Should I change to Rpi 4B?

1st Official Post

    Hello.

    5 years ago I bought Rpi (3B I suppose) with HiFiBerry. It's working great.

    But I want to install netflix plugin and for that I need to reinstall whole system (don't know why but even Youtube plugin is not working).

    Raspberry Pi 4B is out and I'm thinking of upgrading whole system - once again with LibreElec. So I have few questions.

    1. Should I upgrade Rpi 3 to Rpi 4? (For now I don't want to use 4K, but maybe in 3-5 years I'll change my TV).

    2. Which version 2GB or maybe 4GB?

    3. Is HiFiBerry compatibile with new Rpi?

    3. Will netflix work without editing any config files? (I don't use linux).

    Hi,

    I just upgraded from RPI 3B to RPI 4B 2Gb RAM.

    From my two weeks experience it is a wast of money at this moment if you are on tight budget: you will need also: RPI4 case, another HDMI cable with mini HDMI, power source with USBC or just USBC adapter and SD card.

    For mine RPI 3B it is still working good for: ITPV, Movies from LAN & YouTube.

    RPI 4B it is faster yes but still have few bugs on drivers and sw; USB boot it is not working yet; even if you require 4K this will not work at this moment without glitches, if you read first on raspberrypi.org forum, topics about RPI4 you can decide it better.

    I think this RPI4 will stay on 1080p resolution at least 1 year or forever and TV will upscale to 4K so no difference here from 3B/3B+.

    On RPI 3B and 3B+ you don't need to use any more SD cards, you can put your OS on USB stick and use it, advantage is USB stick will last longer and it is faster than SD card.

    Problems I found on my RPI4 at this moment in LibreElec:

    ( Kodi interface and resolution is 1080p at 25Hz connected on HDMI cable with LG TV 4K 55UK6750, higher resolution and refresh are white-listed )

    - browsing in kodi interface/menu it is not smooth like in 3B, it shutter and looks like a broken movie

    - tested on RPI4 from my lan server one movie mkv 3840x1632 and it look really bad with artefacts on top of the screen, same movie played directly on TV with SSIPTV it looks very good.

    - mini HDMI connectors on RPI4 board looks very fragile, my advice is to not use a HDMI adapter just use good cable.

    edit:

    - mouse is not working...

    If the cost it is not a problem for you then you can go for RPI4 minimum 2Gb RAM and hope the drivers and sw will be improved this year.

    Edited once, last by myrpi (April 11, 2020 at 2:06 PM).

    • Official Post

    RPi4 is not perfect, it's had 10-months of development vs. RPi3 which is essentially fettled over 8-years now. In the near future we're about to reinvent the wheel with a move to GBM/V4L2 which will likely add bugs while also moving the Pi codebase forwards and (for RPi4 owners) closer to having 10-bit output and HDR and HD audio things supported. There is a lot of effort being expended on this.

    I've been using one for year now (since before launch) as the family daily driver and have zero issues in daily use. I also couldn't care about the lack of USB boot because none of the USB sticks I posess are anywhere near the speed of a decent SD card and I've only had one SD card failure in the last 5-years (completely due to physical abuse) so I don't loose sleep over the inevitable probability that one day one might die. All the media is on an NAS anyway. I also run the GUI at 1080p60 with a BT remove and I don't really notice any artefacts or stutttering during navigation. I can't imaging why anyone would want to run the GUI at 1080@25. I do notice the speed difference on the rare occasions I dig an RPi3 out for testing. I'm not sure that I have done anything unusual or special in setup.

    I am running GUI at 1080x25Hz because IPTV channels are on the same refresh, movies I have are also on the same refresh, only YouTube clips are displayed at 30Hz, I think is no need for higher refresh only for interface.

    • Official Post

    Kodi automatically doubles the refresh rate of media when appropriate modes are available, so PAL content will use 1080p50 transparently as if it were 1080p25 and YouTube content at 1080p30 will play at 1080p60 (each frame is simply rendered twice). It will make no visible difference to playback, but having the GUI run at higher refresh rates allows transitions to be rendered smoother. I read "I forced the display to 25Hz" as "I forced stuff to look bad" .. and then you're complaining that GUI navigation looks bad.

    Hi,

    I do have a Rpi 4. But Libreelec is installed on a Rpi 2 for now. How easy would it be to move my Libreelec setup from the 2 to the 4? It seems that just moving the SD card from one to the other is not enough? Would I lose anything if I export my Libreelec to settings from the GUI and import it back on the new one (parameters, add-ons,...)?

    Thanks

    I'm running RPi4. Originally got the 4Gb version, but that was WAY over kill. Nothing came close to filling that, though I did have limited memory issues on my Pi3 so I bought another Pi4 2Gb version and swapped out (will use the 4G for another project). The network bandwidth of a proper Gb connection has been very useful in preventing some of the stuttering I had on the Pi3. Overall, I've been very pleased with the Pi4 over my Pi3 in terms of performance and playback. A lot of videos I had issues playing on the RPi3 have worked flawlessly for me on the RPi4.

    The one thing I do need to do is dig into buffer optimizations. I've assigned 512GB for GPU and the rest of the 1.4Gb to main memory. Some of the bluray demos and super HQ youtube videos I downloaded from the internet to stress the Pi4 will play perfect, pause as it buffers, play, pause, play, repeat.... My Pi3 will play them smoothly, but the video is unwatchable. Running a every 5 second check to grab gpu/memory usage and it's barely using the memory. There's a lot of guides for RPi2/3 memory buffer tuning, but I've not seen any explicitly for RPi4 and haven't had the time to test the same changes on my RPi4.

    I will also say that on every update, I've noticed big improvements on the RPi4. If interested, I can post some of the performance metrics I've taken.

    Quote from Alomon

    Hi,

    I do have a Rpi 4. But Libreelec is installed on a Rpi 2 for now. How easy would it be to move my Libreelec setup from the 2 to the 4? It seems that just moving the SD card from one to the other is not enough? Would I lose anything if I export my Libreelec to settings from the GUI and import it back on the new one (parameters, add-ons,...)?

    Thanks

    For further reference, I would advise anyone who wants to migrate from a Rpi to another to install a fresh Libreelec on the new one and use the backup/restore function of Libreelec. That worked perfectly for me from a Pi2 to a Pi4, just had to adjust some add-ons but it was no big deal.

    Edited once, last by Alomon (April 26, 2020 at 9:40 PM).

    Quote from Alomon

    Hi,

    I do have a Rpi 4. But Libreelec is installed on a Rpi 2 for now. How easy would it be to move my Libreelec setup from the 2 to the 4? It seems that just moving the SD card from one to the other is not enough? Would I lose anything if I export my Libreelec to settings from the GUI and import it back on the new one (parameters, add-ons,...)?

    Thanks

    make a backup in libreelec rpi2 and put that back in libreelec rpi4. there are some topics with steps how to do it

    I upgraded from an s912 box to the pi4. It does load, scrape, and play media quicker however the s912 handles 4K and hdr which the pi4 can not do. Currently unless you want a slightly faster load time there is little benefit to the pi4. It doesn’t seem like support for hdr is coming anytime soon either.

    Hi,

    I have a P4B with the last Libreelec installed.

    To get better and 5.1 sounds with my home cinema amplifier, i bought a DIGI+PRO soundcard. After many tests and reading topics, it's not posible to use these soundcards with PI4. I seems to be an issue from the driver. We have to wait for ...:(