[VonMagnum]

I finally finished setting up SPMC (sadly it used a much older database so I had to rescan and correct some things, etc.).  I still have to try it out with a full movie, though.  This is such a PITA for something that used to work so well and then broke for no obvious reason....

[VonMagnum]

Instead of "stopping" I had a "freeze" instead that then started a "buffering" window at the top and continued playing a few seconds after that (and caught up to where it would have been if it had kept playing).  That's similar to what Krypton did on the Shield sometimes.  The real question is WTF is causing it to do either one of these, not whether it freezes and then continues instead of stopping the movie.  I'm starting to wonder if it could be a WiFi dump once in awhile.  I get "excellent" for signal on the Shield's meter, but there's no doubt the Shield is further away (floor below) than the FireTV that never seems to do it.  Other than that, I have no idea what the cause is.

[sullysnet]

Instead of "stopping" I had a "freeze" instead that then started a "buffering" window at the top and continued playing a few seconds after that (and caught up to where it would have been if it had kept playing).  That's similar to what Krypton did on the Shield sometimes.  The real question is WTF is causing it to do either one of these, not whether it freezes and then continues instead of stopping the movie.  I'm starting to wonder if it could be a WiFi dump once in awhile.  I get "excellent" for signal on the Shield's meter, but there's no doubt the Shield is further away (floor below) than the FireTV that never seems to do it.  Other than that, I have no idea what the cause is.

Have you tried selecting your channel on your router? I did this and in my router I can see the signal meter. Before it would be up then drop. When I changed to manual and picked my less crowded channel I seem to get a more reliable stream. I still see the value on the shield lower than I would like it. I can never get that value to stay solid even though the signal shows excellent. I still get buffer warnings here and there but not as much as before.
I will be happy one I move to wired. Just unhappy with Nvidia in this model that I don't feel the wireless is as stable as the 2017 model (at least for me)

[VonMagnum]

Instead of "stopping" I had a "freeze" instead that then started a "buffering" window at the top and continued playing a few seconds after that (and caught up to where it would have been if it had kept playing).  That's similar to what Krypton did on the Shield sometimes.  The real question is WTF is causing it to do either one of these, not whether it freezes and then continues instead of stopping the movie.  I'm starting to wonder if it could be a WiFi dump once in awhile.  I get "excellent" for signal on the Shield's meter, but there's no doubt the Shield is further away (floor below) than the FireTV that never seems to do it.  Other than that, I have no idea what the cause is.

Have you tried selecting your channel on your router? I did this and in my router I can see the signal meter. Before it would be up then drop. When I changed to manual and picked my less crowded channel I seem to get a more reliable stream. I still see the value on the shield lower than I would like it. I can never get that value to stay solid even though the signal shows excellent. I still get buffer warnings here and there but not as much as before.
I will be happy one I move to wired. Just unhappy with Nvidia in this model that I don't feel the wireless is as stable as the 2017 model (at least for me)

I don't see any signal meter on my router.  I have tried changing channels, but it's a PITA to figure out whether it helps or not if it doesn't act up right away.  It just seems absurd to me that literally everything else but KODI streams just fine in that room.  Increasing the buffer option just seems to make things worse/haywire.  The advanced buffer controls never really helped with anything there as it screws other things up for some odd reason.  I'm starting to wonder if I should just ditch KODI for something else at this point.  The only other option is to drill a hole in the floor (and hope I don't hit something) and run an Ethernet Cat6 cable into the garage and then down into the room under the stairs (I think it'd need a hole there as the removable cover would be in the way and then another hole into the family room through the wall behind that (not a fan of cutting all these holes).  There's that ethernet over cable I could try, but it's a pretty expensive solution.  It wouldn't cost anymore to just buy another brand router that doesn't have as many issues with KODI (if there really is such a thing).

[ZombieViewer]

Since I'm the original poster of this thread, I'd like to inform everyone that I solved all my problems... sort of.

Apparently, the freezes and crashes in my shield tv, are because I have removed/disabled google framework and google services.

For some reason, kodi requires google framework/services and if they are not available then it crashes at random. It seems like kodi is "phoning home" or at least google is.

Once I reinstalled/reenabled those two and blocked internet access, kodi started working fine again like it did back in version 16/17.

[fritsch]

Kodi's Home is not Google....

[rhoop206]

Since I'm the original poster of this thread, I'd like to inform everyone that I solved all my problems... sort of.

Apparently, the freezes and crashes in my shield tv, are because I have removed/disabled google framework and google services.

For some reason, kodi requires google framework/services and if they are not available then it crashes at random. It seems like kodi is "phoning home" or at least google is.

Once I reinstalled/reenabled those two and blocked internet access, kodi started working fine again like it did back in version 16/17.

I’ve been dealing with this issue for weeks now on Kodi v18.7 on my nvidia shield... how exactly do I enable google framework/services?

Thanks for any help/direction you can provide & glad you found a fix!

[VonMagnum]

My FireTV 4K (2nd Gen) ended up dying for some reason (ran low on space and then got stuck in a reboot cycle).   I had another I wasn't using and still had the final release of Krypton on it.  I've been using that for a week or so and I noticed it has started doing what my NVidia Shield does.  It just "stops" while playing for no apparent reason.  The previous FireTV 4K never did that (at least with Leia).  Meanwhile, the Shield is doing fewer "stops" and more "freezes" instead (which sometimes continue and other times sit there for minutes at a time and then quit).  Both devices report "Very good" to "Excellent" WiFi signals.  The Shield is using a fixed network address.  I'm now updating Kodi to Leia on the FireTV 4K to see if it goes away or not (Shield has been using latest version of Leia).  I find it very strange it's doing the same thing as the Shield when the other FireTV never did that.  They're the exact same model.  The server hasn't changed.

Edit:  With Kodi 18.7 installed, the FireTV 4K is now behaving exactly the same as the Shield.  It just froze up while playing a video and then eventually exited, except this time it said "Error: Connection timed out".   The previous FireTV 4K running Kodi 18.6 never did that.  I don't know if there could be a configuration difference (I used to use this FireTV device in my home theater room but stopped when I got the Shield).  I don't see any odd Add-ons (and I did a fresh install with the Shield before to make sure it wasn't some old add-on or whatever and it made no difference).  I'm kind of baffled once again.  I thought it was the Shield in particular that was the problem, but perhaps it's something more subtle.  I remember having issues when I first upgrade the Mac to Mojave, but I found if I exited the SMB server and restarted all the "freeze" issues seemed to go away with this one.  I tried that yesterday, but I'll try it one more time.

[VonMagnum]

It seems one of the issues may have been the hardware decoding option on the FireTV.  Only Surface seems to work reliably in Leia, anyway.  Between that and resetting the server a 3rd time, it hasn't frozen since through two movies on the FireTV.  I'm going to see if there might be a similar issue with the hardware decoding setting on the Shield next.  I'm not sure, but it seems like it reversed in terms which setting worked best as I'm certain "Surface" didn't work right at all in a previous KODI version on the FireTV, but I thought I compared/tried all those settings on the Shield and anything else I could think of.  I did notice there seems to be a difference between a "freeze" and an outright "stop".  I get the impression the stop is a glitch in the WiFi signal and the freezes are a hardware decoding issue with a particular file on one setting or another.  I know I tried it software only before on the Shield and it still stopped.  The signal may not be reliable enough from that distance.  I'm thinking about maybe getting a mesh router with two units to maximize the signal.  That or I could try one of those encoders that transmits Ethernet signals over the coax cable line, but that's about as expensive as a new router setup.  Running a Cat6 cable to the other side of the house would be the best option, but also a royal PITA.

[fritsch]

Why not route the cable through the house, just for testing purpose and see if it actually fixes the issue?
I would not concentrate on the different devices too much - cause all of them have something in common: They run in your network.


Some years ago there was an issue on Android with certain UPNP devices in the network. They said hello every 500 ms and cause Android devices to shortly hickup.

[VonMagnum]

Why not route the cable through the house, just for testing purpose and see if it actually fixes the issue?
I would not concentrate on the different devices too much - cause all of them have something in common: They run in your network.


Some years ago there was an issue on Android with certain UPNP devices in the network. They said hello every 500 ms and cause Android devices to shortly hickup.

It's really too far to run a cable just for testing (at least 200+ feet away winding down steps, etc. as the router is on the 2nd floor opposite side of the house as the home theater) and I don't even have a cable that long at the moment.  I did think about bringing the device into the room with the server where I could have the strongest WiFi signal or connect it via Gigabit Ethernet with no difficulty.  The Shield installation in the home theater is a bit more of a pain to move than the FireTV (which is now working so it's moot anyway), but it may be the only choice to determine for certain whether it's WiFi or SMB itself.

[VonMagnum]

I think the issue here is finally at least mostly solved, at least in terms of the odd behaviors.

1> FireTV 4K will freeze/hold unless I do a reset of the SMB server on the Mac after any reboot of the Mac (i.e. turn "sharing" off and then on again).  This problem started after the upgrade to Mac Mojave 10.14.6 for whatever reason (SMB3 changes?).  This might also affect the Shield as well, but it has another issue.  FireTV 4K needs either "Surface" hardware acceleration or None to function correctly.  It then more or less plays videos correctly with KODI Leia (AVI files need acceleration OFF or they skip frames as the hardware decoding apparently never worked correctly with that format and maybe others but in earlier KODI versions it was disabled automatically, but in Leia it's fully enabled for reasons that make no logical sense so you have to manually turn if off if you want proper playback).

2> The NVidia Shield (here Shield Pro) from 2017 prior to the last major firmware update worked correctly here with the prior Mac OS and had no freeze/lockup issues except if CEC options were turned on in which case it behaved strangely from time to time (usually just stopping playback randomly), apparently getting a spurious CEC command from another device or god knows what.  The Mac OS upgrade caused the same kind of freeze issues as it did on the FireTV 4K.  A SMB reset after booting gets rid of it until the next reboot.  Given Macs don't need rebooted very often, this could cause one to not notice or forget about it as I've gone 8 months without a reboot before (Unix based systems are typically just plain more stable than Windows).

3> After said firmware update, the Shield started randomly stopping again (similar to CEC behaviors) despite shutting all of them off.  Due to forgetting about a reboot a month or so ago (power outage with APC failure), it also started locking up again.  However, this was also confused with the stopping behavior so it could do either and/or BOTH.  This was further confused possibly again with the most recent KODI Leia updated version becoming available on the Shield (18.7) which I think might possibly have altered the behavior slightly, but that I'm not certain of (as it was just stopping before and now it sometimes freezes and continues and other times stops and more often freezes for a minute or two and then finally stops/exits).  Regardless of the behavior the CAUSE (after resetting SMB so that behavior isn't an issue from the Mac server) is the hardware decoding setting.  On BOTH FireTV 4K and the Shield with KODI 18.7, the hardware non-surface decoding option produces NO PICTURE (it used to) so something changed there relative to both devices.  The "Surface" option works fine on the FireTV4K. 

***However, on the Shield it now (running 18.7 KODI) appears to cause the random freeze/exits.  I know this because it happened several times (4-5x per movie for a typical 1.5-2.5 hour movie) and then I tried turning OFF the player hardware acceleration and I successfully played through a 2 hour movie without a single freeze for the first time in months.  

My theory is that the last firmware update changed something in the NVIDIA Graphics Driver (on the NVidia forums there were actually several complaints about similar things happening on their Shield devices and they theorized NVidia changed something in the graphics driver that was the cause over a year ago within a month or two of the firmware update, but I never heard back from them again.  They said NVidia was going to fix whatever it was in a firmware update, but no update has EVER appeared in the last year, quite possibly due to the fact they've released new hardware and probably don't care about the older Shield that much anymore.  They never released their final SMB update either (it only worked with SMB3 in one direction), but that has no impact on KODI itself which uses its own driver, but does affect the Shield's own file sharing which is slow as hell on my Mac and doesn't like Windows 10 at all without switching to SMB1 (unsafe in Windows).

There's also the possibility that a "stop" could also be caused by the WiFi connection hiccuping, but compared to recent freeze/stops, I think that's occurring far less often and only time will tell if it's still an issue (I've mounted my router higher up in the hopes of a better signal (FireTV 4K is now getting "very good" for 5GHz and Shield shows "Excellent" for 2GHz in the home theater a floor below).  

The bottom line so far:

1> Set FireTV 4K to "Surface" Acceleration only and if using a Mac server, reset the SMB (sharing) after any reboots finish to ensure smooth operation.  This one seems SOLID with those settings.

2> Set NVidia Shield to "NO" Acceleration for now (seems somewhat broken on both somehow at least with some encoded files with most recent firmware update to graphics driver on the Shield) and the same applies to the Mac Server reset.

3> There's still a question of stable WiFi on the Shield that needs more testing.

[VonMagnum]

I watched Gangs of New York on the NVidia Shield with KODI 18.7 using No Acceleration and it went 2 hours and 40 minutes (right to the start of the credits) and then froze for a couple of seconds and then continued.  I'm fairly convinced the previous freeze/exit issues (which happened much more often) were due to the settings above, but the pause/continue things are probably a glitch with the WiFi signal for a moment.  I could be wrong, though, but at the least that was a huge improvement.

[fritsch]

DtimPeriod=1 and BeaconInterval=500 you already tried in your router I assume after this months long struggle?

[VonMagnum]

DtimPeriod=1 and BeaconInterval=500 you already tried in your router I assume after this months long struggle?

I haven't tried them, but I can do so (changing it now).  Looking them up, however, aren't those values for saving power for devices going to sleep versus waking them more often?  Why would the Shield go to sleep, particularly when it's playing a movie?

Is there a more optimal cache setting you would recommend?  In the past when I've tried different local cache settings, some movies didn't play right and/or took longer to start for some unknown reason when I just wanted them to behave a bit more like Apple devices that load the movie onto the local device's drive as fast as possible while it's playing so it's basically playing a local file not directly streaming in real time.  Short of a WiFi failure, I've never really had any freezes or lockups playing movies on AppleTV and I assume that has something to do with it.