[dbbd]

Just finished a fresh installation of Kodi 18.3 on a fresh Ubuntu 19.04, on my not so fresh NUC (Intel® Core™ i5-4250U CPU @ 1.30GHz)

I expected enough juice to play 216 videos fine. Instead I get stuttering playback, some buffering, and 300% cpu load.

Any idea what can make playback better (other than new hardware)?

Thanks,
Dan

[spiff]

you expect a 6 years old mobile cpu to software decode 4k? eh. no.

you need lower resolution and use of a codec that the hw supports (likely only h264).

[graysky]

If you have no desire to update the hardware you can consider a video card that can do this as an add on.  Back in the day, nvidia via VDPAU would do it but I am not sure what is a current option that has some future proof with it.  Thought I read somewhere that VDPAU was going away in something shortly.

[asavah]

 you can consider a video card that can do this as an add on

Good luck attaching a video card to an old NUC
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/...50wyk.html

PCI Express Revision: Gen2

PCI Express Configurations: Half-length MiniPCI card with PCIe x1 lane

[graysky]

Ha, I missed the NUC part.  Time to update hardware I suppose.

[dbbd]

So, it is a hardware issue. Thanks, I guess it's time to upgrade.
What kind of processor should I be looking at? What kind of graphics engine?

[graysky]

Something with hardware HEVC decoding for sure.

[Klojum]

What kind of processor should I be looking at? What kind of graphics engine?

That depends on your "use case". Should it be another Intel-based x86-64 machine, will an 'Android-box' be sufficient as well?
Will you need HDR or not, will you need the new pc to play games as well..?
Just paint us your wish list (not forgetting your budget).

[dbbd]

What kind of processor should I be looking at? What kind of graphics engine?

That depends on your "use case". Should it be another Intel-based x86-64 machine, will an 'Android-box' be sufficient as well?
Will you need HDR or not, will you need the new pc to play games as well..?
Just paint us your wish list (not forgetting your budget).

[dbbd]

It's a Kodi only box. I prefer Linux since I'm a Linux guy, but Android would work. I read that fire stick 4K is a decent option, but I do not know if it will work with nfs, since that's what my file server does (it will do cifs if it must).