Media player for Android TV [Is there one that stands out?]

by vampgirlz

I have few media players installed on my Nvidia shield: VLC, MXplayer and of course Kodi

I have edited Kodi to use different players depending on content and situations. But my question is if any player is a real game changer and gives us better quality over others? I have already stopped using MXPlayer because it can't correctly handle audio pass-through in HW+ mode. So I mainly use VLC and Kodi's default player.

So do you advise using Kodi's default or VLC or another player?

I mostly use it to watch high quality 4K or FullHD files with 5.1 or 7.1 audio (pass-through)

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edit:

Most of the time files are on my PC or External hard disks attached to my pc. I use Emby server on PC to access them from Nvidia shield or SMB shares.

NedSc

Kodi's internal/default video player will already max out the playback quality on the Shield. There's no benefit to using an external player there.

MattSpew

Why would you go past Kodi on the Shield?

Best player on the best media box.

hboinay

If you want to use MX player to its full, you have to download the codecs from the url below and point to them in the settings, also enable all audio/video formats in the settings as some are disabled by default. After doing that MX player will play whatever you throw at it.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Jh6id4rYW4Vujyhm5tIcddTb5ilmG-D9

pawdog

You have made a simple situation complicated. You need one stand alone media player which is Kodi or a client/server system like Plex or Emby. The built in players of either of these will handle 4k remuxes with lossless audio on the Shield. Things like VLC or MX Player are unnecessary. Kodi can see you SMB shares directly.

Drakonis3d

Plex is where it's at. Install the server on the PC, stream to the device.

Kincadium

Are you using network or local playback?

atifsh

As a media player there's nothing more you need after kodi. Uninstall every other players. Kodi plays video and audio to the best also you'll never have issues with audio not working properly.

vampgirlz

Well from these responses it seems that the kodi default player does what it's need to be done. I will still keep VLC for fast video viewing when I just want to brows as I have set kodi player to sync refresh rate and use audio pass-through.

Thanks a lot for sharing your thoughts :)

BiggussDikkuss

Plex and now Emby may be the easiest for Server duties for Newbies to hookup into but Kodi is the best, most flexible Media Player on the planet.

There is also a fork (aka alt. version) of Kodi called MrMC.

Both of them can interface into a Plex / Emby server, Kodi using PlexKodiconnect or the EmbyCon for Kodi Addon.

MrMC is even easier than that having such Plex/Emby network discovery baked into the App

Where Newbies trip up is connecting Kodi to a regular Windows SMB File Server, but this post shows it's pretty easy when you know how and use Bonjour Network Discovery protocols:

https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=329883&pid=2971806#pid2971806

venky61

I like Plex for network streaming and Nova Player for local playback.