I'm obviously making a balls of this Android box Fail!

smilerxxx

Hi everyone

Please help! I bought the minx android box and excitedly prepared myself for epic lazy days. My boyfriend is a technophobe so all our bits and bobs are usually set up by myself (with the help of instructions and YouTube). I set up everything on xbmc and prepared myself with wine and fat pants after a night shift. Cue major buffering issues. I couldn't get one file to load.

My broadband is sky and I have zero issues with it when using laptop and tablet etc. The box is connected wirelessly and I read this may be the issue as the boxes don't have decent wireless. My problem is my modem is in the hallway and it would be very difficult to use Ethernet cable (I'd need a very long one and how the hell do I go through a wall?) If anyone has any suggestions on boosting my signal or direct wiring that's practical I'd be very grateful.

ezra_pound

Spend about 30 euro on power line adaptors on Amazon to bring the Ethernet connection on board.

califano

Yeah powerline adaptors or homeplugs as they are otherwise known will help no end. Android boxes are known for their crappy wifi ability with some worse than others as the antenna is only the size of a small match stick. So it doesnt matter if you have 100mbps internet, if the box's antenna is poor your not going to stream properly and xbmc will disappoint. Homeplugs are the answer. They are in Argos for about the price ezra mentions.
What version is your xbmc? i.e 12.3, 13.1?

smilerxxx

Right power adapters it is. The box is MX (?) I didn't buy the latest edition box because I wasn't sure if I could manage it. It cost about €70. Its running jelly bean android, xbmc 12 I think. The box is a dual core. Is it a bad box? Combined with bad WiFi capability?

Thanks for helping guys

Remouad

Couple of questions

Can you post a link to the box you bought?
(By your description I think I got something similar for my folks)

Where are you storing your media? (NAS, Other PC?)
How is that connected your network? (assuming also wirelessly but maybe not)

Is it
A) buffering and then playing correctly (even for a few seconds)
playing by stuttering frame by frame (with or without audio)
C) Not playing at all

There are things you can do to improve buffering

smilerxxx

I tried posting the link but I can't seem to do it on my phone so here is the description

Mx2 xbmc dual core Android 4.2 Smart TV Media Player 1080p Wifi programmed box.

Re the buffering. I'll click on a file to play etc and it will initiate but kinda time out if that makes sense. Only once did the file ever play and it stopped after about 20 secs. It had audio. So a bit from column A and mostly column C

I store all my media on the go flex cinema connected to the TV via HDMI. I have a second hard drive that's connected to the go flex to increase my storage to a couple of TB's these are almost completely full

califano

Most addons now are optomized for the latest xbmc builds i.e 12.3, 13.0, 13.1
any versions earlier to this then your in the hands of the developers of particular addons whether they make them backward compatible or not. For instance no addons will work anymore on xbmc 11(eden).
So whether your current problem is related to wifi or not(im sure it probably is) then there is no harm finding the forums for the latest version of xbmc for your particular box. This way the best addons will stream better for you.

I dont have one of these particular boxes but downloads of the newest version of xbmc can be found here.

More info here

And here
Q: How to update firmware? MiniX have produced a Youtube guide to updating firmware here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVKHBwnYe2k

massy086

smilerxxx wrote: »

I tried posting the link but I can't seem to do it on my phone so here is the description

Mx2 xbmc dual core Android 4.2 Smart TV Media Player 1080p Wifi programmed box.

Re the buffering. I'll click on a file to play etc and it will initiate but kinda time out if that makes sense. Only once did the file ever play and it stopped after about 20 secs. It had audio. So a bit from column A and mostly column C

I store all my media on the go flex cinema connected to the TV via HDMI. I have a second hard drive that's connected to the go flex to increase my storage to a couple of TB's these are almost completely full

I have a mx2 running openelec linux
And I have to say it is great I run it on Wifi no problem s .maybe it's android that is causing all your issue.s

Johnboy1951

To be sure it is only a wifi problem, temporarily connect the box to router with an ethernet cable and then stream ..... if at all possible.

If it is OK doing this then something like the homeplugs should sort the problem.

If not then it is more likely some other problem ......

threein99

This fixed my buffering problem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGoTzvX1of8

The problem is XBMC only has a small cache file which fills easily, where as this sets the cache file to the local storage which is much bigger

Johnboy1951

threein99 wrote: »

This fixed my buffering problem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGoTzvX1of8

The problem is XBMC only has a small cache file which fills easily, where as this sets the cache file to the local storage which is much bigger

Seems interesting ........ what decides where the video is temporarily stored?
Does the user have any control over that?

threein99

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Seems interesting ........ what decides where the video is temporarily stored?
Does the user have any control over that?

By default it goes into a small file in XBMC where as that fix sets it to the local storage on the device.

My XBMC never buffered properly until I used this fix, what I mean by that is when I paused it, it would not continue buffering, this got annoying if I was watching a HD stream as the XBMC cache would fill easily.

Johnboy1951

threein99 wrote: »

By default it goes into a small file in XBMC where as that fix sets it to the local storage on the device.

My XBMC never buffered properly until I used this fix, what I mean by that is when I paused it, it would not continue buffering, this got annoying if I was watching a HD stream as the XBMC cache would fill easily.

Thanks .. IIUC so, the Storage partition is used for the buffered data storage.

As this setting is said to be irreversible apparently, is it reversible by manually editing some file?

Apologies to O-P for taking this thread a bit OT.

threein99

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Thanks .. IIUC so, the Storage partition is used for the buffered data storage.

As this setting is said to be irreversible apparently, is it reversible by manually editing some file?

Apologies to O-P for taking this thread a bit OT.

I'd imagine you just edit the xml file, but why would you want to go back to annoying buffering?

Johnboy1951

threein99 wrote: »

I'd imagine you just edit the xml file, but why would you want to go back to annoying buffering?

I like to have a 'way back' before making a change to basic operation ..... I consider it prudent

Also I might want to be able to put this temp storage in a particular location and it would be mice to know how .... by specifying a path hopefully, in whatever config file the setting is placed.

threein99

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

I like to have a 'way back' before making a change to basic operation ..... I consider it prudent

Also I might want to be able to put this temp storage in a particular location and it would be mice to know how .... by specifying a path hopefully, in whatever config file the setting is placed.

It just uses your local storage to cache, I've no idea where on it, I'm sure it's easy reset