Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W

    Hi

    My English is terrible, please excuse me.

    I have tested LE11 Nightly RPi2 20211105 and 2121110 on a Pi Zero W2 and also on Pi 3 and 3+ and on the whole it works extremely well except for 2 problems.

    1. if the Pi (no matter which one) runs YouTube, TVHeadendclient or Netflix (which works really well on the Pi Zero W2) for a few hours and then I try to run a Nash film via SMB (all versions), it hangs on the computer, unfortunately there is no error log because the system hangs.

    2. NB 2121110 only, with the local stream TVHeadend Client (SAT TV) via WLAN there is picture interference in the lower area (dropouts) after a few minutes, regardless of the resolution HW decoder active, computer does not crash. Otherwise, it has become noticeably faster, especially with the Pi Zero W2.

    I hope this helps a little for the developers.

    Hallo.
    Ich hoffe, dass es gut übersetzt ist.


    Ich habe eine Frage. Netflix auf Pi 0 2 W

    Ist die Auflösung bei der Wiedergabe 1080p? Oder 720p?

    This is an important part of my purchase of Pi 0 2 W.

    ㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡㅡ

    Hi.

    I hope it's translated well.

    I have a question to ask you. On pi zero 2 w, Netflix...

    When you play it, is the resolution 1080p? Or 720p?

    This is an important part when I buy pi zero 2 w.

    kim_j_m The Netflix add-on can provide 1080p resolution, see here.

    No idea whether the RPi Zero 2 W can handle such a resolution. This takes more than just playing 1080p. The stream has to be decoded first, which needs additional processing power. Investigate this, or buy an RPi 4 to be sure.

    Sorry I was offline for a couple of days.

    So the Pi Zero 2 W has about the same performance as the RPI 3b but less RAM, Netflix runs on the Pi Zero 2 W with 720P (with me) as well as on the 3B. Unfortunately, I don't get a higher resolution from Netflix. I haven't tried RPI4 yet.

    I have a Pi4 running LE 10 w/ JellyCon and just for kicks, I decided to try the same config on a recently acquired zero-2.

    Using the 2021.12.01 nightly build, I was thrilled to discover that it booted fine and ran Kodi (UI was a little slower than Pi4) and it proceeded to play 1080p MP4 and 1080p MKV X264 files with no problems.

    Unsurprisingly, the zero-2 choked on 1080p MKV X265 (HEVC) files, presumably due to lack of HW acceleration.

    The zero-2 also failed to launch JellyCon, which I need to check in the logs, but suspect it's an OOM issue.

    Sadly the latter is a deal breaker for me (losing sync between devices), but it was a fun experiment, and hoping we'll see a faster CPU and 1GB of RAM in future iterations of the zero.

    Edited once, last by apn64 (December 5, 2021 at 9:40 AM).

    Sorry, I don't have a Netflix account, so didn't test that.

    I edited my post (above) to add the 1080p designation, since that's all I tested.

    Since the zero-w may be able to handle a lower bitrate, I'll find a 720p MKV X265 (HEVC) file to test, and on the off-chance it's not OOM, overclocking the zero-2 may help.

    OK, so I finally got around to testing a 720p MKV X265 (HEVC) file with the 2021.12.01 LE nightly build and sadly, it's a no go :(

    The audio came through fine, but no video; just the spinning circle and kodi stuck on the screen. The UI was still working and after playing the file for a few minutes I was able to stop playback from the remote and return to the kodi menu screen.

    I was looking for the /boot/config.txt to attempt to overclock my zero-2w, but I guess the folder/file are not used in LE, so I need to look for another way.

    You should forget about HEVC.

    The ZeroW2 is basically an underclocked Pi3B with less RAM.

    At launch of Pi3, HEVC software decoding was very bad, basically unusable. Eventually limited HEVC playback became possible, due to highly optimized decoder (some functions were hardware assisted).

    These optimizations were discarded for Kodi 19. Therefore from LibreElec 10 onwards, Pi3 HEVC capability takes a permanent step backwards.

    If you own an old Pi3B/+ you have the option to remain on LE9 if you want to keep the old HEVC capability. With Pi ZeroW 2 no such option exists, since LE9 does not support it.

    If you want a small, cheap device for HEVC, forget about the Pi Zero W 2. Wait for the Pi4A, which will (presumably) have same hardware decoder as big brother.