XBMC video playback crashing?

[Noggles10]

I have a FireTV stick loaded with version 14.0 of Kodi and my roommate has another FireTV stick loaded with 13.2 gotham that are both having the same problem. During playback of a movie or a tv show being streamed, playback will suddenly stop and XBMC will "crash" back to the main screen. No errors pop up or anything. Just one second its playing video, the next its sitting idle at the main home screen.

This has happened to my stick on 2 different (and very capable) networks so that isn't the issue. What I have noticed is while watching a video, it will only cache a little bit and then stop. I was just watching an hour long tv episode and it cached about 5Mb of data and then stopped. Once that cache was used up the crash happened again.

I have Zero cache active on both sticks and from time to time it will play fine. I streamed several episodes last night of this same series and they worked fine for a couple hours. Today I did the same and then it suddenly stopped working again.

I sideloaded a speed check app and pulled right at 20Mb/sec so transfer speeds are not the issue and my device is further from the router than his is so his will be even better than mine.

Where can I go from here? This problem happens now with about 90% of the video files I try to stream and has basically made my XBMC useless.

[Noggles10]

I would also like to add that I have a new Tronsmart AW80 coming soon because of this issue and the general poor overall performance of this device. But, I would like to get his fixed so that he doesn't have to do the same and because I know from experience that these sticks CAN run XBMC ok.

[Noggles10]

So I also tried SPMC as well hoping that the added Android support would help. It bumped and skipped its way through one movie and then kicked me out twice during the next. It just gets to a point where it no longer will buffer more video and then the playback will work through all of what has been buffered. After that I guess it just flips out and crashes. I can't really explain it..

[Noggles10]

Wow, no ideas at all?

[Noggles10]

So I received a replacement Fire Stick yesterday and loaded 13.2 on to it. It has worked well all day up until now. Played HD and 1080p files fine with only very minor skips or pauses (but nothing to be concerned over). Now, in the middle of an HD movie the playback slows down and starts jumping and skipping like it did before on the old device right before the playback would stop and take me back to the menu. If I check the "stats" by pressing "O" during playback I can see the cache will slowly dwindle until the playback slows down. Pausing it doesn't allow the cache to continue to rebuild until I unpause the playback and then it suddenly jumps up to 11 or 12 MB which will then slowly fall back down to a few hundred kb.

An odd thing to note is that the Mb/s while its playing hovers around .9-1.2Mb/s or so. Not the 20+ my laptop in the same room or the 18-20Mb/s the Fire Stick itself has shown on sideloaded speed test apps. For some reason XBMC download speeds are severely hampered on my devices. Could this be the cause and if so, how do I fix it?

[Blindseyed]

So I received a replacement Fire Stick yesterday and loaded 13.2 on to it. It has worked well all day up until now. Played HD and 1080p files fine with only very minor skips or pauses (but nothing to be concerned over). Now, in the middle of an HD movie the playback slows down and starts jumping and skipping like it did before on the old device right before the playback would stop and take me back to the menu. If I check the "stats" by pressing "O" during playback I can see the cache will slowly dwindle until the playback slows down. Pausing it doesn't allow the cache to continue to rebuild until I unpause the playback and then it suddenly jumps up to 11 or 12 MB which will then slowly fall back down to a few hundred kb.

An odd thing to note is that the Mb/s while its playing hovers around .9-1.2Mb/s or so. Not the 20+ my laptop in the same room or the 18-20Mb/s the Fire Stick itself has shown on sideloaded speed test apps. For some reason XBMC download speeds are severely hampered on my devices. Could this be the cause and if so, how do I fix it?

Im wondering if it could be the WiFi of the stick. I have the AFTV box and it's been very smooth, I'm running Gotham 13.2 tho because I don't know if Kodi Helix is stable enough since they are working on "bug fixes" for the droid Kodi version. (anyone running Kodi on the box?)
Im plugged directly into my router also with no buffering issues like that. So all I can think is something with the WiFi maybe , kinda puzzling

[Noggles10]

Im wondering if it could be the WiFi of the stick. I have the AFTV box and it's been very smooth, I'm running Gotham 13.2 tho because I don't know if Kodi Helix is stable enough since they are working on "bug fixes" for the droid Kodi version. (anyone running Kodi on the box?)
Im plugged directly into my router also with no buffering issues like that. So all I can think is something with the WiFi maybe , kinda puzzling

Well I thought that too because of how far my stick is from the router. My room mate has the same issue on his tv stick which is close enough to touch the router by just moving it without unplugging it from the tv.

I also didn't have this problem until I took it to my parent's house and used a completely different ISP and router setup and their router was in the same room as the tv we were watching it on. I also don't get how it will play randomly all day sometimes without an issue but then start acting up again.

[Blindseyed]

Well I thought that too because of how far my stick is from the router. My room mate has the same issue on his tv stick which is close enough to touch the router by just moving it without unplugging it from the tv.

I also didn't have this problem until I took it to my parent's house and used a completely different ISP and router setup and their router was in the same room as the tv we were watching it on. I also don't get how it will play randomly all day sometimes without an issue but then start acting up again.

Hmm that's weird, The only other thing I can think of is your internet provider or something on that end? Is it just XBMC or is it all the apps?
When did u buy it? I'd send it back and get new one(s), they're good about returns. Maybe even try the FireTV box plugged directly into the router.

[Noggles10]

Hmm that's weird, The only other thing I can think of is your internet provider or something on that end? Is it just XBMC or is it all the apps?
When did u buy it? I'd send it back and get new one(s), they're good about returns. Maybe even try the FireTV box plugged directly into the router.

Well we have an up level Comcast plan and my parents have an up level Time Warner plan so two different providers. My issues didn't start until I took it to their house that night. The first time it happened it crashed so bad that it reset the skin on XBMC back to the stock one. After that it became a constant issue.

Mother apps stream ok except for an occasional YouTube skip but nothing like XBMC. I have returned it for a different stick and it even does the same thing.