KODI Streaming Box

joala

A Joala is for Life., Not Just Christmas.,
Joined
Oct 7, 2017
Posts
644
Any of you chaps use a dedicated box for Kodi here? What are you using?

My 6 year old i3 htpc running libreelec doesnt have the muscle to pump out 4k so will need to get a new one - just wondering what everyone else is using.

Was looking at the Vero 4K...

Thoughts, feelings and opinions kthx
 

SpamYouToDeath

I asked for a, Custom Rank and, Learned My Lesson.
15 Year Member
Joined
Oct 3, 2005
Posts
6,059
I'm still running a build from 2006. 480p works great.
 

GohanX

Horrible Goose
20 Year Member
Joined
Sep 28, 2001
Posts
12,490
I gave up on Kodi a while back, I got tired of having to research what addons actually worked every few months when I actually used it. I was reading last night that they added Kodi to the Xbox One in Europe, maybe we'll see it get added to the rest of the world too.
 
Joined
Dec 20, 2017
Posts
45
I gave up on Kodi a while back, I got tired of having to research what addons actually worked...

This right here.If you are going to go this route, you should do yourself a favor and get an Odroid-c2. It has 4k, and playback is smooth as butter.It's also pretty cheap at $45 (sorry,to lazy to convert to your currency). Give it a look.
 

mr_b

Windjammers Wonder
10 Year Member
Joined
Jun 1, 2009
Posts
1,379
Nvidia Shield TV. More than enough horsepower to run what you want and you get the benefit of it being able to stream from pc. It's the best thing you can have if you don't want to run a full htpc setup.
 

Dochartaigh

Edo Express Delivery Guy
Joined
Mar 25, 2017
Posts
337
I gave up on Kodi a while back, I got tired of having to research what addons actually worked every few months when I actually used it.

This is my thoughts as well. I give it a try like once or twice a year (on an Android, Raspberry Pi 3, or HDMI stick of your choice - usually just for friends who want to try it out), but it's always so fucking buggy with streaming, and down links/sites/repositories, and all the TS crappy quality videos when you're trying to watch new releases and such, it's just not worth it to me.

I converted everything to Plex myself – which means I have to manually download movies/TV Shows, but that's easily done with a media server I setup in my house which acts as a torrent box, and the Plex server. I also like having a HUGE library I can easily just copy over for people when they bring a USB 3.0 hard drive to my house. Have 3+ Firesticks and Chromecasts setup on it for the various TV's in the house. I only have 1080p TV's at the moment, but have plenty of bandwidth, and with the server being a decent (although old now) Intel Xeon quad-core, I'm sure that could stream 4k too with a compatible device.
 

NeoSneth

Ned's Ninja Academy Dropout
20 Year Member
Joined
Oct 22, 2000
Posts
11,084
Roku 4 plays 4k videos better than an PS4 Pro and Xbox One. it's nuts. Same with Youtube, netflix, and hulu. Those apps struggle on those consoles, but my little Roku 4's are just fine.

stream from USB or your network.

the only thing it doesnt do is Xvid codecs. so get everything in h264.
 
Last edited:

Dochartaigh

Edo Express Delivery Guy
Joined
Mar 25, 2017
Posts
337
the only thing it doesnt do is Xvid codecs. so get everything in h264.
That's one other thing I forgot to mention about XBMC/Kodi - it was always fine running on my desktop/laptop computers for the most part, but all the Android, AppleTV (when I had a hacked one of those), Roku, Firestick, Chromecast (I honestly forget everything I was able to put it on over the years) – on those smaller devices it feels like they always left out one or two codecs a bunch of my movies used...so that was also a no-go for me as well.

...For Xvid, I just searched my video library and 399 files have "xvid" in the filename (sure there's bunch of duplicates) - but that's still a HUGE chunk that wouldn't work for me.
 
Last edited:

joala

A Joala is for Life., Not Just Christmas.,
Joined
Oct 7, 2017
Posts
644
Only using it for local files, never had a good experience using the plugins for streaming for the same reasons you guys mentioned

I've tried the Nvidia Shield running Kodi but half the button maps seem to be missing ie info, context menu.
 

Thierry Henry

Tung's Hair Stylist
Joined
Apr 3, 2013
Posts
1,026
I gave up on Kodi a while back, I got tired of having to research what addons actually worked every few months when I actually used it.

Right off the bat, for me, it's always felt a bit of a convoluted way just to get the add-ons installed on Kodi. Go there, download that, search for that repository, go back, yada yada.
And of course, now most of the shit doesn't work.

I went and found that Terrarium TV app for my Nvidia Shield. Put it on there with the absolute minimum amount of fuss. Great Movie/TV series app. Thing works great and has done so for quite a stretch of time now. The ad-free version also eliminates any annoying pop-ups. Can't go wrong with this one.
 

GohanX

Horrible Goose
20 Year Member
Joined
Sep 28, 2001
Posts
12,490
Awesome recommendation, I just downloaded it and tried it on my phone, and pulled up a random old episode of South Park. It played, no fuss. Hopefully I can cast it to my tv.
 

aoiddr

Over Top Auto Mechanic
Joined
Jan 10, 2013
Posts
855
I have an old Vista computer that has a quad core, 8 GB of ram, and 4 SSDs in it. I run Universal Media Server and Playstation Media Server on it (I used to run TVersity early on), so it's basically a DLNA/UPNP server.

I can stream content in any format to my Playstation 3, Playstation 4, Xbox 360, Western Digital WD TV Live, Kindle Fire, and Fire TV 4K.

To access DLNA/UPNP content on a Fire TV, you need to sideload Kodi or SPMC, which is very quick and easy to do (directions). Both do the job nicely.

(I tried the new Roku Streaming Stick+, but returned it as I couldn't access my server no matter the app and Kodi isn't available on it.)
 
Last edited:

Thierry Henry

Tung's Hair Stylist
Joined
Apr 3, 2013
Posts
1,026
Awesome recommendation, I just downloaded it and tried it on my phone, and pulled up a random old episode of South Park. It played, no fuss. Hopefully I can cast it to my tv.

It has chromecast support. So that would be one option.
 

NeoSneth

Ned's Ninja Academy Dropout
20 Year Member
Joined
Oct 22, 2000
Posts
11,084
That's one other thing I forgot to mention about XBMC/Kodi - it was always fine running on my desktop/laptop computers for the most part, but all the Android, AppleTV (when I had a hacked one of those), Roku, Firestick, Chromecast (I honestly forget everything I was able to put it on over the years) – on those smaller devices it feels like they always left out one or two codecs a bunch of my movies used...so that was also a no-go for me as well.

...For Xvid, I just searched my video library and 399 files have "xvid" in the filename (sure there's bunch of duplicates) - but that's still a HUGE chunk that wouldn't work for me.

xvid and divx are quite outdated, but they run better on weaker hardware. They are open source, so it is a mystery why they are less supported now. H264 is superior in every way, but it does come with more processing overhead.
 

evil wasabi

The Jongmaster
20 Year Member
Joined
Aug 20, 2000
Posts
60,434
I found a good link for setting up convenant and it works great.
 

GohanX

Horrible Goose
20 Year Member
Joined
Sep 28, 2001
Posts
12,490
It has chromecast support. So that would be one option.
Turns out my receiver only casts audio, so I just ran to Best Buy to get a Chromecast. I tried it with a direct HDMI hookup and the video was great, but you really need access to the touch screen to operate the program, it doesn't work with a controller hooked up.
 
Top