[mcrs]

Hello, dear developers and Kodi users.

I've been using Kodi extensively since this summer, and I made a conclusion.
Kodi just can't keep up with unstable http streams or some connection problems.
How does it demonstrate?

In a simplest way: Kodi hangs up forever.

I would like to ask a question: why?
Why can't Kodi watch for a dead thread (as it owns it) and kill it?

I used 15.1 and 15.2 version, on Android, Windows and rPi2. All have this problem: Kodi always hangs up. Dozens times per single day.
The only way to get it working again is a cold restart (for rPi2) or killing the Kodi process in Windows. That's not how it should be with the media center.

I do not use plugins. I use the standard Kodi distro. I take the http link from the web and open it with Kodi. I have had the Kodi hung up about a thousand times. There is no indication of the hang-up reason in the log.

The "Working" label either is looping forever or simply hangs up as well and no animation is seen, only the dead working circle (Confluence skin).

Please tell me, maybe Kodi should not be used for http streams and the code is not optimized enough?

[speedwell68]

I don't experience any such problems with Kodi on my Xubuntu PC, Android tablets or any of my Raspberry Pis. My Raspberry Pi 2 has crashed on occasion, which I think I traced to a unreliable power supply as it hasn't happened since I swapped it for a different one.

[popcornmix]

You'll probably have to provide a URL to a stream (ideally one that is not copyright infringing) that results in the hang. Then a dev can investigate.
Note that most streams don't hang for most people, so we'll need a specific example.

[Atreyu]

In my experience, kodi can stream any healty http source.
I think it might be this particular stream you have issues with. Hard to tell but like i said i never encountered an issue with this.

[mcrs]

> kodi can stream any healty http source

The issue is about stability. Even with unhealthy sources and internet going down the media center must not hang. It must recover after a short period of time. Kodi does not. And I can confirm: with very powerful servers as Akamai I haven't experienced the issues I'm telling about.

I can tell why most people do not experience that. Most people do not watch streaming video. Those who do, usually use stable connection and good servers. And even if something goes wrong they usually think that since they use video plugins (I haven't seen any other person on this forum who, like me, simply uses the http links in user plain-text playlist), they blame the plugin for instability, not Kodi core.

[mcrs]

> You'll probably have to provide a URL to a stream

popcornmix, the most bugging feature of the problem is randomness of the issue. I have like 100 sources (most http streaming links).
If I would try to demonstrate the issue, I can watch a couple of hours any of those streams and Kodi may not hang.
But the issue happens randomly. I switch the streams a few hundreds time per day. The hang-up may happen on 50th switch on a certain day. It may happen when watching the stream on, say, 25th minute.
It is barely reproducible in a timely manner. But I keep the logs of some dead hangs and there's not much information in those.
Still, I suppose, if I'm going to sit down and switch http streams back and forth, it would happen for sure.
It may take time for Kodi to stumble on some http data or no data coming through the connection. And this would result in a hang-up.

And indeed, as I remember, most often Kodi hangs-up when establishing connection to a new http stream, rarely while watching.
So, you go to a next item in a playlist and oops-the ever rotating Working circle. Or even the dead non-rotating Working circle.
And no response to the mouse and keyboard actions.