[ronbaby]

Can you get us a debug log (wiki) of when it plays back something that it can't handle?

OK, I have logs now... three of them. All three can be fetched from my FTP server as follows:

Log File A
Log File B
Log File C

The first log file was produced when I just/only used Kodi to play a 2 minute commercial demo/marketing video that was produced by the company that makes these tablets. It is 720p and about 3Mbps. The corresponding MP4 file (~ 55MB) is available here:

Test Video A

The second log file was produced when I just/only used Kodi to play the first minute or so of the 1080p 2D 30fps "Big Buck Bunny" video. I stopped the playback when I saw the video getting all screwy. The corresponding MP4 file (~ 263 MB) is available here:

Test Video B

The third log file was produced when I used Kodi to just/only play a 44 second clip which was present as a stand-alone file on the Saving Private Ryan BluRay. (In this case Kodi screwed up entirely. The files menu did not go away when playback started, and underneath that the screen was just all black. But then again, all four cores were pegged at 100% utilization during most of the playback, so perhaps none of this is Kodi's fault, and the CPU/GPU just doesn't have what it takes to play Blu-Ray level content.) The corresponding M2TS file (~ 113 MB) is available here:

Test Video C

Please note that I have very minimal connectivity here, so don't be surprised if fetching any of the video files listed above proceeds quite slowly.

[ronbaby]

Did any of you folks have a chance to look at any of the log files I posted?

I will be returning this tablet to Amazon for a refund tomorrow. If anybody wants me to run any additional tests on the thing before I do, please let me know ASAP.

Regarding the video playing failures, it seems I was mistaken to assume that these were related to the video bit rate. I've tried other test files that I have here, and I've gotten perfect playback on at least one MPEG4/AVC file which has a video bit rate of 10 Mbps. So it's not the bit rate that causes the failures but other characteristics of the specific source file. For example, this tablet seems generally fail when playing MPEG4/Part2(ASP) files. Also, although I've now seen it play, perfectly, many MPEG4/Part10(AVC) files, it has trouble with some subset of those (e.g. the Big Buck Bunny 1080p/30 demo), probably because of some specific characteristics of those specific files (e.g. MPEG4/10 features used) that I have not been able to pin down.

Even with these problems, the thing would make a decent Kodi media player if only the touchscreen worked properly around the edges (which it does not). However using it with an external pointing device... either USB or bluetooth... eliminates that problem. Battery life however is atrocious.

P.S. I've checked now, and HDMI out works perfectly on this tablet.

[accessive]

CANNOT DOWNLOAD OBB ERROR. hey folks, if you have received this error with Kodi on any android based device, like your phone, tablet, or fire stick, the #1 reason AND solution to our is CACHE/DATA. while i can't totally explain why fresh installs of Kodi seem to have this issue, i can say i have seen it multiple times on various devices and each and every time, CLEAR DATA, & CLEAR CACHE (DO BOTH) always fixes the problem. So there ya go. hope this takes care of your obb woes.

again, do there following.
#1 - go to app, clear data as well as cache
#2 - force stop the app
#3 - relaunch the app.

also note : if pushing to your fire stick etc from your phone or tablet, launch the app once on phone/tablet BEFORE you push it to fire stick using app2fire or whatever you use. for some reason this seems to help prevent this issue as well. although like i said, i cant fully understand why it would matter. but i can't argue with the results either LOL.

hope this helps!