Which would be better to play 4k video on my Mi Box? A portable connected through USB or a NAS over my network?
Which would be better to play 4k video on my Mi Box? A portable connected through USB or a NAS over my network?
As long as your network can pump the required bandwidth for a 4K video (Be it wireless or wired using USB to Ethernet dongle) even when the network is crowded, the pros that came to mind would be :
USB
Easier first time setup regarding network shares
No network support needed in your video player
NAS
Cheaper capacity cost
Add capacity without downtime (Unless you use a lower end / single drive NAS)
Add / Remove contents without downtime
My MiBox didn't play even 720p files over WiFi even though it should have had plenty of bandwidth. Wired worked fine.
It really depends if you intend to play them from elsewhere, as otherwise there is no advantage to using a NAS.
Definitely a NAS with Kodi running on android TV. Unbeatable. 4k needs 20Mbps max. I have watched planet earth 2 in 4k from the NAS to Kodi. Runs perfectly.
From my experience with the Mibox. Definitely go USB. 1080p files over the network work fine but 4K files, especially those with high quality audio tracks like DTS-HD or Dolby TrueHD seem to only play smoothly when played directly off a HDD.