Skipping steps…
That is a general problem. For ffw/rew a media player needs to read the stream faster. It is the equivalent in simple terms of having a tape running faster.
If you play back something at 8 times the speed, well then data needs to be delivered 8 times as fast.
I am oversimplifying here of course. There are some things you can do though…
Sure with some huge buffer and some clever non linear read ahead approach you can make it work. That’s what decent modern Bluray players are doing. They are caching a ton into RAM during playback and also hold a keyframe buffer as well and even create a new buffers on the fly for scrobbling using data gathered before. And that is no problem because of local media, which can deliver data up to a certain point very fast (but naturally they limit the speed as well). Early Bluray players couldn’t do it properly either. The PVR functions in TVs work similar, though largely relying on more information in the transport stream for some “hacks”.
It is similar like when you scrobble through a Netflix or Youtube stream. Sooner or later bandwidth is the problem unless the whole video (or larger parts of it) remains in cache.
I basically got use to skipping steps since I started to watch 720p/1080p content a decade ago.
And every video player has the same problem as they all use the same approach: Fill up buffer, play from buffer. You play faster then data needs to comes in faster. And sooner or later the buffer is starving, especially over networks. No real evolution here except a few things like timeline scrobbling to extract keyframes.
And no one really bothers to implement some more tricky caching/buffering as people got used to skip steps anyway. So lowest possible priority for video player developers to address this.
Yeah, get used to skipping steps. After after a while you don’t mind it anymore…
Sure better buffering in Kodi in general would be nice, but don’t hold your breath to ever seeing it.
Nice thing is you can customize the skip steps at least to your day to day requirements.