[James_liv]

Afternoon,

This prolly isn't the best place to ask this but I'm really struggling and hoping someone can help:

I've got a laptop with 4 external usb drives connected to it. Kodi all works fine and is great.
I switched to an Android box so I can play 4k movies.
I networked the android box to the laptop so it had access to the drives. This way I can download stuff onto the drives using the laptop and then just add it to the kodi library on the Android box.

However, the wireless network (Smb) doesn't seem fast enough and anything above 720 just buffers.
It's Wireless N and so it should be fast enough but for whatever reason it's not.

It seems to me that if I could hardwire them together instead of using wireless it would prolly work.

Any advice, what's the best way to achieve this? Can I use a cross over cable? Would it work? Or how about if I plugged another router in etc
I'm not the best at this kind of thing and I just want it to work. It's not a complicated setup.

Any help would be greatfully received because I'm at the end of my tether with it.

Thanks in advance

[mchp92]

Sound like a good moment to get yourself a nas. Nases are designed exactly for the type of use you are describing

[James_liv]

Sound like a good moment to get yourself a nas. Nases are designed exactly for the type of use you are describing

What's a nas? Are they expensive

[wrxtasy]

Dirt cheap AMLogic S905(x) box + powered USB Hub if adding more than one 2.5" HDD. 3.5" HDD with their own power supply should have no issues.

Samsung EVO, Sandisk or Lexar Class 10 U1 microSDHC and flash LibreELEC Kodi Krypton on to it:

AMLogic S905(x) - LibreELEC / OSMC - Kodi Krypton - 4K Options

Then simply direct plug in all the HDD's to the powered Hub and you are good to go. If powered 3.5" HDD's - a cheap AML S905 box usually has 3 USB ports anyway - so direct connect.

AMLogic S8xx & S9xx boxes can even dual boot. Running LibreELEC Kodi straight off the microSDHC card, leaving internal Android intact.

Plus LibreELEC has an inbuilt SAMBA file server to transfer files to and from the direct connected HDD's - from any Networked PC. Plug n Play.

It really does not get any easier.

[Atreyu]

Network attached storage.
Google nas or Synology or Qnap and you find your answers.

BTW I use the almost exact method wrxtasy describes (at the same time I was typing this post)

[mchp92]

Network Attached Storage
Its basically a little "computer" with the possibility of hooking up lots of disk space. You connect m in your network, and then every device in your network can basically access the drives.
Check out synylogy.com
One if the leading brands
They start at maybe €150, exclusive of the harddisk(s) you put inside them

[James_liv]

Dirt cheap AMLogic S905(x) box + powered USB Hub if adding more than one 2.5" HDD. 3.5" HDD with their own power supply should have no issues.

Samsung EVO, Sandisk or Lexar Class 10 U1 microSDHC and flash LibreELEC Kodi Krypton on to it:

AMLogic S905(x) - LibreELEC / OSMC - Kodi Krypton - 4K Options

Then simply direct plug in all the HDD's to the powered Hub and you are good to go. If powered 3.5" HDD's - a cheap AML S905 box usually has 3 USB ports anyway - so direct connect.

AMLogic S8xx & S9xx boxes can even dual boot. Running LibreELEC Kodi straight off the microSDHC card, leaving internal Android intact.

Plus LibreELEC has an inbuilt SAMBA file server to transfer files to and from the direct connected HDD's - from any Networked PC. Plug n Play.

It really does not get any easier.

This is exactly what I've done but I don't have the USB hub and didn't realise I needed one.
Then I just thought I could network the drives but that's too slow.
Looks like I'll have to get a hub unfortunately, really didn't want more plugs and wires but think I'm out of options.

The other benefit to networking is I have utorrent running on my laptop and so I can download files directly into kodi in the background which you can't do with Android.

[mchp92]

Why do you think its too slow if you network a drive?

[mchp92]

As for utorrent: most nases have some kind of torrent or usenet cliet so download is no problem there

[Atreyu]

Two things.
Steaming over WiFi is instable by nature and torrenting is a big no-no. On any level.

[mchp92]

Why is torrenting a big nono?

[nickr]

Although there are a (very) few legit video torrent sites, mostly in the video context they are for piracy.

[mchp92]

Ah
You mean that downloading pirated material is illegal. Agree

Totrenting is just a technology. That in itself is perfectly legal

[Atreyu]

Yes, there is the legal aspect of some (most) torrent content.

But this thread was about buffering of netwerk content.
To have a torrent enabled machine buffer over wifi is expected.

Imo best way of achiving good speeds is over ethernet without some aggressive program eating available bandwith away.

[mchp92]

Yeh agree that torrents arent a good way of streaming a video. Apart from the legal stuff involved.
Wifi per se doesnt have to be an issue. I stream to kodi in my lan from a nas over wifi. That is quite fast enough, even for hi res movies