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Best Kodi Media Player Options 2024 - Printable Version

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RE: Kodi Media Players State of the Union: Best Options in 2024 - dinjo - 2024-03-07

Not working for me on latest update fire stick 4k 1st gen


RE: Kodi Media Players State of the Union: Best Options in 2024 - hdmkv - 2024-03-07

It's possible, but just checked AFTVnews & AVSForum and don't see any threads or posts on sideloading being blocked. Amazon did block ability to run local ADB recently.

@izprtxqkft, on including 4K/60 capable players, don't all in post #1 do? I'm only aware of 2 4K/60 UHD titles: Gemini Man, and Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, both by Ang Lee.


RE: Kodi Media Players State of the Union: Best Options in 2024 - dinjo - 2024-03-08

Ordered fire cube 3 should get delivered tomorrow how do I root it to install custom launcher as u read it was blocked by amazon

Would I get the device with newest firmware? From which firmware adb was blocked?


RE: Kodi Media Players State of the Union: Best Options in 2024 - Roby77 - 2024-03-08

Tried firecube gen 3 and I don't like it also for my afr problem


Btw ordered homatics 4k plus

Let's give a try


RE: Kodi Media Players State of the Union: Best Options in 2024 - Roby77 - 2024-03-13

Ok homatics 4k plus arrived and updated to atv 12 beta (4679)

With my setup (old 1080p plasma ) I like it really much

Netflix has afr and hd audio

There is an app to force refresh rate for other app but I can't find it in playstore

Kodi with TV audio is perfect

With avr I have sound dropout (known bug) and out of synch AV (first time in my life that I must use synch playback to display function)

I will try also to disable hardware acceleration

Can someone with Homatics share AV setting and player setting ?


RE: Kodi Media Players State of the Union: Best Options in 2024 - noggin - 2024-03-14

(2024-03-13, 08:32)Roby77 Wrote: Netflix has afr and hd audio

How can Netflix have HD Audio - they don't use any HD Audio codecs ? They use DD, DD+ and DD+ with Atmos extensions. None of these are HD Audio codecs as they are all lossy codecs.

They don't use DTS HD Master Audio/DTS:X or Dolby True HD with or without Atmos extensions - which are the main HD Audio codecs (these all use lossless compression)


RE: Kodi Media Players State of the Union: Best Options in 2024 - Roby77 - 2024-03-14

Yes you are right i wrote a bullshit Big Grin , or rather I meant that it doesn't come out in stereo, with the firestick if I forced the edid I lost the audio codecs you mentioned

Btw now i download the refresh rate app to force afr also for prime and disney let's see if it works

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/shield-tv/9/297663/auto-refresh-rate-tool-google-play/

For kodi and avr no way with sound dropouts, must wait a firmware update 

Even if this bug i prefer this device compared to the firestick and firetv cube

Waiting for s928x device


RE: Kodi Media Players State of the Union: Best Options in 2024 - ricklar - 2024-03-14

(2024-03-14, 14:43)Roby77 Wrote: Btw now i download the refresh rate app to force afr also for prime and disney let's see if it works

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/shield-tv/9/297663/auto-refresh-rate-tool-google-play/

For kodi and avr no way with sound dropouts, must wait a firmware update 
RefreshRate app is only for Nvidia ShieldTV.

For Amlogic SoC devices you need tvQuickActionsPRO from Google Play Store. Can program apps to start in 24p mode in the AFR settings of tvQA.

Also, about audio dropouts in Kodi, are you using the AudioTrack(RAW) passthrough optionHuh Most Amlogic devices still cant use AudioTrack(IEC), exception being Cube.3 and some Ugoos boxes.


RE: Kodi Media Players State of the Union: Best Options in 2024 - Roby77 - 2024-03-14

Thank for your hint I will try quick actions (some user in telegram group suggested me to try refresh rate but in the past I read also about tvquik.actions)

2) unlucky it's a bug of beta 4679 with local files

Let's wait for a firmware update


RE: Kodi Media Players State of the Union: Best Options in 2024 - hdmkv - 2024-03-15

Added a new player (well, 'new' for what it can now do) to post #1, Ugoos AM6B+, that supports DV Profile 7 with FEL playback with CoreELEC. Ordered one from AliExpress to try out. Apparently not the fake TV-led we've had so far, and with DV CMv4.0 support. Minix U22X-J is also an option.

Update: So, this is pretty cool... CoreELEC can be booted into loaded onto a USB stick with Fire Cube 2, and not only that, you get DV Profile 7 w/FEL as well.


RE: Kodi Media Players State of the Union: Best Options in 2024 - Roby77 - 2024-03-16

This is because bootloader is unlocked I suppose but no netflix certification

I would like to have a a928x device with Netflix certification


RE: Kodi Media Players State of the Union: Best Options in 2024 - banggun - 2024-03-16

Just checking in here, but why no love for the Xbox? I've been going back and forth on media players these days and am a bit sad to report that I'm still searching for a perfect solution out there. Yet I do always feel some serious potential for Xbox as it's platform and hardware is rock solid whereas a lot of these Android based players still feel a bit underpowered and they slow down when using more intensive skins. I know it's not one of the preferred items on the list of this topic so I sort of get it but I personally care a lot more about silky smooth navigation then I do about 3d support which pretty much has been abandoned by most TV brands.... With HDR support coming in Omega it's getting more and more viable (I really hope DV gets implemented somewhere down the road). To me I just feel the base of Xbox is much more solid than many Android players (with various Android TV versions and very mixed results with streaming services). In that sense Xbox would by far be the best streaming device as it includes Netflix, Plex etc and has some serious hardware to boot.


Also for those interested and considering the Zidoo Z9X pro I've been having a go with it for two weeks now and it's kind of nice as far as video playback, but I have to say it's seriously unstable. I've had videos stop playing in the middle of playback for no apparent reason. The more annoying part is that if you enable frame rate switching and your video crashes the frame rate doesn't go back to the original setting (in my case 60hz) so you need to keep setting it back every time that happens. I really wanted to love this device a bit more cause when it operates fine it really is quite good but it's poor implementation of any third party software (Kodi included) I would give a serious thumbs down as the integration with it's own native player and Kodi is very rough.

I tried using Omega on it but the lack of support for using playercorefactory.xml file to use default players keeps you stuck with their ZDMC build which is handled by a third party developers and feels really hacky. Also for some reason when using the official Kodi built the interface was stuck on 1080p and didn't render in 4K which for some reason the ZDMC build did support that. It can probably be fixed but it's just one of the many reasons I would never recommend this as a device for Kodi. Also when using the native Kodi video player it gets pretty choppy playback with some high bitrate 4k files.


RE: Kodi Media Players State of the Union: Best Options in 2024 - hdmkv - 2024-03-16

ZDMC is the better option w/Zidoo as it pushes all video playback to the native player app. Zidoo developed the fork themselves. Z9X Pro is still fairly buggy, and it seems Zidoo is more focused on their Eversolo audio streamers these days. Z9X Pro firmware updates have been too few and far between. Main reason I switched to Dune HD, which is also snappier and supports Android TV.

On XBOX, glad to add it as an option in post #1 if you can give me its pros & cons in terms of required & nice-to-have features as I've noted.


RE: Kodi Media Players State of the Union: Best Options in 2024 - izprtxqkft - 2024-03-17

(2024-03-16, 18:44)banggun Wrote: Also for those interested and considering the Zidoo Z9X pro I've been having a go with it for two weeks now and it's kind of nice as far as video playback, but I have to say it's seriously unstable. I've had videos stop playing in the middle of playback for no apparent reason. The more annoying part is that if you enable frame rate switching and your video crashes the frame rate doesn't go back to the original setting (in my case 60hz) so you need to keep setting it back every time that happens. I really wanted to love this device a bit more cause when it operates fine it really is quite good but it's poor implementation of any third party software (Kodi included) I would give a serious thumbs down as the integration with it's own native player and Kodi is very rough.

Kodi doesn't belong on this device but this device runs perfect without Kodi when using the provided HT4 media center, if you look at it a different way it's more of a "Network based 4K BluRay Player" and when looking at it that way you wouldn't expect Kodi to run on a BluRay Player but that player exceeds Kodi's capability on any device.

It's a very specific small group of android devices that Kodi actually works on so I consider it a "Kodi on Android" issue, where Kodi can run perfectly fine on windows/coreelec/libreelec it just won't on Android so best to not expect it to.
There are issues for Shield, issues for Firestick which require a Dolby Vision hack, issues for Fire Cube which require an audio supervisor to keep the audio in sync, issues on multiple devices where it's limited to 1080p, issues on devices where DV doesn't work, issues on devices with low storage because of thumbnails cache, issues on devices with low memory so you can't run extraneous addons or skins. So, issues all over the android ecosystem with Kodi.
 
(2024-03-16, 19:31)hdmkv Wrote: ZDMC is the better option w/Zidoo as it pushes all video playback to the native player app.

ZDMC is broken on the latest firmware from Jan 9th 2024 and ZDMC version 20.2
 
(2024-03-16, 19:31)hdmkv Wrote: Z9X Pro is still fairly buggy
*when used with Kodi
(2024-03-16, 19:31)hdmkv Wrote: Z9X Pro firmware updates have been too few and far between

if you call 3 months "too few", 2023 7-1, 7-7, 7-20, 11-03, 11-10 and then 2024 01-09
- https://www.mcbluna.net/wp/zidoo-model-overview/zidoo-z9x-pro-firmware-download/


RE: Kodi Media Players State of the Union: Best Options in 2024 - hdmkv - 2024-03-18

I'm reading several reports in Zidoo's forum about jerky playback, crashes, etc. And general consensus that Zidoo need to be more active w/firmware releases to get their Pro line to the right level of maturity.