Hi all,

I am having real trouble getting smooth playback on my TV using Kodi. Thinking that it was underpowered TV CPU, I bought an NVidia Shield but disappointingly, I am having the same result. The weird thing is that playback of the same files (and same share) using FX Player is fine - it's only Kodi playback which is completely unwatchable due to buffering and stuttering.

I've established an SMB share on my Windows Home Server 2011 - whether I access it through Wifi or Ethernet (1 GBps), Kodi is always rubbish and FX is fine (same file, same share). Kodi and FX playback from USB 2 or USB 3 ports is fine.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the CPU and Network utilisation charts (on the WHS Server) whilst running are quite different.

Can you provide any insight into what might be happening here?

Here's my operating environment:

• TV TCL55C2 (2160p) with Android 8.0
• 1 Gbps modem
• Windows Home Server 2011 (HP N36-L with 8 GB AMD II Neo Dual Core 1.33 GHz)
• 1 Gbps card in server
• Kodi & FX use a Windows SMB share
• TVAddons Speedtest says network is 16 Mb/s - "Excellent" for up to 4k
• Internet 50 MB/s (streaming 4k off Netflix
• NVidia Shield (new) on Ethernet (also tried wifi) - current software on NVidia Shield is out-of-box NVidia
  • Kodi + tvaddons.co (add-on recommended by
  • Kodi customised as per (as per https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tel1hXk9mLI )
  • Also Under Settings | Player | Videos | Enable HQ Scalers for above (to **100%**)
    • Allow Hardware Accelleration/s (to Off )
    • Addons | My Addons | VideoPlayer InputStream | InputStream Adaptive (to Enable )

Many thanks