Newbie advice needed

[Jfromnorfolk]

Hi all

Got my droidbox k5 a couple of days ago and used it for the first time yesterday and just wanted to share my experience and would welcome any advice or feedback.

So iv installed the wookie wizard as advised by the droidbox team.

Just fyi I only have standard broadband running at around 8mb but using a wired connection. I should be getting fibre next week tho and tripling that speed.

Yesterday lunch time I got a really good stream for the everton v arsenal game on op Robo. But then 3pms
games I really struggled to find anything decent. Checked out all the main places - Phoenix, njm, money etc.

Also movies so far have seemed a little disappointing quality wise.

Im guessing things will improve when im on fibre. With all these addons do they update auto or is it something I need to do or the wookie does?

My system says I have kodi 15.2 but in play store the offical kodi app says " uninstall " only so im guessing I do have 16.0?

Thanks guys

Jamie

 

[Nigelar]

The problem with football streams is likely to be server contention in rather than your broadband speed. I get this on very fast virgin fibre from time to time So getting fibre is unlikely to improve things radically if you are getting 8mbps. Regarding movies, again the source where you are getting the film from can cause buffering, freezing etc. Minimum recommended for hd quality is 8mbps so you are on the edge. You may well see an improvement here when you get fibre.
Regarding Kodi, do you have dbmc 15.2 or vanilla Kodi 15.2 currently? If you want to update to vanilla Kodi 16 from Google play you will probably need to uninstall your current version and set everything up again. If everything is working then you may wish to delay doing this as you won't gain much.

Finally Addons update automatically by default (you can switch this off)

 

[sean99]

Also J try downloading bionictcp from the playstore and install as this improves d/l speeds significantly. Also try wiziwig from the Castaway addon as this is a very good stable stream for live football games.

 

[Jfromnorfolk]

Many thanks for the tips guys. Does bionictcp work auto once installed or do I need to do anything?

 

[sean99]

Each time you power your box on just open it and click the top left, jobs done. Experiment before you install bionictcp, do a speedtest before you install. Then do another with it opened and top left clicked and your d/l speeds should improve.

 

[Jfromnorfolk]

Just put a money sports link up. Sky sports 1 HQ. Streams ok to begin the buffering galore :-(

 

[Jfromnorfolk]

To be fair it seems to be streaming well on the backup link, non hd

 

[sean99]

Could probably be the addon, try castaway and wiziwig and try a live football stream playing now. It's a very stable stream and if they are ok for that means the money sports addon etc has problems.

 

[sean99]

That's a problem with hd links as they use so much bandwidth the streams become unstable especially when a lot of people are using at same time.

 

[Jfromnorfolk]

Thanks mate got a good one which seems stable on wizi. Cant complain just wish the pic was a bit clearer. Will fibre not help with pic quality even if it is standard def stream?

 

[sean99]

No mate as that's peer 2 peer sharing for you. At the end of the day these streams are free with no subs to pay

 

[Jfromnorfolk]

The k5 is a 1gb box. Should this suffice or should have I gone all out and got a 2gb box?

 

[Nigelar]

Please reread my post above jfromnorfolk. You will recollect that the most likely cause of freezing / buffering / poor quality on football streams is server contention I.e. too many users. There are good quality streams out there. But it is often a case of trial and error finding them on the usual sites (castaway, robocop, njmsoccer, U.K. Turk, Phoenix etc). Sometimes, disabling hardware acceleration in settings - video can help.

 

[Jfromnorfolk]

Understood.

What do you make to this tip this guy explains:

 

[Nigelar]

They are things to try which may or may not improve things. You can of course give it a try if you want. And report back if it was successful for you so other users can benefit.

Make sure you know how to back changes out if you have to (presumably by disabling the options).

Before fiddling about with anything to do with settings i like to understand what i am doing and what the likely effect will be. Here is a very good article which i think refers to this tool and i would recommend reading it first. Note any warnings or suggestions. Good luck.

http://androidpcreview.com/fix-kodi-buffering-problems-heres-how-to-modify-the-kodi-cache/2611/