KODI 17 woes (FW 2.0.1 + Leanback 0.1.1)

[nick81]

Hey all

I am extremely disappointed with Kodi 17 so far and I can't believe they flagged it as RTM in its current state.

I am assuming no one in their development team bothered to test it on Android (something reported by Futeko if I remember correctly) as it's a buggy mess.

1 - The biggest issue I am facing is network connectivity. I have a very good and stable internet connection and my Q10 is connected using LAN. I have ZERO issues in all other apps on the same device. Only Kodi decides to give me hell whenever I try to download addons or refresh my library.
Trying to update a single movie is a complete nightmare. If network connectivity drops, then the refresh takes up to 30 seconds before failing and then Kodi crashes completely.
I have NEVER faced a single issue like that in all previous versions of Kodi... Even Kodi 16 betas were more stable this unfinished mess

2 - The new interface is messy. Not a single GUI matches the simplicity of the old Thumbnail interface. Any new movie you add to your library is unidentifiable as the file name is truncated and the font size too large. So you need to put the cursor on the thumbnail itself to actually be able to read the file name...

3 - Lots and I do mean, LOTS of stuttering when playing certain files. And I haven't even tried playing 4K stuff!! I got the stuttering on SD stuff last night! Using the wrapper made things a bit more manageable but still nowhere near as responsive as Kodi 16

Are people here actually happy with Kodi 17??? I am thinking of purging my Q10 from this filth and reinstalling Kodi 16. The Kodi team obviously has no interest at all in maintaining quality standards on Android. If I were them, I'd just stop releasing new versions for Android. This is just damaging the Kodi brand more than anything else.

One last thing, can anyone recommend a decent alternative to Kodi ? Really curious if anything else does the job. I tried MX Player some time ago but the interface and controls were a nightmare when using a remote.

Thanks !

[raviprasanth]

All the issues which you  had mentioned are not from Kodi 17. Kodi 17 works perfectly with Nvidia Shield TV. All the issues are from Himedia, as the customised Himedia Android update to Nougat do not support Kodi 17. Even the problem of hidef audio which is one of the most important issue has been delayed sorting out in the name of Chinese New Year. It is very sad that customer satisfaction is not an important criteria for Himedia.

[HereIsTom]

I also read that Kodi 17 works fine on most Android players, but HiMedia has to update the Android 7 version, that is where we waiting for!

[tmihai20]

Well, I beg to differ. Because some TV boxes do no have issues it does not mean that Kodi 17 is good. I do my playback with SPMC these days (still bases on Kodi 16.5), I keep Kodi 17 around to see when it will be fixed. Team Kodi has a lot to fix with the new version. All addons and patches that you can find here work pretty well with SPMC. I can even use the Wrapper with SPMC, just not by default like with Kodi. It is good enough for me.

[futeko.com]

All the issues which you  had mentioned are not from Kodi 17. Kodi 17 works perfectly with Nvidia Shield TV. All the issues are from Himedia, as the customised Himedia Android update to Nougat do not support Kodi 17. Even the problem of hidef audio which is one of the most important issue has been delayed sorting out in the name of Chinese New Year. It is very sad that customer satisfaction is not an important criteria for Himedia.

Not true at all.

Kodi 17 is a mess on all hardware except Shield. That can hardly be called the fault of every hardware manufacturer. It's like Kodi are going all out to alienate their customer base by making their software run badly or not at all on common hardware (e.g. no support for Android 4.4, trashing of existing 5.1 audio support). It would perhaps have been less confusing if Kodi had renamed itself Shieldi for this release.

The stuttering on add-ons is entirely a Kodi problem and they know it. Hopefully it will be fixed.

HiMedia will fix HD-Audio.

At least with Q5/Q10 Pro the wrapper allows Q5/Q10 Pro users to avoid most of the media playback problems with Kodi 17. I don't like the new interface either, but it's still the best for media management.

[qazwer]

Just found out that stutter in Kodi  17 stops when you disable hardware acceleration.  Does this mean that is a hardware problem?

[DancesWithChickens]

Just use KODI 16, make backups of it and test new KODI releases from time to time until they'll actually release sth worth upgrading to.

At least that's what i'm doing.


But:
With the last few buggy releases and the unmapping of remote buttons, KODI 17 has become unusable on Q10 Pro.

[qazwer]

The thing is that Kpdi 17.1 runs without any problems on my other cheap Android 6 MXQ Pro box.  Makes me feel a bit disappointed by HiMedia.

[divinestyler]

How do you install Kodi 16, when the playstore automatically installs 17?

[DancesWithChickens]

How do you install Kodi 16, when the playstore automatically installs 17?

http://mirrors.kodi.tv/releases/android/arm/

[futeko.com]

To disable Kodi auto update from Play Store:

-From home screen go to Play Store.
-Select the three line menu icon at top left next to where it says 'Google Play'.
-Select 'My Apps & games' in left panel.
-Scroll down to Kodi and select it.
-Select the three dots menu icon at top right of screen. You should see a check box for 'Auto update'. Disable it.