Hey peeps, I'm looking for the best option to stream personal videos and my movie rips (often 50gb+) from Google Drive.
I've been using Kodi with the Google drive add-on, but Kodi itself isn't that good at streaming certain kinds of files, even locally (short iPhone clips in 4K, while strangely, long clips play fine). My larger issue is with streaming my movie rips. While some play just fine, others stutter and are sometimes unwatchable.
In an effort to find the issue, I've been experimenting with a Fire stick 4K, Nvidia Shield and the new Google Chromecast. They all have their drawbacks, but as far as Kodi is concerned, performance is roughly similar. I thought that the ethernet-connected Shield might do better, but it seems the bottleneck is not there. Some movies play better on the Shield, some on the fire TV. I've got a fiber connection, 500/500, ax88u router, and a Windows computer/server connected with an 802.11ax adapter (link speed around 2.2 gigabit, speed test hits 800-900 Mbps on the upload).
I tried setting up a Plex server with recommended settings and Google drive file stream, but still got hit with a temporary ban anyway. I've never tried Plex before, but given the ban and the idea that I'm introducing a middle man in the connection (sounds counter intuitive to do that given I'm trying to stream large files) made me put that idea on the back burner.
So the options I'm looking at are:
- Plex server connected to Google drive either via Google drive file stream or rclone
- Emby version of the above
- Infuse on an apple tv (apparently connects directly with Google drive) via ethernet
Anything else out there? I want to stream the movies directly, want them to play in 4K and HDR, and I'd like passthrough sound to my receiver.
I'm also not sure which device to stick with, but basically I want the above mentioned Google drive playback, YouTube in 4K HDR, Apple tv, Amazon Prime, Netflix, maybe Disney, ideally frame rate switching and HD audio passthrough. Unfortunately it seems, no one device does all that.
All advice is really appreciated!
You could try/test this Google Drive addon on any device running Kodi:
https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=324784
100% reliable High bitrate 4K video playback across a network needs Gigabit Ethernet connected devices.
The Fire TV devices should be using a 480Mbps LAN adapter and a special version of Kodi, all details are over here:
https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=336151
Kodi may need an advancedsettings.xml cache tweak:
https://kodi.wiki/view/HOW-TO:Modify_the_video_cache
You are not going to get 4K HDR YouTube from the Nvidia Shield or Apple TV 4K.
No Apple TV App on any Android TV - external HDMI connected media player, there is one on FireTV devices and naturally Apple TV 4K.
The only Android TV device that does Dolby TrueHD/Atmos audio passthrough is the Nvidia Shield.
The Apple TV cannot do that but does support other types of HD audio. (decoded losslessly to highly AVR compatible - Multichannel LPCM - for no loss in audio quality)
Look over in the Firecore forums about Infuse App / Google Drive support:
https://community.firecore.com/t/appletv-4k-infuse-pro-6-gdrive/22714
The best - Android - device for auto Frame Rate Matching is the Amazon FireTV stick/Cube devices, which can also do 4K HDR YouTube.
The best media player device for well sorted Apps auto Frame Rate Matching is the Apple TV 4K.
The new CCGTV dongle will give you 4K HDR YouTube, but no auto Frame Rate Matching or HD audio support.
The best Kodi device for local 4K HDR HD audio home user content playback is the ODROID N2+ running CoreELEC Kodi:
https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=252916
Yep pick your poison, there really is no one device "to rule them all".
Personally I would be looking in the Apple TV 4K / Infuse direction to achieve nearly all you want on the one powerful device.