Dolby Atmos - TrueHD - Raspberry Pi 4b possible?

1st Official Post

    Hello,

    I recently bought a new TV from LG model (LG 65 C9).

    Looking around for a HTPC that is low budget but still working great for 4K60.
    Found that RPi 4 works now with 4K60?

    My question is, can I play 4K 60hz movies AND have Dolby Atmos working on a Raspberry Pi 4 (4gb)?
    I really want to know what is needed for a Raspberry 4b to work with TrueHD / Dolby Atmos and so on.

    Thank you for your patients :angel:

    • Official Post

    Movies are normally [email protected] not 4K@60 but yes, RPi4 can do this. HDR and High-Bitrate audio are technically possible in hardware but not currently implemented in software. All current development is focussed on the Kodi v19 codebase (will be LE10) so there is subzero likelihood of current LE 9.2 release ever gaining the features.

    If you want more of that stuff today, you need to look at Intel NUC devices.

    Setting audio passthrough to a compatible receiver that can handle decoding ATMOS will indeed out put ATMOS. the Pi's don't have hardware that will output discreet channels but it will pass that stream to an external processor/amp.

    Quote from AGLyons

    Setting audio passthrough to a compatible receiver that can handle decoding ATMOS will indeed out put ATMOS. the Pi's don't have hardware that will output discreet channels but it will pass that stream to an external processor/amp.

    So if I have a 4K HDR movie with dolby atmos will raspberry passthrough this signal by kodi to my soundbar (samsung q70r)?

    • Official Post

    I think the current plan is to use GLES shaders to handle the conversion. The shaders are already well known. The plumbing to use them with the all-new RPi video pipeline is not, we (mostly the Pi Foundation folks) will need to invent and implement more new stuff. HDR is also mind-bendingly not simple so I wouldn't expect this to happen too quickly.

    • Official Post

    The upstream kernel now has 10-bit and 12-bit support queued for Linux 5.12 (and backported to the current pi kernel) which is the first step in plumbing in all the fancy stuff that uses it. The number of scenarios needed to properly support HDR, SDR, different types of media and bit-depths (in kernel, ffpmeg, and Kodi) is mind-bendingly complicated, and changes need to choreographed over a number of other SoC platforms. Once you make changes that work on one you also need to prove they work on other platforms too, so it's a slow dance with terrible music.

    • Official Post

    HEVC has been working for months (H264 is/was the hold-up). 4K is working now (not 4K60, but that's will be along eventually). HDR is complicated but will come. Upstreaming will take time.. but getting it all working comes first. We aren't going to do a formal Pi release for LE10 out of an abundance of caution (we have hundreds of thousands of Pi users) but things are moving along nicely..

    Quote from chewitt

    HEVC has been working for months (H264 is/was the hold-up). 4K is working now (not 4K60, but that's will be along eventually). HDR is complicated but will come. Upstreaming will take time.. but getting it all working comes first. We aren't going to do a formal Pi release for LE10 out of an abundance of caution (we have hundreds of thousands of Pi users) but things are moving along nicely..

    HI chewitt

    i guess its time for a offical Alpha LE 10 version :)