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+--- Thread: Best Kodi Media Player Options 2025 (/showthread.php?tid=376035)
RE: Best Kodi Media Player Options 2024 - izprtxqkft - 2024-12-09
(2024-12-09, 12:31)jbinkley60 Wrote: This is not surprising and partially why, back on post 29 of this thread, I indicated that I have chosen to stick with the 2 box approach: one for online streaming and the second for my local streaming. The stability and control it provides for my local streaming isn't dependent upon stuff I can't control (ii.e Google antics etc..) and with my Mezzmo solution my Kodi boxes don't need Internet access. Only Linux and Windows for local clients running Kodi. Mezzmo clients running the Mezzmo Android app are separate.
My local streaming is totally self-contained, stable and secure. I realize this may preclude Dolby Vision support but I can live with that. I think we will see, as you and others have indicated, a further divergence between local and online streaming of content.
i was on a multi device setup prior to the release of the Cube Gen3 because the Gen2 couldn't do Kodi things well enough for me
things were looking better when it was released, more powerful CPU meant no lag in Kodi so duties changes and i eliminated a LibreELEC PC
with the eliminated libreleec it was down to 90% Cube use, 10% UHD BD Player because i didn't yet have the capability to copy 4K discs
once i sat down and figured out how to patch the firmware on my BD Drive i use for copying so that it was capable of 4K copies
then the UHD player use dropped to 0.01% use and was also eliminated
with the elimination of the player the Harmony remote was eliminated as well as an HDMI switch since now we're using a single device
once the player was eliminated, cracks started showing in Kodi regarding audio tracks namely TrueHD and DTSX, with the efforts of fritsch and hdmkv as well as other testers these were resolved and life was good again
then i noticed i was missing DV playback on some movies, which i hadn't payed attention to because i was still using a samsung tv without DV any way
solving DV playback and getting to see the actual difference was night and day, i finally had "truely" replaced that UHD BD Player with Kodi+Cube Gen3
fast forward a little more than 2 years and it is starting to look like all that effort is getting wiped away a little at a time and it's just a little disheartening
RE: Best Kodi Media Player Options 2024 - meccs - 2024-12-10
Cube arrived. Do I only need the <superviseaudiodelay>true</superviseaudiodelay> fix on the Cube 3?
RE: Best Kodi Media Player Options 2024 - izprtxqkft - 2024-12-10
(2024-12-10, 17:53)meccs Wrote: Cube arrived. Do I only need the <superviseaudiodelay>true</superviseaudiodelay> fix on the Cube 3?
that should be all for initial setup
RE: Best Kodi Media Player Options 2024 - hdmkv - 2024-12-10
Here's the advancedsettings.xml I use for my Cube 3's.
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So, somewhere in this thread I had done a mini-review of X96 X10, the non-pro 4GB/32GB S928X Android box, and wasn't impressed. Fast-forward a few months to now, just re-tried it w/CoreELEC NE, installed to internal eMMC. Gotta say I'm quite impressed w/it as a CoreELEC box... appears CE devs did excellent work supporting it. While the non-pro version I have isn't 'supposed' to support DV, it in fact does. Both played-led and display-led. Like all S928X boxes, it can't do Dolby Vision FEL, only MEL, but the box's performance is pretty impressive. It's significantly more snappy than my Ugoos AM6B+, even slightly (but noticeably) more so my Fire TV Cube 3 as far as Kodi goes. Library scans are very quick, even w/my large library w/a couple thousand movies + shows, and Kodi UI navigation is fluid w/no lags. The 4GB/32GB X96 X10 is probably the cheapest S928X Android box, and I think it's now a worthy contender for pure Kodi use if you don't need DV FEL support.
RE: Best Kodi Media Player Options 2024 - meccs - 2024-12-11
I still have the a/v corrections with the Cube 3 but I noticed it only seems to happen if I have my Bose QC 45 connected to the Fire TV. I might do some logging but I fear that connecting BT headphones is an "all bets are off" situation with Kodi. Am I right? Anything I could try to fix the problem?
RE: Best Kodi Media Player Options 2024 - izprtxqkft - 2024-12-11
i have no insights on using bluetooth on (any) of these devices
i don't use bluetooth other than on my phone or tablet and i don't use kodi on those devices so i couldn't even comment on bluetooth with kodi in general
RE: Best Kodi Media Player Options 2024 - clarkss12 - 2024-12-12
I had the opportunity to test the OSMC Vero V this week and I am very impressed.
It played all of my media, including my Dolby Vision and HDR 10+ videos. Of course it converts those DV videos to HDR which is more that acceptable for me. Here is why I am impressed , IT PLAYS the VC-1 video codec flawlessly WITH hardware transcoding. I have a LOT of my favorite Blue-Ray rips that are encoded with that codec, and for years I had to use Emby because it would transcode that codec on the fly. Up until recently, transcoding was needed for subtitles, unsupported audio codec or video codecs. Even the Blue-Ray of "Back to the Future trilogy" was encoded with that pesky VC-1 video codec. I purchased the UHD trilogy just to get away from the VC-1 codec. There is NO upgrade for most of my favorite Blue-Ray movies.
The Vero V is one of the very few devices that can play that codec and all of the video and audio codecs that I have tried and tested.
RE: Best Kodi Media Player Options 2024 - hdmkv - 2024-12-12
Sam & team there have a solution for handling DV MEL & doing dynamic tonemapping. He had mentioned FEL proving to be more challenging, but they're working on it. @Sam.Nazarko, any updates?
RE: Best Kodi Media Player Options 2024 - Sam.Nazarko - 2024-12-12
(2024-12-12, 01:01)clarkss12 Wrote: IOf course it converts those DV videos to HDR which is more that acceptable for me.This is due to change shortly, with native Dolby Vision output. I already sent you instructions to a test build that will get you native output. If you need any assistance please get in touch.
(2024-12-12, 01:08)hdmkv Wrote: Sam & team there have a solution for handling DV MEL & doing dynamic tonemapping. He had mentioned FEL proving to be more challenging, but they're working on it. @Sam.Nazarko, any updates?
We are still working hard. We have a few users testing with public testing a little further away.
It will be nice to give something to our users this Christmas if we can, otherwise it will need to wait until the New Year.
FEL is still something we need to explore properly. I cannot find a definitive answer, but are discs still being released with FEL or has Dolby abandoned it?
I did state in the past that we wouldn't be the first to implement Dolby Vision, but the important thing is we do so in a way that allows us to maintain support and not rely on a proprietary kernel module from the upstream SoC module that we have no control over. This can only be used against us as it would mean that we cannot necessarily meet long term support commitments and we could introduce features that could later be taken away (for example FEL working in 4.9 and not working 5.4/5.15 kernels).
We'll have more details on this in the near future.
RE: Best Kodi Media Player Options 2024 - hdmkv - 2024-12-12
Thanks for the update. There's a long, running list of FEL titles here. Not fully understanding the technical challenges, this may be a simpleton question... can't Vero V leverage the same dovi.ko method like other S905X4 boxes to manage DV? Is the "O" in S905X4-O "OSMC"? And not something akin to "J" or "K" allowing full DV implementation? What strange is I have a X96 X10 box that's a generic S928X, but it supports DV under Android and CoreELEC.
RE: Best Kodi Media Player Options 2024 - Sam.Nazarko - 2024-12-12
(2024-12-12, 02:20)hdmkv Wrote: Thanks for the update. There's a long, running list of FEL titles here. Not fully understanding the technical challenges, this may be a simpleton question... can't Vero V leverage the same dovi.ko method like other S905X4 boxes to manage DV? Is the "O" in S905X4-O "OSMC"? And not something akin to "J" or "K" allowing full DV implementation? What strange is I have a X96 X10 box that's a generic S928X, but it supports DV under Android and CoreELEC.
I've seen the long running list but are there new releases being added (i.e. new discs)?
No -- we don't use the dovi.ko method because it is too restricting on open source; licensing and functionality. AML obviously like to release new kernels for new SoCs. Being held hostage to whether we get a new 'dovi.ko' would not work for us or our support commitments. There were a few other things we were worried about. For example there's red push issues on NVIDIA Shield when I did some testing, but NVIDIA cannot fix it. We really did not want to end up in that kind of situation.
It seems newer versions of dovi.ko have to be encrypted and require locked bootloaders.
No idea about the 'generic' S928X. Have you popped the case open or checked the serial number? I wouldn't be surprised if they've licensed a -J/-K chip and just ship regardless of which model you order.
I will outline the technical issues at a later date.
Quote:Is the "O" in S905X4-O "OSMC"?
Internally yes. It means we try and keep things consistent. So if we get a Rev D chip for S905X4, we can keep things working (like deinterlacing) which I believe might be problematic on newer S905X4 chips.
RE: Best Kodi Media Player Options 2024 - hdmkv - 2024-12-12
Makes sense. I love and hate Dolby equally
!
RE: Best Kodi Media Player Options 2024 - jbinkley60 - 2024-12-12
(2024-12-12, 01:01)clarkss12 Wrote: I had the opportunity to test the OSMC Vero V this week and I am very impressed.
It played all of my media, including my Dolby Vision and HDR 10+ videos. Of course it converts those DV videos to HDR which is more that acceptable for me. Here is why I am impressed , IT PLAYS the VC-1 video codec flawlessly WITH hardware transcoding. I have a LOT of my favorite Blue-Ray rips that are encoded with that codec, and for years I had to use Emby because it would transcode that codec on the fly. Up until recently, transcoding was needed for subtitles, unsupported audio codec or video codecs. Even the Blue-Ray of "Back to the Future trilogy" was encoded with that pesky VC-1 video codec. I purchased the UHD trilogy just to get away from the VC-1 codec. There is NO upgrade for most of my favorite Blue-Ray movies.
The Vero V is one of the very few devices that can play that codec and all of the video and audio codecs that I have tried and tested.
I've got 3 of the Vero Vs running in my Mezzmo setup. They have been rock solid, no transcoding and they just run. They've been totally 0 maintenance in my setup other than the occasional software update from Sam and team, which has been flawless. Performance is good and 4K UHD full bitrate over wireless is no problem. Here's my performance Wiki page for Mezzmo clients so you can see how it compares relative to other devices.
Thanks,
Jeff
RE: Best Kodi Media Player Options 2024 - hdmkv - 2024-12-12
Jeff, I see you're the Mezzmo Kodi addon author. I had tried Jellycon & Jellyfish to have a shared library across my Kodi devices, but found some limitations w/which protocols I could use (like WebDAV, which I use for my Fire Cubes, or mounted SMB shares like w/my CoreELEC boxes) or skin limitations w/certain media flags not showing. Looks like Mezzmo is Windows only, but can point to NAS shares? Starting to read your write-up here, you mention "Mezzmo doesn't leverage existing SMB mounts and similar". Does it only rely on DLNA? What about high bitrate UHD rips that need SMB, NFS, or mounted shares to stream well from a NAS?
Happy to take this convo somewhere else, but pretty sure many of us have multiple Kodi devices using/different OS'es (CE, Android, etc.).
RE: Best Kodi Media Player Options 2024 - jbinkley60 - 2024-12-12
(2024-12-12, 15:45)hdmkv Wrote: Jeff, I see you're the Mezzmo Kodi addon author. I had tried Jellycon & Jellyfish to have a shared library across my Kodi devices, but found some limitations w/which protocols I could use (like WebDAV, which I use for my Fire Cubes, or mounted SMB shares like w/my CoreELEC boxes) or skin limitations w/certain media flags not showing. Looks like Mezzmo is Windows only, but can point to NAS shares? Starting to read your write-up here, you mention "Mezzmo doesn't leverage existing SMB mounts and similar". Does it only rely on DLNA? What about high bitrate UHD rips that need SMB, NFS, or mounted shares to stream well from a NAS?
Happy to take this convo somewhere else, but pretty sure many of us have multiple Kodi devices using/different OS'es (CE, Android, etc.).
The Mezzmo server does run on Windows but it could be a Windows VM. That cannot be changed. Back-end media can be local or SMB mounted. The main streaming is HTTP so everything is a URL. DLNA is used for device discovery, syncing metadata and communications between the clients and the server. High bitrate streaming is not an issue. See my performance results here where I have 6 streams running simultaneously, including UHD full bitrate over wireless. Mezzmo does its own dynamic buffering based upon the device profile so you don't need to do any Kodi advancedsettings tweaking. You do not do SMB mounts to Kodi clients with Mezzmo. That makes it so much simpler.
Kodi clients with the Mezzmo Kodi addon can run on anything. I have many different clients including LibreElec, OSMC, Android, web, Windows and more. Hardware is a mix of PCs, Vero Vs, Raspberry Pis, AMD mini-PCs and more. Mezzmo has over 300+ device profiles and a native Android client. All watched statuses, resume points and similar are shared across all clients. No WebDav is needed but Mezzmo can stream external live streaming URLs, linked playlists etc..
I think all of those issues you describe with Jellycon and Jellyfin will not be present with Mezzmo. I've never had an issue with anyone having a skin issue, across any skin. There are no skin dependencies in the addon as long as the skin developer follows standard Kodi practices. The Mezzmo Kodi addon does not create any of its own windows. it calls whatever is available normally. But it does have some pretty cool features like global sort orders, setting views by media type etc.. It also has a built-in global search capability. These typically don't exist in Kodi.
Thanks,
Jeff