I tested the same samples (astra uhd and some my samples), hevc and hev1 on my chinese tablet:
http://www.ainol-novo.com/pipo-p1-rk3288...-32gb.html
So:
- astra uhd ts sample (mentioned as broken, mhm) - plays good and very smoothly with system video player and MX Player on Android. Kodi (recent nightly) fails and unable to play it, no hw decoding at all.
- any hevc file created with ffmpeg (hev1) - failure, no hw decoding at all
- any hevc encoded file created with Handbrake - plays just fine, but not in Kodi, the same as #1 (including 4k DCI)
What to say, ffmpeg sucks on encode with its hev1 (yes, it's mentioned in hevc standard but should not be used from compatibility reasons). Kodi on Android sucks as well, at least on Rockchip devices, I don't have any other device with hw hevc decoding to test. I found many problems with h265 encoded using ffmpeg, many software and hardware are unable to recognize video codec "hev1", I have no idea why ffmpeg encoder uses this.
[edit]
I tested Kodi more carefuly on my tablet and it seems HW decoding doesn't work at all, even for h264, so good bye... Obviously, software 4k decoding is impossible in this case (even h264), it eats all cpu and gives slideshow instead of movie.
Regarding to Kodi on Android, hw decoding always sucks (sorry). MX Player is able to hw decode always, on Rockchip and even Mediatek. Kodi - not really, hw decoding platforms are very limited (as far as I tested).