Addons are small hosted applications that provide Vidi with one or more resources. This resource will supply Vidi with the information required fulfill one of it’s specific needs.
Addons are not provided by Vidi. It is the user’s responsibility to source or make addons that provide the necessary resources for Vidi to function as a media center.
Let’s look at how these resources map to different needs:
Catalog
Catalog resources provide the collections of items shown within the feed of the app. It can be lists of movies or TV series, family videos, etc. If you do not have any catalog addons you will not see any content.
If the catalog provides a search option it will be queried in the search function.
Metadata
Metadata resources are able to resolve the metadata of a given item. Given a supported identifier it will resolve the title, runtime, genres, synopsis, date of release, image assets, etc.
Stream
Stream resources provide HTTP streams for a given identifier.
Subtitles
Subtitle resources will try to find subtitles for a given stream. For example you might be watching a movie from a Libby stream provider that doesn’t have subtitles in your native language, then a subtitle addon can come in quite handy.
An addon is not limited to one resource per addon, so it may well be able to provide catalogs as well as be able to resolve the metadata for said catalog. An addon can even provide every resource for a given identifier type, essentially making it a complete streaming service.
Identifiers
Addons use identifier types to communicate between one another. These types are matched using a prefix. Each addon describes what types of identifiers it can handle using these prefixes. For example, an IMDB identifier tt0133093 will match for an addon that supports an ID prefix tt.
If you have a catalog providing one type of identifier but no metadata provider for that same type Vidi will not be able to resolve the metadata for the items provided by that catalog.
Stremio Addon Resource Support
Support for Stremio Addon API is extensive albeit limited and under constant development. A generous subset of the specification is supported but there is no guarantee an addon that works in Stremio will work in Vidi. If you encounted a use case where an addon should be supported (given the chart and additional notes below) but unexpectedly doesn’t work, please write us an email.
| Resource | Status |
|---|---|
| catalog | ✓ Supported |
| metadata | ✓ Supported |
| streams | ✓ Supported |
| subtitles | ✓ Supported |
| addon_catalog | ✗ Unsupported |
streams
Only HTTP streams are supported. infoHash, ytId and externalUrl are not and will likely never be supported.
Live TV (catalog type tv) is not yet supported but it’s a planned feature.