DLNA player recommendations for Fire TV

Ramadhir Singh

Ramadhir Singh

Wasseypur
Level G
For Fire TV - do we have anything similar to infuse in apple platform, where we just point out to the upnp path and all movies were displayed with nice poster and metadata from online database ?


------
Although kodi looks like overkill for my need and heavy o the firestick - i just want movies in NAS ( mdlna/twonky server) with metadata.

But does anyone know any good source/tutorial for Kodi ? or want to help me out.
I was fiddling with kodi for quite few time, never able to get metadata with this.. probably im missing something very basics.
In the screenshots kodi look so amazing, but when i try to do mimic the same .. its not even remotely anything like that. ( the vert first step of getting metadata is failing).

Kodi skin Eminence 2 Mod - ( source https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=307568&page=119 )
expectation are something like this
Kodi-Skins-3.jpg

or even this - https://forum.kodi.tv/archive/index.php?thread-172739.html

but my install. its look more like pre-windows XP era, file browser
 
Last edited:
@Ramadhir Singh

I wanted exactly what you are asking, just that I wanted the watched / continue playing / next up etc information to sync across devices (iOS / Android). Earlier, I used VLC on my firestick to access my pen drive which was connected to wifi router so I was essentially using UPnP / Samba / Something. But metadata was never there.

I am now having Raspberry Pi 4 and using it as Jellyfin server and on Firestick I use Jellyfin's own app and on my iPad, I use infuse pro (sideloaded) and I also now have all metadata etc. Infuse on iOS / iPad is great, but buying pro is super duper expensive at like 7000-8000 Rupees. I have also great things about Infuse on Apple TV.


I did try Kodi but I only tried with jellyfin server and not UpnP or so and felt it was overkill for my usage. There was a time I had used Kodi extensively with numerous addons for streaming live tv etc when I was in US but now with advent of so many easy to use (of course illegal) streaming apps and most of the desi kodi addons dead, people I guess shifted to these apps.
 
raksrules said:
Infuse on iOS / iPad is great, but buying pro is super duper expensive at like 7000-8000 Rupees.
Click to expand...
yes infuse became subscription model now, version 4+, i have some version 3.xx, guess i got it around 600-700 rs only back in time. that purchase just allowed me to play Dolby, rest all functionality are same.

back to the topic, without meta even esfile explorer is able to play from nas.
built in dlna player in my TV is rock solid (its doesn't play x265.), i was thinking to transfer that job to firestick, and give some relief to the ageing tv. :)

kodi is mostly now relate to piracy i guess, because every site i found related to kodi is selling some kind of VPN, proxy, etc. and youtube views are age-restricted. struggling to find a decent tutorial.
came to know about emby, going to give it shot tonight.
Also, i feel kodi is making the stick slower.
 
I'm using Plex btw. Registered a single user for Rs.250/- and running the server on my NAS. The metadata needs a very fast storage source so an SSD is recommended. This set-up works however hardware transcoding requires both hardware and software support which I don't have.
 
Mann said:
I'm using Plex btw. Registered a single user for Rs.250/- and running the server on my NAS. The metadata needs a very fast storage source so an SSD is recommended. This set-up works however hardware transcoding requires both hardware and software support which I don't have.
Click to expand...

The way the avoid transcoding is to use a client that can play almost all formats. For ipad I use infuse which provides metadata and before used nplayer which didn't have metadata.
 
raksrules said:
I use infuse which provides metadata
Click to expand...
indeed, infuse is the one of the best dlna player available out there.

im settling with vimu for fire tv for time being.
I'm really surprised by this playback quality of this player, the ability to pass-through is amazing. Almost everything is passed to the hardware for pure quality.
( i never wanted my server to do any kind of transcoding and destroy audio/video quality anyways).

Metadata - its just big posters, which its automatically picking from the same location as my media, making a nice video wall - i can live with.

---------------

Given emby a try as well, it not free - 14 days trial in fireTv. ( after that $120 lifetime licence) .
Really liked the overall presentation and the way media is presented in TV. ( In distant future, if i think of a dedicated server only for media.. i might consider this).

I found emby documentation is rather confusing and misguiding - many menu item listed in "official documentation" are missing in actual install.
Like i don't want the backdrop, posters, etc to fetch from internet all the time. in documentation they shown a checkbox to download everything in local. but in reality that menu doesn't existed in my server setup. And every time it was calling artworks from fanart site, which was dynamically updated in the .nfo file.
Also i failed to find the menu where we can turn off certain metadata fetching/displayed, ( again well documented in their knowledgebase , but not available in my setup).

tried jellyfins- setting are ditto from emby (parent of jellyfins).
All the struggle of emby, PLUS little confusing compared to emby, the TV interface didn't looked as polished as Emby. .. hence passed.

----------------

Finally uninstalled kodi from the firestick, realised it was slowing down the stick considerable.. now my firstick is 200% more responsive and snappier just like brand new.
Surprised to discover how KODI is just overly hyped. Jellyfins/Emby is no doubt, far better than kodi as a complete solution.
 
Ramadhir Singh said:
Finally uninstalled kodi from the firestick, realised it was slowing down the stick considerable.. now my firstick is 200% more responsive and snappier just like brand new.
Surprised to discover how KODI is just overly hyped. Jellyfins/Emby is no doubt, far better than kodi as a complete solution.
Click to expand...
Probably the only use-case where Kodi still shines, is when you use it as a media-consumption platform in itself, rather than as a one-among-several apps - given it's interface, hardware/remote support and support for multiple streaming services (including niche ones).

Have attempted to switch to Kodi as a Youtube + DNLA client many many times before, only to feel disappointed. A dedicated DLNA client + Newpipe/Smarttube combination does so much better. Feels just way too unwieldy for this use case.
 
@Ramadhir Singh

Bumping this thread after an year. I have been using jellyfin since last year and have been super satisfied with its utility for me. But since my external hdd went dead last week, I lost all media and everything and so I used some disposable usb pen drives and SD Cards (not Microsd) of questionable quality and speed (16GB-32GB) to sort of play around with the Pi. So I again setup dietpi with sonarr and torrent client and all. But Due to less space available, I am downloading only 1-2 seasons of couple of shows (max 25GB total content).

But I observed that (of what I presume is due to pen drives) even jellyfin is super duper slow and overall things are slow. That is when I had to revert back to good old DLNA and this thread came to mind. I have today downloaded Nova Video Player on my firestick tv and through dlna, it is working great. It fetches metadata and even says it will scrobbe to trakt (didn't happen for me I guess due to me using external app vlc to play videos). Not on jellyfin level but this is a good stop gap solution for me.

So just thought about updating here as I found a good video player for fire stick which works well with dlna and fetches metadata and update trakt too and is fancy looking. I also read something about Vimu player but it is not on amazon app store here and when I checked it's screenshots online, it seemed same like nova video player.



I would like to use Kodi but kodi is too bulky and slow and I watch stuff on faster speeds and I don't much that functionality in kodi. I mean I have but I cannot set the speed when video is playing. I have to setup in another addon and then all videos play with same speed. Very inconvenient.
 
Back
Top