Kodi Community Forum

Hi,

The background for this was buying a Sony XD9305 55" Android TV which I (stupidly) thought would be fast enough to fulfil most of my needs (streaming content from a NAS drive, mostly 1080 and 4K/HDR things). I quickly learned that the system on a chip inside the Sony is incredibly and infuriatingly slow.. so I bought an Nvidia shield recently which is, in comparison, wonderfully fast and rewarding! This new setup has some issues still, for example the receiver won't passthrough HDR content (I know i could connect directly to the TV from the shield, but then the TV doesn't pass many new sound formats back to the receiver *sigh*). So, all in all, this was the best compromise.

Yesterday I moved all of my gear around and then plugged everything back in together. Since then I have a problem which I cannot solve. Previously Kodi (running on the Shield) recognised that the receiver and TV were 4K, and hence - without any intervention from me - happily played any 4K videos at the right resolution. But now Kodi does not recognise that it can play 4K and instead downscales the video to 1080 . I have tried lots of tinkering with menu options, and testing different ports, checked the cables are compatible and rebooting everything in sequence, but nothing has changed this new situation. I did not change any configuration or update any software.

So... this is the situation in summary:

Setup:

- Nvidia shield running Kodi 17.3
- Shield connected to receiver (Yamaha RX-V675)
- Receiver connected to TV (Sony XD9305 55")
- Cables I am using are these: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B002...UTF8&psc=1

Until yesterday, this is what happened:

- Shield set to 1080 output (but I could, if I wanted choose to output from the shield at 4K)
- In Kodi System > Resolution I had the option to output at 1080 or 4K (I used 1080 though)
- When a 4K file was played, Kodi would send it to the receiver at 4K

Now, this is what happens:

- Shield set to 1080 (I can still choose 4K in the shield settings, if I want to)
- In Kodi System > Resolution I do NOT have the option to output at 4K any more, only 1080
- When a 4K file is played Kodi downscales it to 1080

So it seems that Kodi doesn't realise that my receiver/display is 4K capable, even though the Shield itself does. Any ideas on what is going on? My next move - unless somebody has a suggestion - is to factory reset things, but, there must be an explanation surely?

Any suggestions/ideas about what is going on or sensible ways to try and get back to how things were before?

Joe

External Android media players (FireTV2 excluded) cannot Auto Resolution switch based on the Resoluion of the video being played. 4K LibreELEC Kodi media players can.

If you manually choose 4K in Android settings then that is what Resolution ALL video will be output at.
1080p will be up scaled by the Shield Hardware to 4K,which will likely show inferior picture results due to the Shields poor up scaler hardware.

If you manually choose 1080p in Android Settings then that is what Resolution ALL video will be output at.
4K video will be down scaled by the Shield and output at 1080p.
ALL 1080p video will then be high quality up scaled by the 4K TV.

That Kodi resolution setting is only for outputting the Kodi only GUI in 4K or 1080p resolution. Leave it in Auto.

You have bought the wrong device if you expect all this 1080p/4K to operate in a hands off in a seamless manner.
A cheap $40 1GB AMLogic S905x device running LibreELEC has all this working properly based on the resolution of the source video being played.

This is one of the reasons I do not like the Android OS that much as a base for a 4K Kodi Media Player

Hi ,

Okay thanks for that.

I actually spent another hour messing with things last night, only to conclude that I was mistaken about the previous behaviour... so, yes, this all makes sense.

*STUPID*

I can live with a bit of tinkering with settings to make things work though, so I'll just ensure to change the resolution as/when I need to. However, you're correct that I've bought the wrong device! Shield is very expensive, clearly... and doesn't work quite as one would like.

I'll investigate LibreELEC - I hadn't heard of that before.