Unless you have connectivity issues which method you go with is probably irrelevant but instructions for each…
This tutorial is to help those who are using Samba (also known as CIFS, SMB or Windows Networking). It assumes that you already are sharing media files on a Windows Server or Desktop.
Why use /etc/fstab instead of Kodi’s built in SMB client? The Kodi client in current versions (17.x and older) is slow. Using /etc/fstab is faster, and not really that hard to setup.
EDIT: 11/1/2019
While improvements were made in Kodi 18.x, using fstab will still be faster.
Preparation:
You will need to know …
And to actually use them you will have to dump your library and add new sources or else take the path of least resistance and just put in a path substitution to redirect to the system mount.
This guide is intended only as a more in depth instruction for manipulating file paths either for broken links or performance modification. For other applications of path substitution you can consult Kodi’s wiki on the subject.
At its core, path substitution is a simple concept. You are simply adding <from> and <to> tags to an advancedsettings.xml file that specify a part of a file path that will get replaced, and the new path that will be replacing it. Kodi will use this whenever it is trying …