RK3328 Any indication if and when LE will be available for these new boxes ?

1st Official Post

    The S905X boxes seem to be now being replaced with this new RK3328 based boxes, like the Beelink MXIII II is now out of production and replaced with the new Beelink A1 with the RK3328 chip and a super high spec for a still lowish price. So any indication when we may see the excellent LE builds we get for the S905X boxes available for these new RK 3328 devices.

    What I find frustrating is that each great new box that arrives soon goes out of production and replaced with something newer, just too many changes too quickly for boxes that are runnign superbly as they are. Ah well I suppose that is called progress. So what I would love to have is a new Beelink A1 box with a good stable LibreELEC 8 firmware available for it as we get with the S905X boxes today. So I am asking whether any of you guys here may know the answer to when this may possibly be available if at all. Is it months or just weeks away?

    • Official Post

    Nothing official for some time. Maybe for Kodi Leia release (no date is scheduled). The current Kodi Krypton builds in circulation from the git repo from Kwiboo are effectively discontinued as developers have now switched to the Leia codebase which is still rather experimental for DRM/KMS and V4L2 things.

    I tried running the ROCK64 LE build on my SCISHION V88 Mini III (RK3328) and it boots up but there's no sound and I had to use a USB adapter for network connectivity. I'm guessing this is because of the mis-matched dtb file (or is it dts?). It's encouraging to see it boot up anyway. And I didn't have to do anything. Just burned the image to a microSD, insert it and boot up. No toothpicks, no nothing. I've tried extracting the dtb(s) file from Android but I don't think it really matters because of Android using an old kernel. Thanks for the support.

    • Official Post

    Until we publish an official release there is no end-user support for those code branches. This is still early stage work and things are in a fluid state of development. If people want to self-build and experiment that's fine, but expect zero assistance with things that don't work. It's not that we don't care; but time devoted to supporting broken and unreleased code is time not spent on creating stable and released code.

    Right now, GearBest has this EMISH X800 TV Box (RK3368) under $26 + Free S/H. That is pretty sad that RK3368 (8-core) is not supported. Otherwise, I would have placed an order. :(

    Quote from RayW

    The S905X boxes seem to be now being replaced with this new RK3328 based boxes, like the Beelink MXIII II is now out of production and replaced with the new Beelink A1 with the RK3328 chip and a super high spec for a still lowish price. So any indication when we may see the excellent LE builds we get for the S905X boxes available for these new RK 3328 devices.

    What I find frustrating is that each great new box that arrives soon goes out of production and replaced with something newer, just too many changes too quickly for boxes that are runnign superbly as they are. Ah well I suppose that is called progress. So what I would love to have is a new Beelink A1 box with a good stable LibreELEC 8 firmware available for it as we get with the S905X boxes today. So I am asking whether any of you guys here may know the answer to when this may possibly be available if at all. Is it months or just weeks away?

    2gb 16gb S905X runs as good as it gets. Why worry about new boxes when they prob won't run any better anyway? Plenty of S905x's out there for sale. NEW doesn't always mean better.

    Yes well aware new is not always better but on average that is the case of course. Just a boit sad as teh Beelink MXIII II box was IMHO one of the best S905X boxes out there at these reasonably budget prices though they were somewhat dearer than the very cheap crap that is out there. Seems that these manufacturers keep changing models way too quickly. The new Beelink A1 box will be fine once we get good LE for the RK3368 boxes, but I understand that the necessary Rockchip code is not yet forthcoming to develop a good reliable LE for these Rockchip boxes. Perhaps kszaq or anyone else here in the know has an update on the RK3368 LE development as to when and if it will ever be at least as good as the S905X LE builds we now thankfully have.

    • Official Post

    Amlogic is top-dog at the moment due to a complete absence of competition but Amlogic devices are ~7% of our userbase and 80% of the support issues. Installation complexity is the root cause of a large percentage, but the prehistoric dog of a Linux kernel we are currently stuck with drives the remainder. RK development is progressing nicely and joint development is building a solid and sustainable foundation for Kodi based on Atomic DRM and V4L2 decoding. In comparison Amlogic are *miles* behind and although there is some work, the visible activity level is low. The long-term plan is to drop amcodec support in Kodi, so they either need to pick up pace and show progress or there is a significant risk they are the only SoC/GPU vendor holding things back. That would mean we get to make a decision on whether to throw Amlogic support under a bus and move everything else forwards, or continue with something that "works" but has many unresolved (and unresolvable) issues that drive most of our support traffic. It's not exclusively my decision, but I'd currently describe it as a simple decision.

    Quote from RayW

    Perhaps kszaq or anyone else here in the know has an update on the RK3368 LE development as to when and if it will ever be at least as good as the S905X LE builds we now thankfully have.

    I am not doing *any* Rockchip development but I wouldn't hope for RK3368 support as it comes with PowerVR GPU with no Linux drivers.

    Quote from kszaq

    I am not doing *any* Rockchip development but I wouldn't hope for RK3368 support as it comes with PowerVR GPU with no Linux drivers.

    Thanks for that update Kszaq. I am perfectly happy with your excellent S905X development myself and eternally grateful to you for all your amazing hard work. But it seems these manufacturers are not stayign with the Amlogic S905X sadly, so what next once the S905X boxes dry up as they are starting to now ?? The S912 path maybe but that is still not recommended here as yet, unless anyone knows better.

    Thanks also to chewitt for that excellent information, much apreciated as it answers many questions many may be having on this issue.

    Quote from chewitt

    RK development is progressing nicely and joint development is building a solid and sustainable foundation for Kodi based on Atomic DRM and V4L2 decoding. In comparison Amlogic are *miles* behind and although there is some work, the visible activity level is low. The long-term plan is to drop amcodec support in Kodi, so they either need to pick up pace and show progress or there is a significant risk they are the only SoC/GPU vendor holding things back.

    Thanks for the update chewitt. From what I can see on the LibreELEC Github repo, most of the Rockchip related checkins are related to the RK3328. Will the RK3399 receive any love in the future?