[BigPines]

...pop-up message: External player active - Click "OK" when playback has ended

This is intentional by HiMedia in order to mark a title as 'watched' in Kodi. No way to disable.

That is a shame because I don't even care about the watched flag. This is a messy hack that doesn't even work correctly. For instance, if you watch several TV episodes, the only one that gets flagged as watched is the first one you played. This hack is just an extra step that is awkward and a pain. This also didn't happen in Kodi 14.2 which explains why my watch flag never got updated. Something must have changed in 15.1 that enabled this.

...intermittent unexplained audio dropouts on almost all file types.

Known issue. Audio drop-outs is the most nagging issue right now. Apparently an issue w/the current HiSilicon SDK, and HiMedia is expected to use a new SDK with the next firmware update.

Thanks. This gives me hope that they may actually get it fixed. I guess we don't know when the next firmware update is anticipated to be released?