During this August, Movistar + It stopped being only for Movistar customers and became a (great) evolution of the Canal+ that arrived in Spain in the '90s. That pay channel was only one, and it showed good content, like the second best soccer game of the day (the best was for the regional ones) and movies that had just arrived in video stores or on CD/DVD. Linux does not have a native application, but it can be used with one that is mandatory to have on any compatible computer.
What makes it possible is a fairly recent addon. The first version arrived in March 2023, and the last one a little over a month ago. It is written in Python, and allows us to see all the content of Movistar+ from Kodi, including on-demand content.
How to watch Movistar+ on Linux with Kodi
There was a Kodi add-on a while back that promised to do the same thing, but I never got it to work. If I remember correctly, when I tried it it didn't work anymore. That or a server was mandatory for it to work. But the good thing about this plugin from the developer Paco8 is that the only thing it asks of us is a user and password or an API key, so I recommend the former.
What you have to do is the same thing we did before there were installers like Kelebek (recently abandoned) or Luar: download and install them from a ZIP. The detailed steps would be like this:
Steps to follow
- The first steps are added in case someone did not know Kodi, and that is its installation. As this also applies to Windows, macOS and any other compatible system, the first thing is to go to kodi.tv, download the program and install it. Android users can also find it on Google Play
- When you install it, it is in English, so it is worth going to the options gear, then to the section where there is a pencil and a ruler, then to Regional and then to Language (it will be in English). In the list that appears we choose Spanish.
- In the next step we will this link and we download the two plugins. Both, since one is a dependency for the other. Since we are here, let's say that it is in Luar, but there they seem to not have the dependency, so for now it is better to install it from a ZIP, than what we are explaining here.
- With the two add-ons downloaded, we go to the gear / Addons / Install from a zip file. We first install the script.module.ttml2mssa-xxxx.zip and then the other one, the plugin.video.movistar-xxxx. As we explained, one is dependent on the other, and if we try to install the second first it will give us an error. If we have never installed anything this way, it will ask us if we want to allow the installation of add-ons from unknown sources, and we have to say yes.
- We wait to see the messages that it has been installed and that would be all. The plugin will appear in the Addons section.
- There would be one more step, which is to access the Accounts section and enter our username and password there.
- One more, and this is the last one really: when trying to start any content it will ask us to install Widevine. We do it and immediately we will see what we have selected.
Better than on the website
Watch Movistar+ on Kodi better than in the website. There is even a section for recordings, and the quality is not reduced in any way. As if that were not enough, we even find a "Manage devices" section that serves just that, to manage them by stopping the playback of one or deleting them from our list.
From the tests I have been able to do, it works even better than the Smart TV applications. It's not that pretty, but performance is not diminished because the software decides to show us a small trailer and it stumbles. Regarding the cuts, I, who have seen some on my smart TV with webOS, can say that on the channels that have historically failed me the most, on Kodi they do so less.
Kodi is an all-rounder, and once again it has been proven. As long as there are developers like Paco8, why do we want official apps on Linux?
Via Engadget, where I discovered the existence of the plugin.