Kodi 16.1 – Jarvis, XMBR- Video not showing issue on Windows 10

First of all, What is Kodi?
As per their website:
Kodi® (formerly known as XBMC™) is an award-winning free and open source (GPL) software media center for playing videos, music, pictures, games, and more. Kodi runs on Linux, OS X, Windows, iOS, and Android, featuring a 10-foot user interface for use with televisions and remote controls. It allows users to play and view most videos, music, podcasts, and other digital media files from local and network storage media and the internet. Our forums andWiki are bursting with knowledge and help for the new user right up to the application developer. We also have helpful Facebook, Google+, Twitter andYoutube pages.

I installed Kodi 16.1 – Jarvis, XMBR- on my old budget computer that is connected to an old but expensive 60 inch NEC monitor with Windows 10. Installation went well but then didn't now how add-ons work or which are the best add-ons! Found one Add-on, I don't remember the name at this moment, but it works fine.

After everything was in place, I was able to find a movie and wanted to test its streaming. So far so good. However, it would show the play, stop, fast forward, reverse buttons. Seemed like the movie was playing but there was no video. The audio was fine.

Why do some computers get this issue? If you care to know, it is because some computers have no dedicated video cards with Acceleration hardware. Or your computer may be too old with some very old acceleration that may not be compatible with latest software.

I did lot of search on Google and Bing with different terms like "Kodi Video not playing", "Kodi 16 Audio works but no video" etc. I watched many videos that came up and read through many Kodi message boards and articles. Most of them gave a great tip to uncheck "Allow Hardware Acceleration (VDADecoder) box(es). I say box(es) because on my computer with Windows 10, there was only one box but most pages I visited or videos I watched had 3 checkboxes! Whatever number of checkboxes you have on your system, just uncheck them.

This one still didn't fix the issue on my Windows 10 system. I kept looking on Google and Bing search engines but had no luck. Then on some messageboard, on a message, someone suggested to change the "Render Method" from Auto to Software. See the two arrows on the screenshot above? The first one on the top shows this particular setting. Change it to Software and it would work.

As I benefited from many posts on the Internet, it is my duty to help others. Pay it Forward, right? I wish I had found a direct mention of both of these settings quicker! That would have saved me from 2-3 frustrating hours to make my Kodi XBRM work!

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