Direct File Access - Exoplayer

[Teddyknuddel 144]

@vdatanet
That's actually a much better way of putting it, and I mostly agree with you.

You're right that “the server isn't in the media path” is, by itself, an architectural difference rather than automatically an advantage. Whether it becomes an advantage depends on the setup.

But you've also just listed several concrete situations where it does become an advantage: avoiding an unnecessary network hop, players whose native file access behaves better, and media structures that benefit from real file access.

And that's really all I've been arguing. I never claimed that SMB universally beats HTTP, nor that it somehow produces better picture or sound from identical data.

In my particular setup, everything is local, the player and storage are on the same network, Kodi has excellent native SMB support, and I neither need nor want the server to mediate media delivery. So Direct File Access is the architecture that suits that setup better.

For a browser, Chromecast, remote client or a client that may require remuxing/transcoding, HTTP obviously has major advantages. I wouldn't suggest otherwise.

So yes: two architectures, different trade-offs, and which one is preferable depends on the setup.

Which brings us to the slightly ironic conclusion that Direct File Access does indeed have concrete benefits — just not for everybody.

And that was my point all along.