I had the Raspberry Pi B+ and had a lot of problem streaming video as well. I ultimately disowned it. Now I got the Pi 2 in hopes that it would be better and I could use it for just streaming video. Sometimes it works but then I hit a point where it will become unwatchable and I get frustrated and give up. I’m getting 6-9MBps download speeds so I don’t know whats wrong. How could I optimize my Pi?
You must understand that you are at the mercy of the source servers that provide this streaming content. 9/10 times a buffering or failure to play issue is due to issues from the provider as opposed to OSMC/Kodi’s receipt of the stream.
Is there a way to tell if it’s the source or the Pi? Even when I try multiple sources I have the issue sometimes. I was thinking maybe cache issues but I don’t know how to check that either.
There is a big wide google out there and you will find thousands of people who have the same issues as you, using the same type of content you are. We cannot address that here. Your problem is not with OSMC. I suggest you seek resolution from someone closer to the source of the problem.
I use Rasp Pi 2 with OSMC and have no issues with buffering and only have an 8mb line.
Suggest you try playing a youtube video and check if it still buffers, youtube streams at full speed…
why not install kodi on a pc and with the same addons that you stream and double check?
As people above say it is not the pi. 6 to 8Mbps, is not a very good line. Maybe up to 720 and if and only if the source you are downloading is ok. That is if you are site/single source streaming. If you are streaming from multiple sources then problems should not be there at all (unless the file is huge, or lets say above 8Gb).
If noone else is using your bandwidth at the same time.
If your carrier is behaving in a good way, and not tricky distributing the banwidth to a lot lot users with qos and things like that.
What you can do is tweak advancesettings.xml and use a bit bigger buffer (156000 to 200000 on a pi2 should somehow do the trick.).
Also, as a suggestion, turn off the overclock. Pi2 does not need it really, and all you will get in return is an unstable system.
Another good addon to test the performance of your internet connection and Pi is the “Apple iTunes Trailers” addon available in the standard Kodi repo. It can be configured to use 720p or 1080p streams in the addon settings - the 1080p streams are about 10Mbps streams.
Unlike a lot of the servers that certain addons use, this addon uses Apple’s servers which have plenty of grunt even at peak times. (They use world wide CDN’s) If this addon plays fine but others do not chances are almost certain that it is the servers used by these other addons which are the issue.