Hi,
I have been using the Picopix Max for last 16 days. Overall, I think it’s a pretty good projector.
I am on 1.0.25 firmware version now.
I noticed that there’s quite a bit focus of the Dev team to fix Netflix, YouTube etc. But Kodi is completely being ignored/neglected. I know that there are a lot of backers who use Kodi app and would love to see Kodi working smoothly on Picopix Max.
I have been using Kodi on several devices for the past few years and Kodi app on Picopix Max is not smooth. Video playback is jittery or you can also call it like dropping frames.
We were told by Prashant that it’s due to Picopix Max use of Rockchip and Kodi doesn’t support Rockchip anymore.
I get that but there have been few Kodi versions that supported Rockchip android boxes in the past even when Kodi officials pulled the plug on Rockchip based android boxes. But now those Rockchip supported Kodi apps don’t exist anymore.
So it’s definitely possible to make Kodi work on Picopix Max.
I have raised this issue before and I am doing it again here for the Philips dev team to please work on Kodi app at the same time as trying to fix other apps.
Kodi is very important app and we would like to see it natively working in Picopix Max.
Hello there!
Thanks for your support.
We are not the software developper for Kodi so we will need to talk directly to them.
Fortunately, we have their contact
I have not used Kodi much on the PPMax, mostly on my laptop, but I agree it and plugins can be very useful. Unfortunately badly written / old / malicious plugins can also eat CPU and ruin the watching experience. Have you tried disabling plugins in Kodi PPMax and see if anything improves?
Also I still feel some of the dropped frames and jerkiness may be due to the PPMax’s image processing stack, small delay when auto keystone is recalculated, etc. I am trying to look for a reproducible pattern of file type, file size, image settings, etc that can for sure make for no jerkiness vs always jerkiness. If you find either please let me know!
If you use aptoid you can install different versions of apps - might be worth trying some of the older versions - just find kodi and then select a version.
Just pure Kodi without any plugins installed. Trying to Play my collection of movies from USB Hard Drive and it’s not playing smoothly.
Whereas built in already installed VLC player is playing same movies without any problems. No jittery effects.
Might be worth looking online… A lot of the Chinese android boxes use rockchip chipsets - might be worthwhile looking on the brands websites or similar hacking type sites as they like to upgrade kodi.
I saw on a different thread that a factory reset can improve stuttering playback. I was having issues with prime video app in 1.0.25 also stuttering. A factory reset improved both Kodi and prime video app performance. VLC was never effected, haven’t tried any other apps today.
Thanks for looking into this. As a purchaser of Rockchip equipment, I hope Phillips/Screeneo will use their voice and leverage to motivate the supplier to improve their APIs and Android support.
If there is ever a PPMax 2, maybe using more widely used and well developed SOCs (such as in the raspberry pi or other popular SBC solutions) would be wise.
Seems like it’s the hardware decoding support that is missing for Rockchip. But the fix apparently is not that difficult for devs. It’s just the matter of taking up the task of fixing it either by Kodi, Rockchip or Philips dev team. If other devs can make the Kodi work for Rockchip in the past and called it a different fork like SPMC, then I think Philips devs should do the same for Picopix Max Projector. We don’t care if it’s called Kodi or something else as long as it works on Picopix Max with hardware decoding support for smooth playback.
I meant that any video playback whether your own video/movies library or any Kodi plugin installed, will not be played as smooth as say Kodi installed on a proper hardware supported device such as Shield TV, Amazon Firestick, Raspberry Pi etc.
