What "box" to buy ??

    From MCE, WMC, XBMC, building HTPC's, TV/internet providers implementing DRM from clear/unencrypted QAM. Adding to our already complicated hardware choices ARC & CEC also play an important roll.

    Selecting a TV manufacture has also become an increasingly important factor too. It's not enough taking into account ARC, CEC, OS, but does the TV allow HDMI passthrough without disabling CEC. LG's had this issue before releasing the most recent update.

    My Pi's (9.2.7) have become as important as my HVAC.

    Service provider for TV/internet: FiOS/Frontier (Netgate 1100 firewall/router + Ubiquiti access points).

    TV signal distribution: 4x HD Home Run Primes w/ rented Cable Cards.

    For viewing 4k/HDR content I just let the TV streaming apps handle it. My TV's consist of Hisense Android & LG's WebOS chosen for compatibility with Yamaha AVR's and of course Pi's. Including my use of Pi HiFi-Berry hat-boards w/ TOSLINK 9" touchscreens.

    Most importantly, LibreELEC.

    Select your hardware based on your other needs.

    Quote from chewitt

    ...an RPi4 is a solid daily-driver.

    chewitt , does RPi4B (2GB RAM) play AV1 video reliably? (I take it as granted that it does play reliably HEVC, up to 10bit.)

    PS: I am only interested in 1080p@60Hz, the capabilities of my current Panasonic TV. I also have a PC monitor reaching 2560x1440p@120Hz which I would like to use occasionally as output device, so I would appreciate an answer on that too. I am not at all interested in 4K (not until 4K video files shrink to sizes below 1GB), except if the viewing experience for a 720p/1080p file is better on a 4K screen than it is on a 1080p screen.

    Edited once, last by DiMag (January 27, 2023 at 12:18 PM).

    Quote from DiMag

    Does RPi4B (2GB RAM) play AV1 video reliably? (I take it as granted that it does play reliably HEVC, up to 10bit.)

    AV1 is a new codec and there is very little hardware out there with native decoding for it (mostly Android TV boxes). So RPi4 will be forced to software decode AV1 content and I've seen RPi Foundation developers comment that SD/720p content should be in range, but not 1080p. As most of the content providers that started to offer AV1 content also provide it in H264 which an RPi4 plays easily, the lack of AV1 (and VP9) is more of a hypothetical problem than a real-world one. HEVC support on RPi4 is excellent.

    Hi,

    I'm new to the forum but have happily owned a Pi 4 with LE for over a year now.

    Now that I have more and more movies in x265/4K/24p/HDR/Atmos AND about 80 GB in size it has become hard to watch them since I get micro stutters. I am playing my movies from an external USB 3.2 harddrive (130 MB/s).

    Movies with DTS are still playing fine. Or when I switch a movie with both Atmos and DTS audio tracks to DTS it's also working fine, but Atmos combined with those high bitrates seems to be too much for the Pi's hardware, I guess?

    In addition, I finally switched to a Synology NAS which, of course, makes it even worse. Wifi hardware is pretty crappy on the Pi, I only get about 10 MB/s which is 80 Mbit/s, with my movies having about 65 Mbit/s. :D (On my laptop I almost always get 250 Mbit/s).

    So my question is which alternative device would you suggest that can handle both 4k/Atmos videos properly AND has better Wifi hardware?

    Would the Vero 4K+ be enough? It's chipset seems to be even weaker than the Pi's, but since it's all-in-one, it might be implemented better?

    The ODROID-N2+ looks pretty strong and I obvisouly could run LE nightlies, which I would prefer over OSMC.

    A NUC seems too expensive and too much hassle just for playing movies.

    Thanks for any advice!

    Quote from Knotte

    Wifi hardware is pretty crappy on the Pi, I only get about 10 MB/s which is 80 Mbit/s, with my movies having about 65 Mbit/s.

    WiFi on the Pi4 is constrained by the bus, so 80Mbit/s is pretty typical cap. A supported USB dongle with 802.11ac will get you more bandwidth (270Mbit/s is what I get with a USB dongle).

    I would try using the cache settings in Kodi's advancedsettings.xml to smooth you through high-bit rate scenes and see how that goes, this one sets up a 512MB cache (which works fine on a 2GB Pi4, but you could probably live with 256MB):

    /storage/.kodi/userdata/advancedsettings.xml:

    Code
    <advancedsettings version="1.0">
    <cache>
        <buffermode>1</buffermode>
        <memorysize>524288000</memorysize>
    </cache>
</advancedsettings>

    HOW-TO:Modify the video cache - Official Kodi Wiki

    NOTE: It says it uses 3x memorysize, from my testing this is not accurate. Maybe it is outdated documentation, not sure. From what I could tell is memorysize is the limit and then it splits the buffer into a read behind & read ahead cache. IIRC read ahead cache is 75%, read behind is 25%.

    Also make sure you followed the recommended settings for 4K/HDR:

    https://wiki.libreelec.tv/configuration/4k-hdr


    As for the Vero4K+, it's relatively old hardware (S905D SoC released in 2016). As you noted, it is weak on the CPU side, it couldn't handle software decoding of Netflix @ 1080p, if you have a SmartTV then that would be the route to go. LE is also pushing mainline, which is where Amlogic SoC's still have gaps in support for HW decoding.

    For the sake of speaking heresy and pointing out the obvious: If you're otherwise happy with the RPi4, run an Ethernet cable. You might not like cables but it's often the cheapest and better option.

    Thanks for the hints regarding network performance.

    But even if I play from my external harddrive, where streaming high bitrates is not a problem, I still get microstutters playing 4k+HDR files with Atmos. Since everything else is playing smoothly, I can only think of the SoC being the bottleneck and was wondering if you know about the Pi's limits regarding playback. It sould not be a software problem, right?

    I should try and play 4k+Atmos files with lower bitrates to verify that, but I don't think it's the bitrate but processing 4k+HDR+Atmos at the same time.

    This is NOT the Pi killer you're looking for
    The Rock 5 model B is certainly a beast, as far as ARM SBCs go.Mentioned in this video (some links are affiliate links): - Rock 5 model B: https://wiki.radx...
    www.youtube.com

    We all know and love Jeff. In this video, he is comparing small form PCs to RPI alternatives which are supposed to be faster than the RPI itself. Somewhat related to this topic i assume.

    IMHO there will only be one RPi killer, and that's another RPi :)

    RPi4 is not the best spec thing in the market, but only comparing hardware specs misses the point about RPi boards. They have massively better long-term software support, so they are reliable and continue to improve with age.

    Although bitrate is probably involved somewhere in the overall scheme of things, I'd guess internal bandwidth between IP blocks is where things are on/approaching the limit, so (repeating myself) some overclock might be helpful.

    Quote from chewitt

    IMHO there will only be one RPi killer, and that's another RPi :)

    RPi4 is not the best spec thing in the market, but only comparing hardware specs misses the point about RPi boards. They have massively better long-term software support, so they are reliable and continue to improve with age.

    Although bitrate is probably involved somewhere in the overall scheme of things, I'd guess internal bandwidth between IP blocks is where things are on/approaching the limit, so (repeating myself) some overclock might be helpful.

    What do you think about this one? I am sure you know of this, Risc-V, an open source instruction set, very different from arm i assume. I don't know if having an open source cpu would make any difference in the community. Would this thing stick?

    VisionFive 2: RISC-V Quad Core Low Cost SBC
    StarFive VisionFive 2 RISC-V SBC review, including a demo of an engineering release of Debian, and of Python GPIO control. My previous “Explaining RISC-V” vi...
    www.youtube.com

    Edited once, last by twilightened (February 2, 2023 at 5:40 PM).

    Quote from twilightened

    I don't know if having an open source cpu would make any difference in the community. Would this thing stick?

    Looking purely from programming point, CPU instruction set doesn't matter. What matters is capability (either HW video decoding or speedy CPU, etc.) and platform maturity (good mainline drivers). StarFive isn't there yet, but it's progressing.

    Question: If I were to want to replace a Cubox I.MX6 would I be better off with a RPI4 (if I can find one to purchase...where???) or a Mini-PC (e.g.: wo-we Mini-PC - NewEgg Item# 9SIAW62JNS1853)?

    I have looked at numerous RPI suppliers (per RRP web site) and none of them have stock at present (mid Feb 2023). Also, there is all the other parts needed (case, power supply, remote control receiver, anything else?)

    Newegg does have stock available and their product is basically turnkey except for the Remote Control receiver. .

    Is there any easy solution for Remote Control Receiver for either RPI4 or MiniPC that works well?

    Thanks


    Chewitt,

    Thank you very much for the info about the Flirc-IR-Receiver and the rpilocator site, however every item on the two page list on rpilocator was Out of Stock....

    That's why I'm also looking at the mini-pc I linked. It appears to be a Celeron, Gemini Lake, N4020 up to 2.8 GHz. 4Gb memory, 128 Storage, plenty of builtin IO including wifi (up thru ac), Gig Ethernet, USB (including C), fanless, built-in MicroSD slot, expandable memory and storage. It says it supports up to 4k video which is nice to have for future. Nothing I've got is there (yet).

    Thanks again

    Sooo, I am now running the Odroid N2+ with 2 GB and my H265/4k/HDR/Atmos videos are finally playing as smoothly as they should. This thing is a beast with 50% more power in the CPU Benchmark add-on, and I guess the whole hardware is just way more powerful.

    As suggested by chewitt I also tried overclocking the Pi 4 according to https://forum.libreelec.tv since I am running it in their great passively cooled case:

    • arm_freq=1950
    • gpu_freq=650
    • over_voltage=5

    But it did not help with the stuttering.

    Since LibreELEC is only in alpha stadium for the Odroid and does not play those H265 videos at all for me, I switched to CoreELEC, which is identical and running perfectly so far.

    So it could also be that CoreELEC has a "better" or just different (since it's a different SoC) implementation of decoding high-end H265 files?

    But I guess I am in the wrong forum from now on. :saint:

    Just wanted to let everyone know who are still looking for the "right box" to play videos like those mentioned.

    Just a final report...I purchased the Mini-PC by Wo We and it arrived Monday. I downloaded the latest stable LE for X86-64 and attempted an install....Couldn't get it to boot from the SD slot. Went into the Bios to try to get it to work and couldn't get it to boot from the SD no matter what settings I used. Finally quit and sent a chat message to Wo We about my issues. The responded that the SD uses such a different read methodology, it cannot boot. At this point, I decided to give up on it and send it back. I'm now on the wait list for a RPI 4 and hopefully that will come in before my Cubox ('s) quit...