Stream from HTPC to Kodi box

Doltanian

I wonder if anyone here could help me.

I have a HTPC built specifically for movies, tv shows etc. in the living room. I got one of those Android boxes

http://www.gearbest.com/tv-box-mini-pc/pp_230334.html

and it is pure rubbish really, those dodgy pirate streams don't work half the time and the quality is low and buggyness high. You really would need to be a pirate enthusiast to get any value of this box. It is also illegal to stream pirated content So I don't condone it and I merely want to repurpose my box in a better way.

What I want to do with it intead is to stream content I have already downloaded from the HTPC over my Wired LAN to the TV in the bedroom where I'll locate the android box. So I could playback .mkv and .mp4 video files from the HTPC direct to the Bedroom. The TV there is not a smart tv so I'm hoping I can utilise this Android box for this.

Johnboy1951

The Android box has Kodi, so you can use that to play whatever you have available, to the TV.
All you need do is make the content in the HTPC available to Kodi; there is no need to stream out from the HTPC.
Kodi will play media from storage on the LAN.

Doltanian

Excellent advice, I have this Android Box over a year and was using ES File Explorer to navigate to my shared folder on the HTPC and MX Player to playback the files. This stupid method caused the video to freeze up very often.

I'll report back on my findings but keeping everything in house within Kodi seems much better.

Doltanian

Much less freezing but there is still minor jitter, anyone know anything to fix this. I'm thinking just canning the Kodi box and building a micropc to run VLC.

Mickalus

You can put VLC on the android box too to see if there's any difference. KODI should be able to handle most of anything VLC can.
The Kodi box you have is decent enough, should be fit to play anything locally without jitter.

What format is the media?
What's the specs of the HTPC?
You've got ethernet from android box -> Router -> HTPC? Have you checked the Android box is using Ethernet and not wifi?

Johnboy1951

Doltanian wrote: »

Much less freezing but there is still minor jitter, anyone know anything to fix this. I'm thinking just canning the Kodi box and building a micropc to run VLC.

To me there are three things I would be checking in this order

1. each device in use is wired via good ethernet cable (Cat 5e or better)
2. the source is able to provide the required data throughput and is not being bottle-necked by a slow HDD or the device being busy doing something like transcoding
3. there are sufficient resources available on the playing device .... nothing else going on there except playing the media.

Zilog

Couple of simple things to check first:

Smoothing settings on TV:
Smart TVs and Kodi glitching / stuttering

Check also 'Auto Adjust Frame Rate' under settings menu.
When enabled and providing your hardware and TV are capable, the TV frame rate should adjust to match video playback (typically 24, 50 or 60 FPS).
From memory you may need to be on 'expert' settings (under Confluence skin) to see this option.

HTH.