Official downloads only

We only support the currently released version of Retrospect and only versions that were downloaded using the official Retrospect or via our Download page.

If you obtained Retrospect via any other means, like other repositories, other sites or other download locations, we consider them as ‘not-ours’ and cannot provide any support. Please install Retrospect the correct way and see if that fixes your issues.

Initial checks

Just a small note about Retrospect: it parses websites and websites can go down or change their layout! So before blaming the add-on, please make sure that the websites you are browsing with the add-on are online!

Before mailing or posting issues with Retrospect please follow these steps FIRST:

  1. Verify if there are any known issues with the channel within Retrospect by going to the Retrospect Channels & Status page;
  2. Check if your Internet Connection is up and running (don’t chase it 😀 );
  3. Check if the website of the TV Channel you are trying to access is online;
  4. Check if you can playback videos from within their own site;
  5. Check Kodi for connectivity (did it get an IP adres and can you for instance do an imdb, cddb or weather lookup?
  6. Did you delete all files of Retrospect before updating to a newer version?

If these checks turn out OK, you can assume the problem is Retrospect. Please do the following:

  1. Retrieve both the retrospect.log and retrospect.old.log file from the Retrospect folder. See if there are some errors in there that could help you a bit further.
  2. If no errors are there, check the xbmc.log and/or xbmc.old.log for error related to Retrospect.
  3. If the there are errors present and they are code related, please submit an Issue on this page and attach the log files to the post.

Furthermore, if an issue was introduced in a new version, please check the changelogs for any changes that could have lead to this issue.

What do the symbols º/^/ª mean behind some video item mean

Some video or folder items have one or more º/^/ª symbols behind them. These symbols say something about possible playback issues:

º These items are Geographically locked to the region they belong to. E.g.: BBC iPlayer items can only be watched from within the UK.
^ These items are protected by Digital Rights Management (DRM). Kodi will not be able to play these items.
ª These items are paid or premium items. Kodi will not (yet) be able to play them.

The latter two item types can be hidden via the Retrospect Add-on Settings:

Retrospect Add-On settings for DRM/Premium/Geo items

Add-On settings for DRM/Premium/Geo items

Log level settings

Retrospect has a separate setting for the log level: info, debug, trace:

  • Info: Default level. Shows messages that are related to the basic workings of the add-on.
  • Debug: Shows details information on what is exactly going on and what steps are done to get things working.
  • Trace: Very extensive logging on the smallest detail. This really generates a very large (and useless to the common person) log file. It is also very heavy on CPU and should only be enabled if asked by a developer.

The following video illustrates how to configure Retrospect for Debug logging.

For day-to-day use, the Info level should be fine. If you want to post bugs you must post a log file with a Debug level logging.

Posting Issues (and feature requests)

If you cannot find the problem, you can create a new issue on the Official GitHub page for Retrospect. Please notice that you can create an enhancement request or bug. The names are self explaining, but please try to set the correct one.

If possible upload a complete Debug log file. The complete log from begin to end contains a lot more information then you think. So don’t provide just the last couple of lines. Starting with Retrospect 4.1.4 you can automatically upload the log files to a Github Gist. You can do that via the Add-on settings, in the General tab. This feature is only available if the log level is set to either Debug or Trace.

With older version of Retrospect you can find the log file in the Kodi profile folder at these location (if you have multiple profiles enabled, make sure to look in the correct userdata folder for the profile, instead of the location given below):

For Windows:

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Kodi\userdata\addon_data\plugin.video.retrospect\

or on a portable install here:

<Kodi Install Folder>\portable_data\userdata\addon_data\plugin.video.retrospect\

On ATV2 you will find it here:

/private/var/mobile/Library/Preferences/Kodi/userdata/addon_data/plugin.video.retrospect/

On Raspberry Pi you will most likely find it here*:

/home/pi/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/plugin.video.retrospect/

Or here*:

/home/xbian/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/plugin.video.retrospect/

And on OpenELEC you will find it here*:

/storage/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/plugin.video.retrospect/

And on Android*:

/sdcard/Android/data/org.xbmc.kodi/files/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/plugin.video.retrospect/

* Keep in mind that the .kodi path might be hidden on your OS.

Reinstalling Retrospect from scratch

If things are really not working and you want to start from scratch please follow these steps:

  1. Delete the /addons/plugin.video.retrospect/ folder from your Kodi installation.
  2. Delete all the /addons/plugin.video.retrospect.channels.<channelname>/ folders from your Kodi installation where <channelname> differs per folder.
  3. Don’t delete the Retrospect repository if it was installed.
  4. Delete the Retrospect profile in /userdata/addon_data/plugin.video.retrospect/.
  5. Delete all downloaded and cached Retrospect packages from the Kodi package cache: /addons/packages/. These are the zip files that start with plugin.video.retrospect.
  6. Restart Kodi
  7. Now follow the standard Retrospect installation instructions located here.
  8. You now should have a brand new Retrospect installation. If the initial listing comes up empty, please try launching Retrospect again.
  9. After a successful first run enable all Retrospect related add-ons that were deployed during the first run:
    1. Go to the Kodi Add-on Explorer
    2. Select My Add-ons
    3. Then navigate to All
    4. Find the Retrospect related add-ons and make sure to enable then. Only then they will be automatically updated.