Android Use of External player for network stream
#16
(2016-01-24, 21:13)ronnyy Wrote: This is why it doesn't really makes sense to offer in xBMC an external player, when there are very few that support smb shares. How many android devices will install xBMC for playing files from the local drives? very few...

See also my reply here:
http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=...pid2224672

So? External player support is a universal feature in Kodi. (also, the named used to be XBMC. It was never called "xBMC".) Kodi was designed to work on multiple OSes and not just Android. Just because Android has a crappy selection of video players is not a reason to disable a feature that has existed long before Kodi/XBMC had an Android version.
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#17
Another option is to install the Emby server and the Emby for Kodi addon that allows you to play videos in Kodi from the Emby server. In this scenario, the Emby server is the bridge between Kodi and MxPlayer. The addon has a setting to "Play from http:", and then MxPlayer works well as an external player for Android. I use this on a FireTV Stick because I couldn't get 720p .mkv files to play in Kodi 14.2 without stuttering.

I was already using Emby to organize my media library, so it has worked very well as a solution for me. Just throwing it out there as an option.
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#18
(2016-01-24, 21:18)Ned Scott Wrote:
(2016-01-24, 21:13)ronnyy Wrote: This is why it doesn't really makes sense to offer in xBMC an external player, when there are very few that support smb shares. How many android devices will install xBMC for playing files from the local drives? very few...

See also my reply here:
http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=...pid2224672

So? External player support is a universal feature in Kodi. (also, the named used to be XBMC. It was never called "xBMC".) Kodi was designed to work on multiple OSes and not just Android. Just because Android has a crappy selection of video players is not a reason to disable a feature that has existed long before Kodi/XBMC had an Android version.

You must be joking, so for you it's better to keep the features in your product even if they are not working on some platforms... what's the added value of having an external player if there are no players that can be used over smb?

I understand though you care more about the product itself than about the users, you prefer to have the users going through the hassle of trying your product with an external player because on your wiki it says it works, no mention that the external player is supposed to support smb... then the user naively tries it and it doesn't work, why... well I don't know... another research to find out how to debug it... then you realise there is an error, and then you end up posting here like the author of this thread... and the answer is that: "yes we know that there is no player out there for android but we prefer to keep this feature because on other platforms it works and by the way we care more about our product then we care about you or informing you correctly not to waste your time"

Great user experience!
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#19
In what exactly is our fault that Android players mostly (to the best of our knowledge) ignore or do not support smb urls?
What if one pops up that support it? Should we drop everything and do an emergency release to re-add the feature that we would have removed to satisfy you?
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#20
(2016-01-27, 04:56)ronnyy Wrote: You must be joking, so for you it's better to keep the features in your product even if they are not working on some platforms... what's the added value of having an external player if there are no players that can be used over smb?

I understand though you care more about the product itself than about the users, you prefer to have the users going through the hassle of trying your product with an external player because on your wiki it says it works, no mention that the external player is supposed to support smb... then the user naively tries it and it doesn't work, why... well I don't know... another research to find out how to debug it... then you realise there is an error, and then you end up posting here like the author of this thread... and the answer is that: "yes we know that there is no player out there for android but we prefer to keep this feature because on other platforms it works and by the way we care more about our product then we care about you or informing you correctly not to waste your time"

Great user experience!

I've numbered this to make it easier for you:

1. There are external players on Android that can use SMB.

2. External player can be used for local files or from other protocols. We're not going to remove a feature just because "not enough" people are using it, which is something you are only guessing about. It doesn't matter if it's only a few or if it's everyone.

3. The vast majority of our users will never, ever, use the external player feature. It is an advanced feature for experienced users who wish to override the internal player, only. The fact that it requires editing xml files should be a big hint to this. So yeah, usability is not a focus there, because normal users won't even know the feature exists. Why would they even want to use the external player in the first place?

4. Any reasonable person would need to assume that the external player needs to support the video format and protocol for that video. That's why no one complains that Minecraft can't open videos.

5. Kodi is not a "product". Kodi is something that some volunteers work on in their free time and then wish to share with other people.

6. The wiki is made by volunteers in their free time. It only exists because the community exists. No one is paid to write it. Everyone is able to edit it. You have no one to bitch at if you think something should change there. There's a lot more information about external players that still has never been written about on the wiki, simply because no one has had time or has wanted to spend their free time writing about that specific feature.
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#21
Hello,
anything new?
I would also like to use MXplayer to play videos files from Kodi but it doesn't work (I use from esexplorer meanwhile).

I would like to use MXplayer because Kodi cannot play video's without artefact. The only without problem is MXplayer.
Thanks
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