Video Card for HEVC 265 10bit

  • for now on my LibreELEC PC , if I replaced my GTX 660ti video card with a GT 1030 or a GTX 1050 ..

    would this eliminate or even reduce banding, pixelation etc on H.265 playback?

  • Went out and bought the Asus GTX1050 2Gb Phoenix video card at $50 more than a GTX 1030, it's nice and small + runs off the motherboard for power

    Fully wiped/uninstalled LibreELEC 8.0.1 & reinstalled with LibreELEC 8.1.0 beta with v304.135 Nvidia legacy driver to add 10-bit HEVC support

    I now have really, really great video quality with abolutely no sign of banding, pixelation or artifacts what so ever :)

    SWMBO said the overall picture is a fair bit sharper, I think it could be a little bit, but we both agree that the contrast is a quite a lot better as is the overall picture quality

    In video setting there are now a sharpen & a noise adjustment option which I left alone

    At the computer shop everyones pretty excited & hyped up about Coffee Lake

    Edited 2 times, last by Pokey: spelling (October 14, 2017 at 12:58 PM).

  • Purchased the Asus GTX1050 2Gb Phoenix for $160

    compact @ only 192mm long & powers of the PCI express slot .. one less power lead for my intended Mini ITX HTPC build

  • Now that you asked .. the "intel" in "10-bit HEVC support for recent Intel GPU generations"

    I might be barking up the wrong tree .. that doesn't refer to Nvidia

    I'll reinstall LibreELEC 8.0.1 and see if it's just the newer GTX 1050 video card that's done the vast improvement, I never though to test that out first as it was not supposed to have driver support .. the old video card might have been a bit :thumbdown:

  • No reinstall yet, left things as is .. except all TV Shows are now properly indexed

    I changed Skin to Confluence to re-index .. for some unknown reason this always seems to do a better job of it?

    But: a quick look in Systems / Video

    GPU: GTX 1050/PCIe/SSE2

    OpenGL version: 4.5.0 NVIDIA 384.59

    Obviously didn't look here before

    Besides the H.265 10 bit, very old TV Shows from 1950-80's are clearer .. less noise, artifacts or shimmer etc

  • I'm thinking of getting onto the 4k 10bit train soon. I'm currently using Kodibuntu but since that is outdated I plan to update my HTPC to libreelec in the future. I'm trying to do some research into 4k 10bit playback and came across this post. I know I'm going to have to upgrade my box OR get a dedicated player like a Vero 4k.

    I would prefer to just upgrade my HTPC and ideally just the video card. Is there anyway to do nvidia + linux and get 10bit playback? I do not want to do windows. I would prefer not to do a new cpu either.

  • I'm on LibreELEC 9 with Kodi 18 testbuilds by Milhouse for about two weeks now, many things aren't working as intended but HBR audio passthrough with Apollo Lake NUC6CAYH is definitely not a problem anymore, the patches seems to be included in kernel 4.14 so it's not a hardware problem.

    So if you want to buy a Apollo Lake or Kaby Lake box now, go for it, support for HBR audio passthrough will come real soon, no need to wait for Gemini Lake.

  • I would prefer to just upgrade my HTPC and ideally just the video card. Is there anyway to do nvidia + linux and get 10bit playback? I do not want to do windows. I would prefer not to do a new cpu either.

    Nvidia has not supported 10bit video on Linux from the beginning. It's only Windows which is allowed that honour. Why? I'm sure there is some logic behind that corporate decision by Nvidia.

    Meanwhile, Intel has had its hiccups with BIOS's and drivers. Not to mention the flakey HDMI 2.0 solution they came up with in their hardware design. Even the next Intel generation is whispered not to have proper HDMI 2.0 support.

  • Nvidia has not supported 10bit video on Linux from the beginning. It's only Windows which is allowed that honour. Why? I'm sure there is some logic behind that corporate decision by Nvidia.

    Meanwhile, Intel has had its hiccups with BIOS's and drivers. Not to mention the flakey HDMI 2.0 solution they came up with in their hardware design. Even the next Intel generation is whispered not to have proper HDMI 2.0 support.

    So there is no way to do a DIY HTPC that does x265 and 10bit HDR?

    I see you mentioned flaky HDMI 2.0 support from Intel. What does that exactly mean? I was looking at the NUC6CAYH. Seems to fit my bill as I can get that for about 120-130$ and should be strong enough to power my Kodi plus a few other things I have running on my box besides that.

    Just read through this and it seems to be giving that box good reviews and makes it seem like exactly what I want.

    Apollo Lake NUC Review (NUC6CAYH) 3/3: Linux, HTPC and Conclusions – The NUC Blog

    Edited once, last by pletopia (October 20, 2017 at 8:58 PM).

  • So there is no way to do a DIY HTPC that does x265 and 10bit HDR?

    Sure, a Windows 10 setup should do everything just fine. I myself just cannot test the HDR part here since I have no HDR TV or monitor.

    I see you mentioned flaky HDMI 2.0 support from Intel. What does that exactly mean?

    It means Intel used some DisplayPort-2-HDMI2.0 band aid, and video drivers in Linux (which LibreELEC runs on) can have a hard time adjusting to. Some motherboard manufacturers will implement their own hardware adjustments and again things will work just a little different. Of course Windows drivers will have more support from manufacturers, the Linux community is trying to catch up.

  • That generation of NUC supports 10-bit HEVC but fixes for HD audio passthrough are not in current LE releases, because while the available fixes work great on the latest generations of NUC they also break stuff on older generations. Things are resolved once the kernel bumps to 4.13 or so which is available in milhouse dev builds (future LE 9.0, although we are nowhere near alpha releases at the moment) and some other community images found in these forum. The LSPCON internal DP > HDMI design decision attracts pissy comments because it's taken Intel a huge amount of time to recognise and then fix the audio problem (more than a year).

  • That generation of NUC supports 10-bit HEVC but fixes for HD audio passthrough are not in current LE releases, because while the available fixes work great on the latest generations of NUC they also break stuff on older generations. Things are resolved once the kernel bumps to 4.13 or so which is available in milhouse dev builds (future LE 9.0, although we are nowhere near alpha releases at the moment) and some other community images found in these forum. The LSPCON internal DP > HDMI design decision attracts pissy comments because it's taken Intel a huge amount of time to recognise and then fix the audio problem (more than a year).

    So if i were to get one of those NUC's and install one of the milhouse dev builds of LE, I will be able to do 10-bit HEVC to a compatible 4k tv?