LibreElec and NVidia / AMD GPU's, current status

    Quote from darkside40

    Okay so Nvidia seems a nogo. What about AMD?

    Another option is to wait for the Intel discrete card. They should be out soon. Intel's Linux drivers are excellent. AMD is ok, but drivers are not nearly as good as Intel's.

    Quote from smp

    Another option is to wait for the Intel discrete card. They should be out soon. Intel's Linux drivers are excellent. AMD is ok, but drivers are not nearly as good as Intel's.

    Question is If Intel will have a Low end Card...

    You don't want a 150W Card for $xxx in your HTPC.

    Regards

    Nicolas

    An Intel Card would only be an option if it had the same performance like a current 200€ AMD or Nvidia card.

    My setup should be suitable as HTPC and for Gaming, so a GPU which is just as powerful as Intels iGPU is no option.

    • Official Post
    Quote from Nicolas

    Question is If Intel will have a Low end Card...

    You don't want a 150W Card for $xxx in your HTPC.

    I don't see an Intel discrete card coming into the mainstream market for any time soon. It has been vaporware for so long now.

    I now have a J5005 ITX as (ht)pc that runs Ubuntu 20.04 and Kodi, which in total uses from 8-20 Watts, going from idle to heavy video processing scenes. I don't use HDR content yet (don't have such modern TV either), I do my gaming on the office PC or the Nvidia Shield.

    I have a simliar setup, a quite modern Intel NUC as HTPC and a small Gaming PC.

    But being a Geek i would like to have both in one machine ;) which does not seem to be easy if you dont want to go the Microsoft way.

    Quote from darkside40

    I have a simliar setup, a quite modern Intel NUC as HTPC and a small Gaming PC.

    But being a Geek i would like to have both in one machine ;) which does not seem to be easy if you dont want to go the Microsoft way.

    Yes, I think Windows ist curently the only way If you want an all in one gaming HTPC Setup with 4k HDR, HD Audio and stuff.

    Which Nuc do you have?

    smp Made a build for Gemini Lake (Intel 4xxx HD 600) which can so HDR.

    Intel true 10bits/HEVC/HDR support... ?

    Regards

    Nicolas

    Edited once, last by Nicolas (June 23, 2020 at 11:34 AM).

    Quote from Klojum

    I don't see an Intel discrete card coming into the mainstream market for any time soon. It has been vaporware for so long now.

    ...

    I do my gaming on the office PC or the Nvidia Shield.

    That's what i thought too about the Intel Card. And in recent News they only Talk about high end 150 to 300w Video cards for gaming. But, I believe it when they are available.

    I don't have a shield but, AFAIK it can do 4k HDR with Kodi and all the stuff darkside40 wants to do plus Game Stream or however Nvidia calls it should work?

    Regards

    Nicolas

    Quote from monarc

    Coming with the NVIDIA 450 Linux driver series besides CUDA 11.0 RC compatibility are:

    - HEVC 10/12-bit "decode only" support has been added to the VDPAU driver

    Well, that was certainly unexpected.

    They don't happen to say what hardware will be required? It might might make a DDR3 version of the GT 1030 a worthwile investment for those with older Intel hardware who just want to add the newer decode support. They can't be too expensive used on ebay...

    Quote from chewitt

    Hmm, the VDPAU announcement of 10/12-bit support is interesting. If it works on a broad range of cards it might result in a stay of execution. If it only works on the latest cards it might not be so appealing (our stats show nvidia is mostly legacy users). It might also require someone to tweak Kodi in some areas; and there's low desire to work on nvidia things among the current core Kodi devs.

    I wonder if there is a bit of a chicken and egg effect there.

    The community has been saying VDPAU is dead, and that Nvidia is stubborn uncooperative and suggesting Intel hardware for such a long time now, that I wonder if that has just driven people to move away from Nvidia.

    If Nvidia support is coming back with this driver, maybe the userbase will come back too?

    I wonder what it would take to add this to LibreElec. Just a drop in Nvidia driver update?

    I've also never quite understood the difficulty in adding NVDec, considering Kodi uses FFMPEG for playback, and FFMPEG supports NVDec. But that may be a question for another thread...

    Quote from smp

    Not gonna happen. "Userbase" wants HDR which will only work with Kodi-GBM. Nvidia does not support GBM.

    If you say so.

    I've heard people going on about HDR for years, but I've never quite understood what the big deal was.

    I figured it was just a silly fad, like those 3DTV glasses. :p

    Quote from mattlach

    I've heard people going on about HDR for years, but I've never quite understood what the big deal was.

    The big deal is that ~90% of the 4K UHD stuff you find on the internet is HDR. So if you have a 4K HDR capable TV you'd want your LE device to be able to pass through the HDR metadata.

    • Official Post
    Quote from mattlach

    I've also never quite understood the difficulty in adding NVDec, considering Kodi uses FFMPEG for playback, and FFMPEG supports NVDec. But that may be a question for another thread...

    In the last 2.5 years Team Kodi has been slowly and successfully driving the Linux codebase towards common standards (GBM/V4L2) and away from vendor-proprietary interfaces (VDPAU, Amcodec, iMX6, OMXplayer, etc.) so there is low interest in adding another nvidia vendor proprietary interface (NVDEC) to Kodi. It's probably not hard to do, but someone has to do it, and even if it's done it's unlikely to be accepted into the codebase.

    Quote from mattlach

    If you say so.

    I've heard people going on about HDR for years, but I've never quite understood what the big deal was.

    I figured it was just a silly fad, like those 3DTV glasses. :p

    HDR goes hand-in-hand with UHD/4K. Lots of people want to watch UHD content on their UHD TVs, and HDR->SDR downconversion is average at best, and terrible at worst. Watching HDR content (which is the bulk of UHD content) really needs HDR output.

    HDR, to me, is far more compelling than 3D. When handled properly in post production it adds a lot in subtle ways to a programme. For live sport it adds even more because you get a less compromised view (watching football with a pitch, or Wimbledon with grass, half in shade and half in bright sunshine looks a LOT better in HDR than a constantly re-irised SDR feed)