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    • Official Post
    Quote from sweetthdevil

    Hello there,

    Thank you for the information and the hard work provided by the libreELEC team!

    May I just confirmed that my understanding of the announcement is correct, LE v10 which will run Kodi 19 - Matrix will be available for Wetek Hub (Soc S905-H revision C) done the line?

    Also, following the announcement from coreELEC to stop supporting amlogic S905 & S912 due to their kernel not being maintained by amlogic any longer. Is there plan to stop supporting those SOC in the near future?

    The statement makes it very clear (or so I thought) that there will be no LE10 release for Amlogic devices. Nightlies exist but mainline kernel support for Amlogic chips is not where it needs to be; there are challenges with hardware coding. I've been poking mainline u-boot support for the older WeTek devices and now have Play2 working well (within the caveats on hardware decoding) but I've been unable to get the Hub to boot so haven't done any work on it in some time - I need to dig up the vendor files and test the hardware with those again. If the status of decoding improves we can release something in the future. S912 is easier since it has more CPU grunt and you can disable problem hardware decoderss and use software decding on 1080p content (forget 4K). Same for newer chipsets with have even more CPU power. There is currently nobody working on the hardware decoding as I don't write code and nobody is funding commercial development. So not likely to see progress anytime soon, but we'll get there at some point. The images in my team share Index of /testing/ are a little more usable then current nightlies due to experimental ffmpeg work. Note - the "box" image is the one to use with any device that uses vendor u-boot.

    VC1 is a weird (and also quite niche) codec and software decoding (which is using ffmpeg) is poor - even on higher performance desktop CPUs. Best recommendation is to avoid vc1 or transcode the files to H264 or H265.

    I just talked to RPi devs and did a few quick tests and it looks like it could be possible to get VC1 hardware decoding back on RPi2/3 - we can't promise anything at that point though.

    so long,

    Hias

    Quote from chewitt

    The statement makes it very clear (or so I thought) that there will be no LE10 release for Amlogic devices. Nightlies exist but mainline kernel support for Amlogic chips is not where it needs to be; there are challenges with hardware coding. I've been poking mainline u-boot support for the older WeTek devices and now have Play2 working well (within the caveats on hardware decoding) but I've been unable to get the Hub to boot so haven't done any work on it in some time - I need to dig up the vendor files and test the hardware with those again. If the status of decoding improves we can release something in the future. S912 is easier since it has more CPU grunt and you can disable problem hardware decoderss and use software decding on 1080p content (forget 4K). Same for newer chipsets with have even more CPU power. There is currently nobody working on the hardware decoding as I don't write code and nobody is funding commercial development. So not likely to see progress anytime soon, but we'll get there at some point. The images in my team share Index of /testing/ are a little more usable then current nightlies due to experimental ffmpeg work. Note - the "box" image is the one to use with any device that uses vendor U-boat

    thank you for your reply, your announcement was giving me hope that my box wouldn't be redundant. Although I can carry on using Kodi 18 for a while I will have to have a look for an alternative.

    Thank you

    • Official Post
    Quote from sweetthdevil

    thank you for your reply, your announcement was giving me hope that my box wouldn't be redundant. Although I can carry on using Kodi 18 for a while I will have to have a look for an alternative

    The "box" image should still boot a hub (using vendor u-boot on emmc) if you want to experiment with a spare SD card, but I can't claim to have tested with 1GB devices recently and as noted there are some challenges with hardware decoding. Using WP2 for a bit recently it's annoyingly close to being quite good, but also far-enough away that the initial euphoria of booting a modern kernel etc. wears off.

    RPi4 is my recommendation for replacements. There are technically better spec'd things but the software support on Pi hardware (as in, the level of people and engagement in supporting the software) is in a different league to everything else.

    Thank you for your reply.

    I am indeed looking at purchasing a RPi4 - however, I have two fairly recent smart tv and I am questioning the need to have an additional box to run Kodi to play a video when the tv's are capable of playing it themselves.

    The point of Kodi for me is to keep track of watch status from my library. I am looking at buying a RPi4 to upgrade my NAS (an old Seagate GoFlex running Archlinux) and install Plex Media Server. I then just have to install the plex app on both TV and that will achieve my requirement of keeping track of my watch status and will only require one purchase.

    That should also be able to run Owncloud (or similar) that I wanted to do since Google Photo have limited the storage space available.

    • Official Post
    Quote from sweetthdevil

    I am looking at buying a RPi4 to upgrade my NAS

    Just a tip... A RPi-4B can also run Ubuntu Server or Raspberry Pi OS, on which you can install MariaDB or MySQL server. This will also enable you to have Kodi synchronize metadata as well as watched states / resume points. But if Plex is your choice of weapon, I'm sure that will also work.

    I would however use the RPi4's option to boot from USB. If you attach a SSD via a USB30/SATA adapter, you will not only have better data stability (TRIM support), but also much faster write speeds. SDcards are notoriously slow at writing files.

    Hi thank you for your reply.

    I already have MariDB installed on my current NAS to synchronise my metadata and watched status across my numerous Kodi install.

    The plan for the RPi-4B was to boot from the microsd card I have coreELEC installed on (SanDisk Extreme Pro 128GB microSDXC Memory Card + SD Adapter with A2 App Performance + Rescue Pro Deluxe 170MB/s Class 10, UHS-I, U3, V30) with write speed of 90mb/s. The SSD now are fairly cheap any way so I could always upgrade moving forward if the need is there.

    The only benefit I see with Plex is that I can install Plex app directly onto the TV (no need to buy further hardware) or onto the computer.

    With my Wetek Hub no longer supported moving forward, I have either the choice to keep Kodi 18 across as I have that shared database. Or I have to purchase a new box for the living room to replace my Wetek Hub and another one for the bedroom. And that leave me with my old current NAS that isn't powerful enough to run Owncloud.

    Quote from chewitt

    Using WP2 for a bit recently it's annoyingly close to being quite good, but also far-enough away that the initial euphoria of booting a modern kernel etc. wears off.

    that sounds awesome! Do you have any guess on if/when it would be possible to get wp2 on a good and stable LE10?

    • Official Post

    There are no plans for stable Amlogic releases because non-trivial Linux kernel driver work is required to move things forwards and there is basically nobody doing the work. I keep plugging away at general areas of Amlogic support to keep the codebase current with kernels etc. but I don't write driver code. Until that status quo changes, it remains super-fast and efficient standardised code that is annoying close to being usable, but ultimately deficient in the core media areas Kodi depends upon most.