1080p HD Playback Stuttering

1st Official Post

    Hi. I have and old Foxconn NT-3500 net-top PC I re-purposed to use as a kodi box.

    I am having trouble when playing back anything 1080p The video plays fine for about 5-25 seconds then sometimes stutters for a few frames as if it is struggling.

    SD content plays fine (480i / 480p / 576i / 576p and even 720p).

    It happens with all formats I have tried. AVI / MPEG2 / MP4 / MKV using H264 AVC or H265 and also on Blu-Rays played in the blu-ray drive and live TV from TV Headend.

    I thought it was that the box was just too low power. So when I got my new TV and couldn't use my DVD player any-more I built a new HTPC with a Blu-ray drive. The HTPC has an Intel i5 3470 / 4GB RAM and a 30GB SATA SSD.

    I am still getting the problem with stuttering HD playback on this new box!!

    Now interestingly, when I installed Ubuntu 20.04 and Kodi 18.6 on the new HTPC as a test, the issue is not present and all HD content plays back fine. So the hardware is fine and the problem is only with LibreElec, I have tried 9.2.2 and recently updated to 9.2.6.

    Can anyone advise how I can find the cause of this problem?

    I haven't had time to find a log file yet, however I did notice that I have no stuttering with MKV 1080p / 4k files being played back, so far the issue is only with MP4 and MPEG2 and live TV / recordings which are also in MPEG 2

    Someone recently send me a link to the Broadcom Crystal HD bcm70012. It is a hardware decoder card for H254 video.

    Is this compatible with LibreElec?

    Has anyone tried one?

    Quote from p_g_787

    Is this compatible with LibreElec?

    LibreELEC is not in the habit of infinitely supporting older/prehistoric hardware.

    If Ubuntu+Kodi works for you, then simply stick to it. Ubuntu has a larger video driver pool to choose from than LibreELEC.

    The AMD E-350 APU has had good results in certain older LE releases, but based on the number of users of such ancient graphic cards, it's simply not worth the time and effort to keep up support for such hardware.

    Most of your video formats should work on a AMD E-350, but a HEVC/h265 video will definitely stutter on your Foxconn box.

    Quote from p_g_787

    Someone recently send me a link to the Broadcom Crystal HD bcm70012. It is a hardware decoder card for H254 video.

    Is this compatible with LibreElec?

    It was supported in the mk1 AppleTV images that I used to create (2011-2016 in OpenELEC days) but support in Kodi was dropped in Kodi Krypton (v17) and there are no plans to resurrect that or restore support in LE images.