Recently (in the last month) I’ve experienced an odd glitch with the Kodi player on my latest FireTV devices. When playing back some MP4 video files (not all) from my local area LAN NAS (Synology 218), my FireTVstick 4k Max (first and second gen) freeze at about 1 minute. They have OS 7 and 8, respectively. My old 4k devices (OS6) don’t do this and neither does my Firestick 3rd gen (OS7). The 3rd gen stick has OS7.1,x,x and says “up to date”. My first gen 4k Max has OS 7.4.x.x and says “up to date”. Seems to be something to do with the version of OS7/8 and/or the chipset in the two “Max” devices not playing nicely with KODI. I’ve done multiple factory resets on the devices and tried multiple versions of Kodi (19.3, 19.4, 20.2), but each freeze up at the same time.
Anybody experienced anything similar or have any other insights???
Converted the offending file to .mkv and it plays now on my 2nd gen Firestick 4kMax. So it’s just the odd MP4 file and only on the two Max sticks. WTF???
Tried this at a second location with a Firestick 4k (OS 6) and a Firestick 4k Max (OS 7). The MP4 files in question played fine on the 4k but stalled at the same point on a 4k Max. I converted the file to an MKV and it plays fine on everything. So there doesn’t appear to be anything wrong with the MP4 file if it converts to MKV with no errors. There’s some issue with some MP4 files on the Max devices (OS 7 and 8) that doesn’t show up on the previous gen 4k (OS 6) devices.
Well, talking to myself (!) and some persistent Google searching appears to have identified the issue. Turning off Hardware Acceleration in Kodi got rid of the problem. Appears there’s an incompatibility with some MP4s and Kodi but only on the Fire OS7 and OS8 devices.
So if anyone else has issues with MP4s freezing in Kodi on your OS7 or OS8 devices, turn off hardware acceleration and that should cure it.
I found this solution on Reddit - appears quite a lot of folks were having this issue.
