Playing movies stored on HDD with the Amazon Firetv stick

Ok identified the problem. The Asus had been configured as a router rather than an access point. Thanks to FM's for pointing out. Now thinking of replacing the D-Link with a ubiquity enterprise router and then a ubiquity AP.
 
I have fiddled around with ubiquiti APs
If you want to save yourself some heartburn, just get an Orbi
I understand it's a subjective opinion but this is one instance where a consumer grade device trumps an enterprise grade device fair & square
FWIW, my current device count on my LAN is ~60 and the orbi does not break a sweat

Ubiquiti may perform better with 100+ in an enterprise setup but in a home network, the orbi kills it with its link speed
 
Just a query- why aren't wired APs superior to Orbi? Also the Orbi can't connect directly to the ISP cable and need a router right ?
 
Me, I have a certain dislike of mesh network....call it just a subjective notion.


I have a netgear nighthawk AX8 WiFi 6 router and a older Netgear nighthawk x6S ac4000. The AX8 is the primary and x6s is setup as AP. And they are connected with cat7 cable.

These two gives a WAN covering my whole house of G+4......4k movies, multiple devices. All work smoothly. As NAS I have 10TB (4+4+2) connected to these devices' usb ports. I use both KODI and PLEX configured for my media consumption.
 
I have fiddled around with ubiquiti APs
If you want to save yourself some heartburn, just get an Orbi
I understand it's a subjective opinion but this is one instance where a consumer grade device trumps an enterprise grade device fair & square
FWIW, my current device count on my LAN is ~60 and the orbi does not break a sweat

Ubiquiti may perform better with 100+ in an enterprise setup but in a home network, the orbi kills it with its link speed
Hi,

How many Orbi modules are needed ? I have to cover an area of about 1500 sq ft. Is it possible to cover this area with one Orbi ?

Me, I have a certain dislike of mesh network....call it just a subjective notion.


I have a netgear nighthawk AX8 WiFi 6 router and a older Netgear nighthawk x6S ac4000. The AX8 is the primary and x6s is setup as AP. And they are connected with cat7 cable.

These two gives a WAN covering my whole house of G+4......4k movies, multiple devices. All work smoothly. As NAS I have 10TB (4+4+2) connected to these devices' usb ports. I use both KODI and PLEX configured for my media consumption.
Wow the AX8 itself costs almost INR 30 K and the x6s almost INR 16 k. But the coverage of 4 floors seems to make it worth it.
 
Hi,

How many Orbi modules are needed ? I have to cover an area of about 1500 sq ft. Is it possible to cover this area with one Orbi ?
If it's a single floor , you don't need an orbi.
Something (relatively) cheap like a Netgear r7000p will give you good coverage with actual speeds upto 500-600 mbps in close range and 100+ in far away reaches (Assuming you can place it at a central location)

If you need to cover 2 floors (or if your wired connection is at one corner of a single floor) , you can look at a pair of Orbi or Velop

Me, I have a certain dislike of mesh network....call it just a subjective notion.


I have a netgear nighthawk AX8 WiFi 6 router and a older Netgear nighthawk x6S ac4000. The AX8 is the primary and x6s is setup as AP. And they are connected with cat7 cable.

These two gives a WAN covering my whole house of G+4......4k movies, multiple devices. All work smoothly. As NAS I have 10TB (4+4+2) connected to these devices' usb ports. I use both KODI and PLEX configured for my media consumption.
2 APs for G+4 is quite good. I tried getting wired APs to cover 2 floors but kept running into handover issues i.e. say a laptop or mobile stuck at low speeds when moving from 1 floor to another because the device would try remain connected with the far AP
I tried mesh routers with non dedicated backhaul links but the shared bandwidth usage on the same band for both the AP backhaul and devices would start affecting throughputs especially when multiple devices would connect
I have had a very good experience with Orbi with a 3rd dedicated backhaul link between the APs that actually maintains gbps+ link with minimal latency between the APs.
The biggest advantage I have seen with a mesh is the fairly quick switching that roaming devices are able to do and real world speeds of 700+ mbps LAN/ 200mbps WAN
The router and NAS in my case are a sopho firewall and a Linux server running co-hosted on a proxmox hypervisor
 
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If it's a single floor , you don't need an orbi.
Something (relatively) cheap like a Netgear r7000p will give you good coverage with actual speeds upto 500-600 mbps in close range and 100+ in far away reaches (Assuming you can place it at a central location)

If you need to cover 2 floors (or if your wired connection is at one corner of a single floor) , you can look at a pair of Orbi or Velop


2 APs for G+4 is quite good. I tried getting wired APs to cover 2 floors but kept running into handover issues i.e. say a laptop or mobile stuck at low speeds when moving from 1 floor to another because the device would try remain connected with the far AP
I tried mesh routers with non dedicated backhaul links but the shared bandwidth usage on the same band for both the AP backhaul and devices would start affecting throughputs especially when multiple devices would connect
I have had a very good experience with Orbi with a 3rd dedicated backhaul link between the APs that actually maintains gbps+ link with minimal latency between the APs.
The biggest advantage I have seen with a mesh is the fairly quick switching that roaming devices are able to do and real world speeds of 700+ mbps LAN/ 200mbps WAN
The router and NAS in my case are a sopho firewall and a Linux server running co-hosted on a proxmox hypervisor
In that case should the router also be changed to the Orbi instead of just using the Orbi as APs? In my case the router is provided by Hathway and seems pretty basic one - Dlink Dir615. I have smart switchboards about 6 of them (Sonoff) + 5 mobile phones (across family)+ 1 PC+ Laptop + 2 AVRs + 2 media players + 3 Amazon Echos connected which is about 20+ devices. Out of these the 6 switch boards are on all the time and consume wifi. In such a case will the router (Dlink) act as a bottleneck?
 
In that case should the router also be changed to the Orbi instead of just using the Orbi as APs? In my case the router is provided by Hathway and seems pretty basic one - Dlink Dir615. I have smart switchboards about 6 of them (Sonoff) + 5 mobile phones (across family)+ 1 PC+ Laptop + 2 AVRs + 2 media players + 3 Amazon Echos connected which is about 20+ devices. Out of these the 6 switch boards are on all the time and consume wifi. In such a case will the router (Dlink) act as a bottleneck?
Move the routing duties to the new router.
Let all LAN devices be connected to the Orbi.
I am not sure what kind of connection/ authentication Hathway uses (PPPoe/ MAC filter/ combination of both)
To begin with, connect the Orbi WAN port to your existing Dlink
Connect all your wired/wireless devices to the Orbi.

The gigabit switches + the wifi on the Orbi will handle all LAN traffic on your devices with ease (I use Orbi with 60 devices on the LAN without a hiccup, and some of them really like to move data)

If you could however tell us more on your Internet connection (type/ speed/ authentication etc) then I could advise on the right setup on your WAN side as well
 
Yes that simple usb cable works great with fire stick. Been using it for a year now. VLC recognises my 1tb and a 500gb drives (via usb hub) and all the formats on it. I do not have an atmos setup, so never tried that.

MaSh

Hi MaSh,

When i try to play 4K videos present in my 4TB powered external HDD through local network using VLC & Kodi in my firestick 4K it frequently keeps buffering, this happens only while playing 4K content.. So trying to check possibilities for directly connecting my 4TB and 2TB powered external HDD's to firestick 4K...

were your 1TB and 500GB HDD's NTFS formatted ?. Also the USB Hub you're using, is it a powered one ?. if possible please provide the model of the USB hub you're using...
 
Hi MaSh,

When i try to play 4K videos present in my 4TB powered external HDD through local network using VLC & Kodi in my firestick 4K it frequently keeps buffering, this happens only while playing 4K content.. So trying to check possibilities for directly connecting my 4TB and 2TB powered external HDD's to firestick 4K...

were your 1TB and 500GB HDD's NTFS formatted ?. Also the USB Hub you're using, is it a powered one ?. if possible please provide the model of the USB hub you're using...

Yes both drives are NTFS self powered. The usb hub is also self powered. Got it from office, so not sure what brand or model it is.

MaSh
 
Yes both drives are NTFS self powered. The usb hub is also self powered. Got it from office, so not sure what brand or model it is.

MaSh

Thanks, so your firestick is also directly connected to the USB Hub or its USB hub -->Y-USB cable --> Firestick 4K ?.
 
Yes that simple usb cable works great with fire stick. Been using it for a year now. VLC recognises my 1tb and a 500gb drives (via usb hub) and all the formats on it. I do not have an atmos setup, so never tried that.

MaSh
Hi Mash - Can you please share the link of cable for this. Additionally can you please confirm if it can work directly with 1 TB or 500 GB hard disk without powered USB hub.

Thanks and Regards,
Vinay
 
Hi MaSh,

When i try to play 4K videos present in my 4TB powered external HDD through local network using VLC & Kodi in my firestick 4K it frequently keeps buffering, this happens only while playing 4K content.. So trying to check possibilities for directly connecting my 4TB and 2TB powered external HDD's to firestick 4K...

were your 1TB and 500GB HDD's NTFS formatted ?. Also the USB Hub you're using, is it a powered one ?. if possible please provide the model of the USB hub you're using...


I have similar problems like this....but found our that HDMI 2.0 needs to be enabled. Just check it's not an issue like this.


I found out this after my Shield Tv update to pie. VLC stuttered .....and I found out it's not due to network throttling but that HDMI 2.0 was not enabled in the system chain.
 
I have been trying to connect a usb pen drive to Firestick 2 through an OTG cable. Firestick 2 is taking almost 20 minutes to read a 32 GB pen drive. It was not reading the NTFS files > 4 GB. I finally found a temporary solution to play the NTFS files through Kodi installed on the Firestick 2 and my laptop and streaming from the laptop. Can any one suggest why the Firestick 2 is taking such a long time to read the files? TIA
 
Dear members,

Just sharing my experience of using a cheap solution to avoid buying another Nvidia Shield. I run a Nvidia Shield in my primary set up and needed a second one for my secondary set up. However I was reluctant to buy another one given the cost in India. Finally found a cheaper solution on the Net (youtube). I had a 4k firetv stick in my secondary setup. I picked up a Y USB cable from Amazon India which allows connection of a HDD to the FireTV while powering the Firetv at the same time. The Y cable worked out of the box. I activated the developer rights through the "My FireTV" option in the menu and downloaded VLC media player (I am not sure if you need developer option for this). The Firetv stick could not recognize my powered HDD (5TB) nor my non powered HDD (1 TB). However it did recognize my pen drive. As a sample I had copied a movie on the pen drive and the movie could be played through VLC media player without any lag or delay with the encoded surround format. Tonight I will try with an Atmos track and share the result. Using this approach you can even install Kodi but I have never been a big fan of Kodi (no Atmos support?). I haven't tried Plex either since I didn't want to overload the tiny Firetv stick at the outset.
While this may not be a longer term solution, it is one of the better ways to get more out of your firetv stick.
Firetv stick/ cube runs a flavor of linux slightly different than android. It recognizes only fat32 formatted hdds, which brings us to the fat32 limitation of recognizing a max of 2TB on a hdd. Anything over 2TB is a waste! Also at the same token, any movie over 3.9 GB will not be recognized.

I have a 4k Firetv cube and a OTA adapter which connects a 2TB hdd to it and am running it as my htpc. It has over 500 movies in 1080p in different folders and is seen by firetv without issues, and vlc player plays the titles all in full screen with amazing 10 band EQ ( it helps greatly as my tv is hooked up to a 5.1 surround sound. Its the cheapest way to create an htpc that works, looks, and sounds great!!!

Firetv cube's operation is lightening fast and it creates thumbnails for all the movies. The interface is zippy and most of all convenient cuz guess what, all is controlled with just the amazon firetv cube remote (plus my receiver remote)
 
For excellent sound that won't break the bank, the 5 Star Award Winning Wharfedale Diamond 12.1 Bookshelf Speakers is the one to consider!
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