Media Player Recommendations ?

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Howdy

Just curious what the tech savvy people of Bigfooty use as a media player/streaming device to watch their content on ?

From 2010 until late 2018, I used a WDTV media player. Connecting a hard drive to it, I was able to playback any content I desired.
With the device failing I've been attempting to use other programs and devices to continue on my merry way. My main media player has been the Nvidia Shield combined with the Kodi app, it plays the dvds I've got with little fuss. Where I've been frustrated and struggling with over the past year is the bluray and also 4K content.... it doesn't always playback as it should (there's a bit of stuttering here and there :().

I've tried adjusting the settings within Kodi itself (hardware acceleration etc), some titles playback flawlessly.... whereas others the stuttering throughout is very tedious.
I've used other devices on the same tv (eg: xbox, ps4) also tried the Appletv app and the playback doesn't stutter. I'm leaning towards the issue being with the NVidia shield itself not having enough processing power to playback the videos.

If anyone has any recommendations please share :)
 

dav3

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I haven't tried much 4K content, but the 2019 Shield is meant to have a bit more performance over the old one. Not sure if your issue is a pure power issue, or just a quirk with whatever codec is being used for your media.
 
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Howdy

Just curious what the tech savvy people of Bigfooty use as a media player/streaming device to watch their content on ?

From 2010 until late 2018, I used a WDTV media player. Connecting a hard drive to it, I was able to playback any content I desired.
With the device failing I've been attempting to use other programs and devices to continue on my merry way. My main media player has been the Nvidia Shield combined with the Kodi app, it plays the dvds I've got with little fuss. Where I've been frustrated and struggling with over the past year is the bluray and also 4K content.... it doesn't always playback as it should (there's a bit of stuttering here and there :().

I've tried adjusting the settings within Kodi itself (hardware acceleration etc), some titles playback flawlessly.... whereas others the stuttering throughout is very tedious.
I've used other devices on the same tv (eg: xbox, ps4) also tried the Appletv app and the playback doesn't stutter. I'm leaning towards the issue being with the NVidia shield itself not having enough processing power to playback the videos.

If anyone has any recommendations please share :)

Won't get much better than a Shield with Kodi. Maybe could try an Odroid N2+ booting straight into Corelec. The video problems you're experiencing are probably an issue with Kodi trying to play the file within the Android TV OS. The hardware on even an old Shield is more than capable. No OS issues with Corelec.


This is a post with discussion about the N2. Is very well supported. Can also look on N2 and or Kodi forums. Wrextacy is a Kodi developer and will answer any questions.
.
 

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I'm not too sure to be honest, I've let certain programs do the encoding for me (dvdfab or handbrake). And in the encoding settings I've experimented with I've made different end results (leaving the framerate as default, adjusting it to 25-30-60fps).

24fps messes with my eyes, which is in part of the problem (the judder motion from left to right, right to left etc). I use the tv's motion settings to smooth it out, but then the video sometimes speeds up TOO much. And the motion settings also make cgi/green screen effects stand out even more and occasionally the non cgi scenes end up looking like cgi scenes themselves!

It probably is a encoding/codec related with kodi/shield playback. On the same tv I've watched movies on the Xbox/Playstation (blurays and digital titles) and not had the same issue. Also started using AppleTV last week and no issues watching things with that app.
 

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