No 4k playback via Sony STR-DN1050 on 4k beamer

Hi guys,

I'm pulling my hairs out here.

I just bought a new shiny 4k Optoma UHD35 Beamer which replaces my previous 1080p beamer.

My Raspberry Pi 4 with libreelec 9.2 is connected with HDMI to my Sony receiver and output A of the receiver is connected to the beamer.

I can only get 1080p output and no 4k whatsoever The beamer just switches to 'no signal' when starting 4k content. The gui of Kodi is set to 1080p/60 which works fine but when I try to set it to 2160p, the screen turns black with no signal.

I use a HDMI 2.0 high-speed cable to connect the beamer to the receiver. I tried connecting the beamer directly to my laptop and that works. I can play a 4k movie on my laptop and it's working.

I also have a Google Chromecast Ultra connected to the receiver and that also displays 1080p and no 4k.

I really have no idea where to look anymore...

Any ideas

Cheers,

Rob

I don't know how to set 4k/30 in LE/Kodi but I haven't changed any settings. Or do I look at the content itself for the framerate? Sorry, not a guru in this area. 4k/30 is fine. Heck, I'm fine with 4k/24 even.

My Sony 1050 should be able to handle that as far as I know right?

Is there a way to force LE/Kodi to display 4k/30?

[update]

So I tried a few things. I added 2160/24 and 2160/30 to the whitelist in Kodi. No joy. I have video display when playing a 4k movie, but only in 1080p.

So I decided to connect the Raspberry Pi to the beamer directly to see what happens. And voila, 2160p video. So basically it's my receiver which doesn't pass through the 4k signal, but it should as it is supported in the specs.

So I'm wondering if this means I'm screwed. I really need my receiver to be my main switch point as I also have a Chromecast and Playstation hooked up. Connecting the Raspberry Pi to the beamer directly isn't an option.

I'm out of ideas here. Anyone?

Quote from blueribb

Does My 4K AV Receiver Support HDCP 2.2?

I know it doesn't. But that shouldn't prevent it from passing through 4k/24 content from Kodi to the beamer, should it?

Quote from heitbaum

Looks like the 1040 and 1050 suffer the same issues 🙁. Does the AV Receiver or Sound Bar Support 4K Pass-Through? | Sony USA

I read that article, yes. I wonder why Sony lists 4k passthrough in the specs of the receiver when in fact this doesn't work - at all -. There is not a single 4k resolution image that is displayed on the beamer when connected to the receiver. Have they even tested this themselves?
I still wonder if there is some sort of combination of settings possible that makes this work...?

Quote from blueribb

I would check to see if a newer firmware was ever released for the Sony that would affect 4K Passthrough.

Also be sure to read the tip to solve your problem I posted above

Yes, I read that. Thank you. Problem is, I have 3 HDMI devices that I use and I have both a TV and a Beamer connected to the receiver (that's why I chose this model because of the dual HDMI outputs). So that is not an option.

I was thinking, since I have a Raspberry Pi 4b with dual HDMI outputs, would it work to connect output 1 directly to the beamer and output 2 to the receiver to get the audio? If so, how would I set that up in Kodi? Audio from the beamer - of course - is not an option, lol.

Quote from ghtester

Yes it's possible, at least in LE10 (don't remember if I tried it in LE 9.2.6 as well or not) to have a video on HDMI0 and an audio on HDMI1.

But the HDMI devices must be detected when Kodi starts (otherwise you would need to play with EDID etc...).

Then you should be able to configure the audio output in Kodi menu Settings - System - Audio - Audio output device

There you should see your receiver at HDMI1.

Thank you! I'll give that a shot. Need to order a second HDMI cable for that though.
It's a temporary workaround till I get my receiver working, or replaced.
I'm emailing Sony to ask why the f* they advertise something that doesn't work.
Keep u guys posted. Thanks so much so far for taking the time to respond. Much appreciated!

[update]

So I ordered a second hdmi cable and connected the second output to the receiver and the first output directly to the beamer.

It works like a charm. I can select the 2nd output in Kodi for the audio passthrough.

However, that still isn't the optimal solution because I still have no other source I can watch on the beamer other than Netflix for which I installed the addon for in Kodi.

I emailed Sony a couple of days ago but I don't have an answer yet.

Keep u guys posted.

[update]

Hi guys. So, I managed to fix it!
I gave it another shot and it took me a whole evening of fiddling around with the settings of both the Pi and Kodi, but eventually I found the solution that made it work with the latest nightly build of LibreElec 10.

It basically revolves around the config.txt which I adjusted so that the Pi doesn't call the EDID to set it's video settings (if I understand correctly). After I got 2160p/24 to work via the reciever's passthrough, some video's didn't play. Just a black screen with only sound. That was solved by upping the GPU Memory to 256MB with the gpu_mem=256 line in the config.txt file (setting it to gpu_mem=512 prevents my Pi4 to boot for some reason, although it's a maximum setting that is supported).

I also set the whitelist in Kodi to 2160p/24 as the only resolution. Now, every video plays in full 2160p! Unfortunately my receiver doesn't support HDR passthrough, so I'll probably replace my STR-DN1050 with the STR-DN1080 which does support 4K HDR passthrough. But for now, I'm a happy camper

Here's my working config.txt:

# SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-or-later
# Copyright (C) 2009-2014 Stephan Raue (stephan@openelec.tv)
# Copyright (C) 2016-present Team LibreELEC (https://libreelec.tv)
################################################################################
# Bootloader configuration
# config.txt version v1 (do not remove or change this line!)
################################################################################
# For more options and information see
# http://rpf.io/configtxt
################################################################################


# Default GPU memory split, 76MB are needed for H264 decoder
gpu_mem=256


# Disable Firmware parsing of EDID
disable_fw_kms_setup=1


# HDMI tweaks
hdmi_ignore_edid=0xa5000080
hdmi_force_hotplug=1
hdmi_force_edid_audio=1


################################################################################
# Include distribution specific config file if it exists.
################################################################################
[all]
include distroconfig.txt


# uncomment to enable infrared remote recevier connected to GPIO 18
#dtoverlay=gpio-ir,gpio_pin=18

I hope I can help someone else who ran or runs into the same problem. This thread can now be marked as SOLVED.