Display problems

1st Official Post

    I was a great follower of Openelec until recently.

    I updated my Openelec to a newer version and started having screen tearing problems.

    Unfortunately, no one in the forums or in the IRC chat would reply to my plea for help.

    So, after a few months of troubleshooting and asking for help (with no response) I have decided to stop using Openelec.

    Libreelec looks very promising and I hope it works just as good as Openelec and I hope the community is willing to help solve (or try anyway) my problems (if any).

    I have started by downloading and installing Libreelec 8.1.1 using the USB creation tool.

    It installed without any problems and booted right up.

    Here starts the problems.

    The screen resolution settings max out at 1280x1024 and is stuck at 4:3 ratio resolutions.

    I have about 6" of black bar on the right side of the screen.

    If I go into the settings and change the output from default to lvd-1 I get the same results (must be the default to start with).

    If I go into the settings and change the output from default to HDMI-2 I get a black screen from which I have no return.

    Only options are to ssh in and reboot or forcefully power down the machine and power it back on.

    Any ideas or suggestions?

    Any log files I can dig into or provide?


    My hardware:
    AOpen i45GMt-HD with Hardware H.264 decoder
    Intel P8700 Core2Duo
    2GB Ram
    1TB 7200RPM WD Black
    Full HD 1080i 42" HiSense TV hooked up via HDMI

    • Official Post

    Tbh...I wouldn't waste too much time on that:

    From the AOpen link you provided:

    "Intel® GM45+ICH9M chipset with GMA X4500 graphics engine"

    Take a look over here:

    Supported hardware - Official Kodi Wiki

    The minimum for Kodi "without hardware decoding"!! is a GPU from the "Arrandale / Clarkdale" family which has been released in 2010. See:

    List of Intel graphics processing units - Wikipedia

    And I wouldn't even recommend to use those.

    Yours was released two years earlier (so in 2008). So I wouldn't expect too much from nearly 10 year old hardware, tbh. Even a 35€ RPi can do a better job as that thingy.

    Btw...

    Quote from FesterJester

    with Hardware H.264 decoder

    That might be true while using Windows...but for sure not for Linux.

    • Official Post

    Intel has a habit of adding regressions for older hardware as they introduce support for newer hardware. In this case the reason newer OE has given you issues vs. older OE is very likely that the combination of GPU drivers + mesa + Xorg have changed and I doubt anyone from Intel (or anywhere else; definitely not us) tests that combination of old hardware. In this respect LE will be no different to OE as we track/update the same combination of code parts. The main difference is that the entire ecosystem that surrounded OE is now resident here so you'll get answers to posts - although maybe not the answers you're looking to hear, e.g. the comment on the RPi is completely true.

    If you run "cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | paste" we can see if Xorg is starting and what errors are logged - although Intel drivers aren't very verbose.

    Sorry for the long delay everyone.

    I had to work some crazy hours so I could attend Ohio Linux Fest.

    I will power up and dump the requested logs as soon as I can.

    DaVu

    Is there a way to determine if hardware decoding is functioning under Linux?

    chewitt

    Would it be possible for me to replace the current Intel driver with the last Intel driver I found that worked?