Video Card for HEVC 265 10bit

1st Official Post

    I run libreELEC from a mid tower PC

    MB: Asus Z97k

    CPU: G3258

    Ram: 2x4gb 1333

    Video card: gtx 660ti

    With latest video format HEVC 265 10bit

    I get pixilation, artifacts etc – especially in darker areas

    After researching here my questions are

    1/- Should I upgrade the videocard to a GTX 1060?

    If so I might build a new (better fitting into the lounge room) mini PC around the card with say a G4620 or i3-7100 on GA-H270 Motherboard etc

    2/- or buy a Minix neo U9-H, I'm a bit edgy about this, I do have the X8-H Plus which does not handle HEVC 265 very well, it ran hot if it played them at all

    No the G4620 at about $40 extra

    I'll check out this Nvidia/Kodi state of support thing .. never heard it mentioned before?

    the GTX 960 & up .. are a requirement for smooth play HEVC 265 10bit?

    Might look harder at all this ..

    The HEVC H.265 10-bit decoding videocard will smooth out the pixilation, artifacts and banding etc

    The Gtx 960 is the first graphics card that supports HDMI 2.0 and comes equipped with a hardware-based H.265 or HEVC video decoder

    So I just assume that the GTX 960 & upward cards would be ideal as a future proof videocard for a HTPC

    I know there is hardware and software decoding and I don't fully understand these

    But the theory for my set up is

    - The video on a harddrive is in storage

    - it's accessed by software with help from the operating system on the CPU

    - then sent to the graphics card for hardware decoding then on to the TV for viewing

    what am I missing here that I don't understand?

    I am up in years, and try to simplify thing so as to not get too lost

    a Minix neo U9-H looks less messy .. but at over $200 is a gamble as to smooth play, overheating & libreELEC installation

    and I love libreELEC's easy PC installation

    the video card you want to buy is the GT 1030, it will handle everything you want to throw at it, it comes in fanless low-profile form factor at around $70, there is no reason to spend more...

    beats changing the whole motherboard+cpu+memory package for sure...

    HDR support in linux is very limited right now (correct me if I'm wrong please) so if you really want HDR you need to look at nvidia shield or have to deal with windows...

    I have both a Asrock J4205 board and an Apollo Lake NUC and now that the audio issues are fixed they will play pretty much anything I throw at them. Both are pretty cheap options too. Should not be long until the new Intel Gemini lake chips come out that should have native hdmi 2.0 support.

    I've been converting some videos with handbrake to H.265 to halve the space they use on my NAS as it's at 90% full .. maybe easier to buy another NAS and leave them at H.264

    So I'll wait till my NAS is 95% and see what comes along support wise for video cards and Gemini & Coffee Lake cpu's

    Thanks for all the advice, it seems that the GT 1030 will only decode & playback HEVC H.265, so I might try one as a cheap option for now .. but an upgrade to the GTX 1060 would also give the ability to encode as well

    There still are current Nvidia Linux Driver updates, whether these have the same support as Windows driver I don't know

    With my Minix neo X8-H Plus I flashed it with Lollypop but went back to Kitkat

    After many tests I put the MyGica? variant of Kodi with Estuary skin on it.. works great except for any HEVC .265 they make it run too hot (if they work at all) and gets the very mild judders

    I was looking at either the U9-H or the U1 which takes LibreELEC okay