Solved Kodi 20.1 broke video playback on xbox
#1
I had Kodi 20 installed and had no issues with playback of locally stored videos. Now it automatically updated to 20.1 and the videos can no longer play. I can click on them and the spinning thing starts up... but then nothing else happens. Tried rebooting... no help.

Any ideas?
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#2
I had the same problem. I was able to get videos to play by changing the setting at Settings>Player>Videos>Render Method to "DXVA". I found that only SD videos wouldn't play on the two Xboxes (one first gen and one X) I have access to. 1080p videos seemed to play fine. Changing it to "Software" also worked. I think anything but "Auto Detect" would work, but I didn't try "Pixel Shaders" once I got it working. Hope it works for you.
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#3
Thanks... that fixed it
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#4
Thread marked solved.
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#5
Got video playback problem with Kodi 20.1 too.
Was during my first usage of Kodi 20.1 (updated).
On my side, got my 1st "video image freeze" since Kodi 19.3.

During music video playing, i pressed "next" to go to next music video on my playlist.
The audio started and played but the image got frozen from previous music video interrupted.
Was not able to return to Kodi UI menu in my situation.
I forced a "stop-shutdown" of Kodi App from Xbox OS Interface.

After that, i changed Render Method to "DXVA" as explained here and restarted Kodi app.
Seem to fix my problem because was not able to reproduce the problem anymore with the same playlist.
I will investigate my case if the problem persist with this thread solution applied.

Thx for sharing this post Smile
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#6
The root cause has already been located:

https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/23004

Seems a bug or behavior change in Visual Studio 2022. Nexus v20.0 is not affected because release was build with Visual Studio 2019.
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#7
This is a major problem so I'd appreciate a fix or work-around.

I just updated from 19.4 on an Xbox One S (older model).

It had been working flawlessly. Now I cannot play videos at all (I have over 600 and none of them work so far)

I have tried changing render method to DXVA, to Pixel Shaders, to software, and even enabling hardware acceleration. None of it allows videos to play correctly.

All my videos are accessed via SMB on my local network (though I tried a video on a hard drive and it also wouldn't work). They are mkv files. Most are h265 but even trying h264 does not allow playback.

On auto it just doesn't play and freezes up kodi. On DXVA it plays, the screen goes black, I can hear the audio but absolutely no video. On Pixel shaders it plays, I can hear audio but it freezes and stays on the last page I was on until I force close it.

For software it plays but the screen is black.

My TV is 1080p so here's something interesting. Trying to play a 4K HDR file is the only thing that causes any video to appear. It's all inverted and distorted but it's the only thing that causes anything to happen and only on DXVA.

Kodi and my Xbox are the only ways I have to access and watch my TV shows and movies on my TV and this consequently means I cannot watch any TV, any movies until it is fixed. This is a really incredibly devastating bug for me as I don't have cable, don't really have streaming services. My collection of media is really all I have. I watch it every day (and have several videos I play to help myself get to sleep) and now I have no way to do that.

Given the time-frame past problems exclusive to the xbox platform have had until updates were released (on the order of months) I am desperate for any work-arounds, ideas, or help to get things working again. I will be eternally grateful for any assistance.

One more thing. Kodi on Xbox has many issues around updating, I kept putting it off and it seems I should have kept doing so forever, as both this time from 19 and last time from 18 to 19 the upgrade process has failed and I've had to manually copy a previous backup to a windows PC running the old version, upgrade that, export as backup that upgraded DB and re-import it which is very unelegant and very slow for any sizeable library so this is a frustration on top of a complication.

Anyone have any suggestions? No matter how complex or far-fetched? I've hard-restarted my Xbox, re--installed kodi, restarted it many times already and fiddled with all the settings I could think of.
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#8
Nevermind! I had colour management on apparently (I had been messing around with that for HDR) and I turned that off and it fixed it!

So if like me you had colour management on under System > Display. Turn it off.

Though FYI this wasn't causing any problems on the old version.

So solved once again!

Thank you Team Kodi for the updates and improvements to HDR by the way as well as subtitles.
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#9
Thanks to one and all.

I've been a Kodi user since 2014 sometime. My WDTV player died, and a friend gave me a Kodi-based Pivos player as a birthday to replace it. One Pivos, two non-name Android players, and a linux-based Arnu box (which was great, until it died and the company was dead with it) later, I bought an XBox One S in 2019 solely for the fact that it's the reference Kodi platform. I've yet to play a game on the thing, using it only for Kodi, Amazong Prime, Youtube, Crave and Tubi, and I've never regretted it.

That is, with the sole exception of upgrades. Every single time Kodi's upgraded on me something gets buggered. I've lost audio, Samba support, subtitle downloads, and this time video playback. I don't install or run add-ons (except for subtitle downloads), because Kodi's been rock solid, and if it works, don't fix it. Like @docsonhammer above, I've regretted it every time it's upgraded, so I simply don't bother.

Unfortunately, I had a power failure today, and on rebooting, my XBox took it upon itself on power up to upgrade every app, so my Kodi 19.3 became a video-less Kodi 20.1.

Fortunately, experience has taught me the first thing to do is to check out forum.kodi.tv and see who else has the same problem, and sure enough, this thread had the solution. Switching from "Auto Detect" to "DXVA" has worked, at least on the three videos I've checked so far.

So, thanks again to Team Kodi and all the helpful members of the forum.
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