to File Manager sources, address: https://dstealth.com/kodi or https://dstealth.com/kodi/.repo/repository.dstealth/
    a) Go into Kodi Settings
    b) Go into File Manager
    c) Select Add Source
    d) Where it says "<None>" enter the address above in (Step 1)
    e) Where it says "Enter a name for this media source" call it something like "DStealth Kodi Repo"
2) Install DStealth Repo from zip from the added source in step 1
    a) Go into Kodi Settings
    b) Go into Add-ons
    c) Select Install from zip file
    d) If the warning for addons-ons from zip comes up, select Yes and turn on Unknown Sources from System settings/Add-ons section if you haven't already
    e) Navigate into DStealth Kodi Repo >> DStealth Repo >> select repository.dstealth-1.0.0.zip (or whichever latest version is there)
    f) Wait for the pop-up confirmation the DStealth Repo has now been installed
3) Install DSTV-Matrix skin from DStealth Repo repository
    a) Go into Kodi Settings
    b) Go into Add-ons
    c) Select Install from repository
    d) Select DStealth Repo
    e) Navigate to Look and Feel >> Skin >> and select DStealthTV
    f) wait for the skin to install

Donate/Tip:
If you like my work and want to support me, you may buy me a coffee on Ko-Fi:
https://ko-fi.com/dstealth







Updates:
Full Changelog:
- Available in the Skin Settings > General > View Changelog

Update 2023-09-09:
- Sorry for the long wait, just wanted to let everyone know that after a pretty busy year I've finally time to resume working on this skin - the skin is still in development and not dead haha. Current plan is to flesh out the DStealth-Helper a bit more and get that trakt functionality working. After that I will start with updating the current DSTV-Matrix skin to include some new features. Once that's done I will begin creating a DSTV-Nexus version to add in the Kodi 20 changes. Stay tuned!

Update 2023-12-03, DSTV v1.19.0 & DS-Helper v1.0.0:
- Lots of bug fixes and improvements. See in-skin Skin Settings Changelog

Update 2023-12-08, DSTV v1.19.2:
- Made as many fixes and updates as I could think of for the Kodi 19 version. Will now start working on updating to the Kodi 20 version.

Update 2023-12-10, DSTV v1.20.0:
- Updated to support Kodi 20 changes.

Update 2023-12-11, DSTV v1.20.1 & v1.21.0:
- Fixed a couple visual bugs introduced in the last update
- Updated DSTV to support Kodi 21-Omega changes (This update will break previously set menu's for DSTV. This is because i've renamed the skin from "skin.dstealthtv-matrix" to "skin.dstealthtv" and thus Kodi will consider it a separate skin. Sorry for the inconvenience but this change will prevent this from happening again in the future!)

Update 2023-12-14, DSTV v1.20.2 (Nexus) & v1.21.2 (Omega):
- Added Skin Settings option for Preloading Fanart
- Reworked main screen info area and added Age Rating display
- Reworked some prefixed paths for some of the Movie widgets to return better results

Update 2024-06-16, DSTV v1.21.3:
- Added new color themes
- Added Trakt menu item as part of the default menu items
- Added setting to lock Viewtypes via View>Options menu (wasn't perfect but it's functional - plz report any bugs)
- Added some miscellaneous widget presets to the "DSTV Default Presets" options
- Added Skin Settings > Visuals options to control Menu Item and Widget Header text case
- Renamed old color themes to more descriptive names
- Updated Main Menu colors to apply color themes better
- Updated Main Menu items to display visual Up/Down arrows when the menu overflows

Update 2025-01-01, Support & Development Discontinued:
- Hey all, I know this is really crappy news for a lot of you but the truth is I initially made this skin for my own personal use and I simply haven't used Kodi for months. Simply put I've no desire to maintain the skin that's of no use to me anymore. For those that want to know why, i've switched over to using Stremio instead as it's much simpler and user friendly.
- I officially make this skin public domain and anyone who wishes to maintain it or continue to support it is welcome to modify it as they please.
- I will leave the current skin files on my server available to any future people who may wish to use it but I will not be releasing any new updates myself.
- I hope the new year brings you the good health and prosperity you deserve!

[dstealth]

reserved

[AchillesPunks]

@dstealth

I'll maybe add a diffuse to the main screen and see if you like it... I'll use the one from my skin and edit it. Looks very nice right now and like the options for the widgets.

It should look something like this. Kind of see how it's not so square with the fanart.

[dstealth]

@AchillesPunks  thanks for the tip on reserving the 2nd post, also yeah I tried to get something like that but my patience ran out while I was hurrydly trying to get the "netflix" look and ended up with what I have now and never revisited it lol. Would you mind if I used your diffuse? though I may not want it soo far under the text, my girlfriend has a vision impairment and I created the skin with her in mind to make sure she can easily read the synopsis and what have you.

[AchillesPunks]

@dstealth
Try out any you need and there are more in my skin. Just decompile the .xbt. I take it you know how to decompile the xbt?

I have decompiled my skin and zipped the texture. Just unzip and all is good... There are diffuse in the home folder as well not just the diffuse folder... Use everything you want from the skin.... If you need and texture images created just let me know and I can't see if I can help you out.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eJbcmhg...sp=sharing

[AchillesPunks]

maybe try a bold font for the synopsis and see if that helps.

[dstealth]

awesome thanks, i'll check out some of yours and yep I'll manage with the xbt. As for the bold, it's not soo much the thinness of the font as it is the contrast of the background for her. Like if a particular fanart is rather bright, no matter how big or bold I make the font in front, she'll have a hard time seeing it. I guess best solution is to default to a diffuse background but add a skin setting to switch to the more square style (current style). My programming style is "when in doubt of whether to include a feature or not, make it a settings option" XD

[AchillesPunks]

You can try out my skin as well and still ideas. A update was just released today. I also mentioned your skin on there.

https://achillespunks.github.io/reposito...ingie.mod/

[AchillesPunks]

Yeah, That's how I started when your not sure created a setting for it. lol

[dstealth]

You can try out my skin as well and still ideas. A update was just released today. I also mentioned your skin on there.

https://achillespunks.github.io/reposito...ingie.mod/

oh danggggg, I just saw the mention! Thank you mate! <3 got me feeling all proud of what I've created *tear*tear*

[AchillesPunks]

It looks great what you have done...I haven't had a whole lot of time to play with it yet but I will. I would like more people to use it and get it more public.. I was thinking of adding your info to your skin somehow on my first page... Kind of direct people to you for a light weight skin.

[dstealth]

I'd be honored. Yeah the whole idea behind this skin was to keep it light weight so I could run it on my very weak android smart tv or on like a Google Chromecast TV device (which actually runs it better than my tv's OS). My future plans are to add touch support or possibly entirely different layouts for touchscreen devices so one could also use this on their smart phones but that's a very far off goal. I'm currently engaged in working on my videos addon (dstealth.helper) to provide default Movie and TV widget content out of the box for this skin so people can easily watch trailers of what's currently popular and going on. I know there's already a lot of addons that provide that service but I want to minimize my dependency on 3rd parties as much as I can. I might even eventually fork/write my own skinshortcuts to be tailored towards the specific requirements of this skin to make that faster and more efficient as well, cut out a lot of the unnecessary extra features that aren't needed for this skin. Goals goals goals, keeps me busy and engaged lol

[kocurek7]

Great work. I'm using it as my daily driver now and can't wait new features.

Regards a

[Romik2505]

[font]Skóra jest naprawdę fajna. Przetestowałem to trochę i jedna obserwacja przyszła mi do głowy. Brakuje mi widżetu panoramy.[/font]

[Dangelus]

@Romik2505 We are an English language forum so please write in English. If you need assistance then please use a service such as Google Translate.