Upgrade

[Markie57]

Hi everyone

I bought this box about a year ago and it's been very good. Just lately though I have had a lot of buffering ( I'm using Ethernet ) whereby if I access kodi via Wi-Fi through my tablet the stream is excellent. I'd like your opinion now that the Mini has served its purpose and got me interested what would be the next step up for an Android box without spending a fortune. I'm assuming that my current box cannot cope with current streams due to either a low CPU or lack of RAM, many thanks

 

[Dave C]

Buffering in Kodi is usually due to the servers you are using, they are free for a reason and often overcrowded. I would recommend downloading the speed test app from the Google Play Store and checking the speeds on that. You should be getting near maximum of the connected speed of your ISP on ethernet. If you are not then I would first try a different ethernet cable and a different ethernet port on your router.

 

[Markie57]

Hi Dave

Many thanks for your reply, I took your advice regards the speed test and the results are as follows.

A wired connection trying all 4 Ethernet ports brought about downloads of between 75-80Mbps but the was with my VPN turned OFF. When I turned the VPN back on the download dropped right down to between 30-35 Mbps

Connecting via WiFi with the VPN turned off showed downloads of between 30-35 Mbps but this dropped to between 20-25 when the VPN was turned back on. Needless to say it was a very good stream without the VPN. It appears that my VPN is having a detrimental effect on my download speed and yet I can't be without it, any suggestions as to what I can do about it, I am currently using IPVanish

 

[Dave C]

Try a different server, there should be an option to choose Best Connection or Server from memory. As a side note, 20-25Mbps is more than enough to stream most content, I think Netflix recommends 25Mbps for 4K but uses less than that.