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I am looking to build an HTPC to stream media files located on my office PC to a TV in my basement over gigabit LAN. I have not purchased any hardware or committed to any software yet. I am interested in Kodi but need to know whether it can play certain files. I have a bunch of home video from two camcorders. One is a Sony DCR-TRV38 a mini DV player which produces a DV AVI file. I have done a google search but cannot find any reliable info whether Kodi can stream this file type. I am not interested in converting to a different format like MPEG2. My current camcorder is a Panasonic HD-TM700 and produces an MTS file. I have it set to produce 1080/60p resolution files , Again, I am not interested in converting to a different format. Can Kodi handle these file types? Any recommendations regarding hardware, particularly for the 1080/60p resolution files which will be the most resource intense. BTW, this HTPC is only for streaming these media files. No gaming or other software duties. I was interested in raspberry pi but not sure if this is adequate for 1080/60p streaming. Any advice would be welcomed.
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The easiest way to test is simply to install Kodi somewhere (anywhere) and try it... it'll play them or it won't. My money is on "it will": I have a Panasonic camera that produces 1080p .mts files, and Kodi plays them without issue (I don't know the frame rate, or even if that's really relevant - it's more about bitrate per frame, not the frame rate per se, as I understand it).
In terms of hardware... nearly every modern box will play 1080p H.264, even low-end Android things. The bigger issues seem to come from sound support (e.g. multi-channel passthrough), the fluidity of the interface, or support for other stuff like Netflix or Prime. If you're genuinely just streaming MTS files in stereo, you could probably use a mobile 'phone with HDMI out, and a Pi2 would do it AFAIK. Someone with that platform could chime in here, though (or I'll go and dig mine out and see...!).
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2016-02-06, 22:46
(This post was last modified: 2016-02-06, 22:46 by Prof Yaffle.)
Upload a sample, and folks can then test a variety of hardware for you, perhaps?
There are live images of Kodi (Kodibuntu) if you have a system on which you can have a non-destructive play... or installing onto an Android 'phone takes precisely very little time whatsoever.
