www.makemkv.com

I have just bought a Verbatim reader and ripped a few 4k discs thanks to Makemkv.
Problem is every one is stuttering when I play them on my Sony TV with Kodi via a NAS. It seems that the network from NAS to TV is too slow or Kodi is not powerful enough to play them. I can play the exact same rip from the same source on my computer so I think I will need a proper player to plug into the system. What I have is

Asustor AS5004T with a 4 disc raid 5 connected via ethernet to Sky Hub
Sony XH9505 wireless (it does not have gigabit ethernet)
Yamaha RXV6A amp wireless
Dali Atmos speaker system
Mac Studio pro M1 wireless

Would a dedicated player with gigabit plugged into the amp then give me a stutter free playback or is there something else I need to do.

thanks

So there are several popular options. If you want to be able to play Dolby Vision (not sure if your TV supports DV), the solution I would recommend is the Zidoo Z9X IF you are ripping to MKV. If you want to do full BDMV or ISO backups and play with full BD menus, then one of the Dune boxes is probably more reliable with BDMV menu support. The Nvidia Shield Pro is another that plays DV MKV's with full support for streaming apps (Netflix, Prime, etc) but there are a couple IQ issues with DV and I think the Zidoo player SW does a nicer job in general (all 3 of these options use the same RealTek SOC). Do NOT get one of the Dune Amlogic based boxes.

All of these boxes will pass full Atmos bitstream to your AVR.

An AppleTV with the Infuse Pro app is quite nice but due to HW limitations, it is HDR10 with lossless 7.1 via LPCM only.

Thank you for the reply
My TV does do Dolby vision and that is a necessity for the player as well as Atmos.
Would love it if the Apple TV played Atmos but alas it does not.

Do you know what the issues are with the Shield ??? looks to be a good product on paper and ticks all the boxes for my requirements.

Aside from having forced ads on the Home Screen, it still has a red push on DV playback. I tried one a few years ago and thought its overall PQ was not ideal either.

I don't have anything fancy. A media PC (my old PC converted to host media and do the Ripping/Handbrake stuff. Has an old GTX 970 in it.), KODI with a SQL server to remember where I am in my media (and watch via my phone or another PC/SteamDeck if I want) and some nice Bose QC45 headphones as most of the time I am watching when others in my house are sleeping. I do run my MKV files though Handbrake to reduce file size which I highly recommend. I don't have a 4k TV so all my media is 1080p which is fine with me. So far it works great.

I typically use Handbrake to convert files after ripping with MakeMKV and then use Plex on my desktop as a server to stream to my TV in the living room.

In the future I would like to get a dedicated system going for it, but Plex meets my needs for now.

I see usb ports on the Zidoo Z9X. Can I just plug a portable hard drive with mkv movies into the usb port and play the movies? Sorry, newbie here.