Netflix for libreelec stutters

Question

I use kodi with libreelec on a raspberry pi 3. But after 30 seconds it stutters and hangs for a short time, then the movie continues and stutters again after 15-30 seconds.

I tried to set a maximum bandwidth in the widevine settings and it did not change anything. Then I changed stream selection to manual and now I get the minimum quality, which is way too bad with large artifacts even in the netflix logo (the internet connection has 50 MBit/s). I do not see anyway where the manually select the stream, I thought this actually enables the selection by the specified minimum/maximum bandwidth?

The 1080/720p setting didn't seem to have any effect (with automatic stream selection) either.

Do I even need to worry about the network, or is a pi too slow for high quality netflix? Where can I select a medium quality?

Answer 1

The raspberry pi 3 is not fast enough for 1080p, because widevine does software decoding because of the DRM In the netflix plugin it is a bit confusing how to set the bitrate in a permanent way.

I had to select manual stream selection and then start a video and choose 720p stream there and then save it as default. It still forgot it the first time, but when I did the same again, it now seem to remember the bitrate.

So you need to:

• Go to the widevine input stream settings and select manual stream selection
• Start a video
• Open the menu and select "video options"
• Select the bitrate option
• Use the highest bitrate 720p option (or lower if your internet connection is slow as well)

Now it should run just fine.