[8.2.4.1] LibreELEC Kodi Krypton - S905 & S912 devices

Okay been following this thread and have some questions which I hope I can get some good answers here from you guys.

Firstly. I have just got new Tanix TX9 Pro 3/32GB S912 box with its imnpressive specs, higher price but still good value. I see no mention of this box searching through the threads here only for the Tanix TX92 with what seems to be the same specifications except a more ventilated case with a power button. So what if any is the difference as they are both the same specs from all I can see and even some say they both have 3G DDR4 and others say one or the other or both have 3G DDR3, so that is the only vague differences I can see.

Secondly. Okay I can say that the TX9 Pro works extemly well with the S912 LE 8.2.2.3 firmware with no freezes and no obvious problems. In fact it runs very well and seems faster than my TX7 S905X 2/32GB box. Both by the way are running LE 8.2.2.3 off of the same type fast Class 10 SD cards and I have one similarly running 8.2.3.1 on another S905X Beelink box. However, and no matter what 1Gb Ethernet port device tree I use (and many wont work) my Gigabit LAN switch indicators never shows a 1Gb connection only the usual standard 100GB. Same even with the newer 8.2.4.1 LE firmware on the TX9 Pro. Can anyone explain why this is ?? For my LAN with my fast NAS drive the Gigabit LAN port on this box would be good for watching stored 4K movies, and some with HDR too, streamed over my Gigabit LAN as I believe I need at least 120 Mbps and ideally a little more with HDR and 5.1 audio too.

Thirdly. I have tried and have sort of got working the newer LE 8.2.4.1 firmware on the TX9 Pro box on separate same type SD card after trying several appropriate device trees, but found the same one I use for the 8.2.2.3 build supporting the TX9 with the 1Gb Lan works best . However i am suffering from freezes that do seem to be heat related, even though I have NOT enabled the GPU overclocking feature. I think this is heat simply because the box runs fine for the first 20 minutes or so and then freezes reuiring a hard power off reboot, and keeps freezing almost immediately after each new reboot too. Strangely although the temperature is showing around 70C ( I live in a very hot Thailand) this is exactly the same temperature I see when using the 8.2.2.3 build wiht this same box, and which does not freeze at all ?? Any advice on this appreicated.

Latly. I cannot get the newer LibreELEC-S912.arm-8.2.4-Oclock-GPU.img.gz build working at all despite trying many 3G with IGb lan device trees. All as I say running a dual boot system with the fast 16GB SD card used for LE.

Thanks in advance for any help with these queries.

Hmm nobody got any info for me ??

Well item one I have posted on the other thread re choosing a suitable Amlogic box so waiting for a response on there.

However the important stuff re the 8.2.4.1 S912 build after a few more tests and adjustments I have carried out. Well whatever I do it is still freezing needing a total power off/on reset. I no longer think it is temperatuire related as it is happening even at 67 C. I also carried out the GUI reset via SSH as suggested in an earlier post in this thread but still the same and even after I manually reconfigured the GUI settings back to what I need. Tried with and without Audio passthough enabled too and using both the Analogue and Digital HDMI output sound options, all making no difference to the freezing problem.

I have established that the freezes actually NEVER happen when I am watching a streaming video and only seem to happen when I am scrolling through any listings whether that is in say File Manager lists or within an addon created list of videos / music etc. I do not think I can provide a log as the box crashes of course and rebooting it I believe resets the error log anyway. Anyody have any suggestions please ??

Oh and no matter what I do I still do not see my Gigabit LAN switch the TX9 is connected to reporting it as a Gigabit link . This Gigabit switch does show that it sees a Gigbit connection from my Gigabit port fibre optic Gateway.

So I tried a UHD sample video "Hisense The Amazing B***ty Of The Planet 4K Demo" 2.2 GB file streamed from my Zyxel NAS Drive using NFS. Even though this demo has no HDR it does get a buffering problem on my Beelink box with only the standard 100Mb LAN port as would be expected but it is exactly the same buffering probelm on this new TX9 Pro box with the supposed Gigabit LAN port ?? So clearly I am NOT getting any better than the standard 100Mbps connection. That is born out by running the Arnu Speedtest addon on the TX9 which shows the normal 90 Mb download speed maximum you get from a standard 100Mb LAN port of course, even with my ISP's 150 Mbps ISP fibre optic internet connection and then all via a Gigabit port gateway and gigabit switches to my TX9 Pro. My PC reports speedtest does as expected report the full 150 Mbps download speed and in fact even slightly more most of the time. Once again does anyone have any useful input on this one ???

Sorry for long posts but I am trying to ensure I convey all the relevant information that may be needed. This is a habit from my past pre retirement professional electronics background where we worked on the sound rationale of leaving no stone unturned when detailing any such technical problems and the symptoms.

P.S. Why the heck is B-e-a-u-t-y a censored word ????????????

Quote from RayW

Oh and no matter what I do I still do not see my Gigabit LAN switch the TX9 is connected to reporting it as a Gigabit link . This Gigabit switch does show that it sees a Gigbit connection from my Gigabit port fibre optic Gateway.

So I tried a UHD sample video "Hisense The Amazing B***ty Of The Planet 4K Demo" 2.2 GB file streamed from my Zyxel NAS Drive using NFS. Even though this demo has no HDR it does get a buffering problem on my Beelink box with only the standard 100Mb LAN port as would be expected but it is exactly the same buffering probelm on this new TX9 Pro box with the supposed Gigabit LAN port ?? So clearly I am NOT getting any better than the standard 100Mbps connection. That is born out by running the Arnu Speedtest addon on the TX9 which shows the normal 90 Mb download speed maximum you get from a standard 100Mb LAN port of course, even with my ISP's 150 Mbps ISP fibre optic internet connection and then all via a Gigabit port gateway and gigabit switches to my TX9 Pro.

To find out the actual ethernet speed i LE, ssh to box and run command: cat /sys/class/net/eth0/speed

If you cannot get it to work with 1Gb LAN, tray with newest version of CoreElec as it uses different dtb.img-es...

Ehh.. I though I will give latest CE a try... I dont quite get it- first it didnt switch resolution to 4K when Kodi is set to 1080p (switching between 1080p<->4k output). Second it had asyncrhonous HD-passthrough and then Ive noticed a couple of other small issues, some sort of stuttering with 4k HDR playback / minor UI stuttering and so on.

Switched back to this release and most of the issues are gone if not all issues I had with CE specifically. Both cases were clean new installs on fresh SD card, no upgrades or anything like that.

I know both CE / LE devs do it for free and in their free time etc. but IMO it just makes more sense to focus on some few devices and have them work more or less flawlessly rather than support a variety of devices that neither of them work well.

But if you ask me, all those android/arm-based devices are just absolute garbage. Its either- Kodi devs dont have the required drivers for the socs or the socs themselves are absolute Efin dog sheet with all sorts of limitations, very slow and so on. I mean they are dirt cheap, but thats because they are dirt and work like garbage.

I mean proper support for 4K HDR on x86/64 devices cant come soon enough. Cause those are the only devices that are any good and where Kodi devs get some sort of decent driver support from hardware manufacturers like Intel.

Again, only sad part is that Linux is not there yet with proper 4K HDR support on x64 hardware, but thats not exactly hardwares fault, cause in some cases it does support 4K HDR natively. Thats the only reason ppl have to use all those dog sheet ARM based garbage players for now.

Not to mention the upscaling/downscaling quality of 99,9% arm players is absolute trash and most of them cant even do lanczos3/spline36 because in 99,9% of the dirt cheap ARM media players the CPU is absolutely slow piece of sheet.

I mean pardon my French, but its a bit frustrating to not be able to buy a media player where you dont have to tinker around with Kodi builds, let alone expect them to work flawlessly with their sheety arse android based software out of the box.

Nevertheless im thankful that we have guys like Wrxtasy who spend time on optimizing software for particular devices. Without them all those garbage Android based media players with abominable manufacturer software support (like Minix etc.) would be close to useless.

It is sad and unacceptable really that the community has to do the job of those companies that sell all these media players. Even more sad that without software like Kodi and forks like LE etc., many of these players would be absolutely useless.

Quote from Mr.Brown

Ehh.. I though I will give latest CE a try... I dont quite get it- first it didnt switch resolution to 4K when Kodi is set to 1080p (switching between 1080p<->4k output). Second it had asyncrhonous HD-passthrough and then Ive noticed a couple of other small issues, some sort of stuttering with 4k HDR playback / minor UI stuttering and so on.

Did you properly select all resolutions in "Whitelist" settings? Did you set screen resolution to 1920x1080p/60 as recommeneded? Did you set "Adjust display refresh rate" to Always?

Ce v.5 is running with Kodi Leia alpha3. Did you try CE v.2 that runs with Leia alpha2. Lots of differneces between those 2 versions (no whitelist in alpha2)

@ Mr.Brown;

There is such a product as Apple TV 4K.

There is another product such as Sony UBP-X800 4K UHD Blu-ray player.

If you don't mind paying.

Look to the positive side (coins do have 2 sides), without these cheap boxes; there is not much options for experiment, for discovery, for tinkering, for excitement. Just stick with the well and tested and "out-of-the-box" standard experience only. Your choice.

Quote from wrxtasy

Are you sure you have not actually been sold a Fake device with 100M LAN only ?

We see this occasionally with 3GB RAM devices actually having only 2GB RAM.

As already mention by Sholander ...

Code

cat /sys/class/net/eth0/speed

Thank you so much for the feedback Sholander and wrxtasy, very much appreciated..

I am logged into this TX9 Pro box with ssh and tried that command twice and both times it gives the result "not found" ?? So why is this ? This is using the 8.2.2.3 S912 build by the way so assume that should still work for this ssh command.

The reasons I think this has to be a real TX9 Tanix box is that only the 3G RAM with 1G LAN device trees work with it. 3G or 2G RAM with 100 M LAN versions just wont boot. KODI 17 system info does show it has 3GB RAM too btw. Secondly I get my boxes always from my China supplier whom I have known quite well for many years now and he gets them driect from the local Shenzhen factories. He has never let me down and is very reliable and helpful too. So although it is maybe possible, I feel it is highly unlikely that it is a 100M port lower spec cloned box.

I will take a look probably later today at this subtitle Dirty Regions fix but I have never as yet heard of it. But as always time permitting I am always willing to learn and then see if it such a fix helps the freezes with 8.2.4.1 My subtitles are set to use both English and the local Thai language and as such I have to install and use a special Arialuni font for the Thai sandscript character set. I have used this font successfully since way back with much earlier Linux based KODI versions from I think KODI 12 onwards.

Oh one other small issue question. Do you know if it is possible to switch off the front panel display ?? This only works in Android boot up and simply just stays fixed with the word "boot" showing when running LE. Somewhere in the past , but cannot find it now, I am sure I read on these forum threads a suggestion to make it possible on some previous box to turn off this display panel via an ssh command.

At the moment I have enough on my plate and thus I am not doing any work playing with CoreELEC KODI 18 as yet. I will most likely wait until much later when we get the full release of Leia, or at the very least near to when that is truly imminent and the system is stable.

UPDATE

The speed check ssh command I typed in was wrong. A basic unforgiveable mistake as I omitted the space after teh cat command. Duh. Anyway now works and returns a speed on 100. Strange indeed. I wonder if maybe the ehternet patch cable form my gigabit switch to the box is maybe an old Cat 5 lead rather than a Cat5e or Cat6 cable. Will take a look later as could that be a possible cause this 100 Mb result reported or does that prove the hardware is only a 100Mb port in the TX9 Pro box. Maybe possible the decvice tree is still not with needed correct driver ??

Quote from RayW

Anyway now works and returns a speed on 100. Strange indeed. I wonder if maybe the ehternet patch cable form my gigabit switch to the box is maybe an old Cat 5 lead rather than a Cat5e or Cat6 cable. Will take a look later as could that be a possible cause this 100 Mb result reported or does that prove the hardware is only a 100Mb port in the TX9 Pro box. Maybe possible the decvice tree is still not with needed correct driver ??

Yes, cable can be the bottleneck, use Cat6...

Quote from edragon

@ Mr.Brown;

There is such a product as Apple TV 4K.

There is another product such as Sony UBP-X800 4K UHD Blu-ray player.

If you don't mind paying.

Look to the positive side (coins do have 2 sides), without these cheap boxes; there is not much options for experiment, for discovery, for tinkering, for excitement. Just stick with the well and tested and "out-of-the-box" standard experience only. Your choice.

Well Apple TV 4K has no USB ports, and I often play files from external USB drive. I dont want to miss that option.

Other than that- the only software that sort of plays everything correctly on Apple TV 4K is MrMC afaik. If apple decides for whatever reason to remove that software from the store, the device becomes a door stopper as far as Im concerned, or a pure streaming device for stuff like Netflix and Amazon Video. Apple TV doesnt even support 4K videos on Yt, cause it doesnt support VP9 codec= trash.

The Sony Bluray player- I would actually buy it if it played all formats and audio formats etc.

It looks like it doesnt support some HD audio formats in MKV containers, which is a bummer.

There is no out of the box device that plays everything without issues, thats the thing. Id pay the high price if one existed.

Thus the only hope remains that x64 devices get proper HDR support with Kodi. Without HDR, x64 Kodi hardware is already the best as far as almost everything working correctly + good upscaling with Lanczos3. The only thing that is missing is 4K HDR support and 4k DV support.

I also have the NV Shield TV, but it has a couple of its own problems as well.

Im having some issues with playing 4K remixed MKV's with dolby atmos sound. The movie starts and the sounds then plays , stops, plays, stop etc.

If I switch to AC3 sound it works. If I turn off passthrough it works.

Dolby TrueHD works with passthrough.

Using the fix lost audio version. Any ideas? I will get a debugg log if needed

Quote from wrxtasy

And I discuss conspiracy theories every night when I walk on the dark beach with the Smoking Man...

If the perfectly legal MrMC were pulled, then the award winning Infuse App would also need to go plus VLC would have to be yanked and that is never going to happen.

The one thing I will agree upon is every device had limitations. Just chose one where those limitations will not affect or annoy you too much.

It was probably a bad example with MrMC. The thing is- you kind of depend on 1 app, due to lack of alternatives, which allways sucks. You also depend on the Apple Jail System. Things cant easily be fixed/worked around by developers of Media Player apps, since ios is a closed system. If some ios update on 4K TV messes up something (like it happened quite a few times already), you can only hope that Apple bothers to fix that. If they dont- youre screwed.

With Linux or even windows, devs have a few more options to work around issues.

What I really meant was- with 4K TV and MrMC you sort of depend too much on both Apple and MrMC devs. There are no alternative media player apps that are any good. Thats never a good thing. And while its unlikely that apple removes mrmc from app store, knowing how r*tarded they somehow behave with removing apps for no logical reasons other than placing their own trash apps in better position by removing any competition, I wouldnt be willing to take the risk with 4K TV. Plus as mentioned before- it has no usb slot, no Twitch.tv app and no 4K Youtube support=trash.

Is anybody having errors using the "Library Auto updater" Addon ?

I have two Beelink Mini MXIII II boxes that gives me errors when I install it.

The auto update doesn't work and I get errors when I try to do a manual update.

Quote from Bossman74

Is anybody having errors using the "Library Auto updater" Addon ?

I have two Beelink Mini MXIII II boxes that gives me errors when I install it.

The auto update doesn't work and I get errors when I try to do a manual update.

Set scanning library on start in Kodi settings and put

cleanonupdate command in advancedsettings.

This will clean your library on every boot. Works flawless every time.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>

<advancedsettings>
<videolibrary>
<cleanonupdate>true</cleanonupdate>
</videolibrary>
</advancedsettings>

wrxtasy :

I'd like to report some bugs in LibreELEC-S905.arm-8.2.4.2-Test2.wetekdvb.img.gz version running on a Minix U1

1) IR remote: if I press power button to shutdown the box, it goes in suspendend mode instead of shutdown.

2) If you resume from suspended mode, the audio volume is at max and you can't adjust it until you reboot.

3) The amlogic menu options to force rgb output does't work. I had to create an autostart.sh file. ( I have a 2009 Sony tv)

Anyway the overall behavior is very good and the file playing smooth. Thank you for your work

Y'all checked your temps with with these sunvell boxes? I was getting 86c just sitting idle in kodi. I slapped on a small RAM heatsink on the s912 chip with thermal paste and it dropped to 59c.

Quote from Sholander

Yes, cable can be the bottleneck, use Cat6...

Yes indeed Sholander my suspicion was correct regarding the Ethernet patch lead I was using from my Gigbit switch to the TX9 Pro box, which was indeed an old unmarked cable, so almost certainly a legacy basic Cat 5 lead. Now changed that for a Cat 5e patch lead and bingo up comes the gigbiit indicator on the swtich, the ssh speed check command now returns 1000, and on the box the Arnu Speedtest add-on returns a download of 151 Mbps, which is in line with my ISP 150 Mb fibre package ( we often get slightly more speed than we pay for here which is nice). Also that Hisense 4K 2.2GB GB file from my NAS Drive now streams to my box and plays almost perfectly with only one small buffer in the same place every time I run it (so probably a file corruption) but now fully watchable with no longer the constant buffering and sound sync losses I was getting before. Yay

I would have thought a simple CAT 5 lead would support up to my internet speed of 150 Mbps but clearly it seems that without the full gigabit connection to the gigabit LAN becuase of the old patch lead cable type then it seems that the box simply does not switch the port to gigabit mode, and that is probably normal behaviour. Also CAT 5e is also a perfectly suitable spec for Gigabit use and even possibly a little more speed too, and will thus exhibit no perfoprmance difference to Cat 6 in general use even with a full gigabit stream. However as you would know Cat 6 cable is much stronger and rugged being more armoured, and it probably will support even much higher speeds and throughput than 5e, but speeds which are curretnly not utilised. So maybe ready for next generation multi gigabuit LAN speeds maybe in the not too distant future. I do use Cat 6 cable which runs from my Computer / Comms room where the fibre optic gateway is with a big 8 port distribution gigabit switch, where it then runs outside the houese and back into my TV lounge where the main AV cabinet is and into a Gigabit 5 port swtich and then via patch leads to my TV, BluRay player, and my main and test Android boxes liek this TX9 Pro at the moment Anyway thanks for all your help and encouragement Sholander.

So I still need some help with the freezes using 8.2.4.1 with the TX9 Pro box which happens mainly when scrolling through lists in the GUI, but I have still got to find time today hopefully to try that Advance xml file DirtyRegions setting that wrxtasy suggested to see if that helps. Now I know what DirtyRegions is from the link he gave me, but just did not know of this probablty relatively recent terminolgy for such a system. Many years ago now I was aware of such a basic system of only updating small data changes with most new video frames and this continued for so many consecutive similar frames until sending a new full frame resfresh after no more than every x frames, and whenever big frame changes were detected like an entire change of scene for example or fast moving grahics. That was many years ago in the early days of digital video systems. I think even before the new millenium started and before I retired.

Oh yes and still wondering if anyone knows about switching off the front panel display which permanently shows "boot" when running LE ?? Not that important but would be nice to fix this. Anybody ??