Forgive the long post. Just bought a new Sharp 4K. I've connected my USB drive and setup DLNA. I've side loaded VLC, MK player, Kodi and Plex but they all stutter. VLC is the worst. The inbuilt player is the best but doesn't have any features like move forward or backward. Also it struggles with 4K video.
What does the community recommend?
Also I'm considering a NAS or Mini PC to stream video but not until I get satisfactory playback.
Thanks in advance
I've used VLC, MK Player, and Kodi with no real issues playing back from local DLNA/UPnP servers (direct play, no transcoding). VLC pretty much plays anything I've thrown at it. I haven't had the need to do the direct USB thing.
Are your videos on the USB connected to your TV having problems playing, or it the issue with videos you are trying to play via DLNA (UPnP) or other local network server?
For me "stuttering" is usually caused by not having enough "speed" if it's via DLNA on a local server it's usually a WiFi speed issue. If it's for streaming, then it could be WiFi or the internet connection speed.
If your DLNA/UPnP server is transcoding the video, then stuttering can be caused when/if the server doesn't have enough CPU power or is trying to serve too many streams at once. This is a usually a server and not a player issue, unless it's a network (WiFi/Ethernet) speed issue.
Never really had any playback issues with directly connected USB devices, but I have had issue with USB HDDs that needed more power than the USB port could provide, which would result in the HDD "disconnecting" at times. This problem/issue usually fixed by using a powered USB hub. One exception would be if the USB device or port was not at least USB 2.0 or if it had rolled back to USB 1.1 (12 Megabits per second) or earlier/slower modes, which usually would cause issues with HD videos, but in some cases even SD videos.
In the future you might include the model number of your TV or other devices that are involved, providing that info usually gets you better/more accurate answers.
Not sure if this was what you were looking for but I do hope that you found it to be useful/helpful.
Good luck!
You do not need to spend a fortune to get smooth Kodi video playback:
https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=352565
The CoreELEC OS is a very polished performer these days with a whole bunch of stuff you can tweak.
your usb is 3 or 2?
im using kode and nova player. both working fine
im using dlna and samba sharing
prefer samba cause using dlna will not show external subtitle
im using bravia 49x8000