Hardware recommendation with hardware AV1?

patl · July 15, 2022 at 4:13 PM

Yes I know, "closed as opinion-based". Bear with me.

My set-top box is an RPi2 that is starting to fail, so I am in the market for a replacement. I only use it for video playback and I want it to "just work". I would like to go through this process as infrequently as possible, so I want something a little future-proof, which makes me think I should demand hardware support for AV1 decoding.

As near as I can tell, my options are (a) CoreELEC with Amlogic, with its downrev kernels and proprietary drivers; or (b) LibreELEC with... um... OK I don't see it.

So, questions:

(1) Am I unreasonable to want hardware AV1 decoding? Are there other things I should have on my list for "future proof"?

(2) Do any LibreELEC-supported SBCs have hardware AV1 decoding, either today or coming soon?

(3) Is my desire for (2) at odds with "I want it to 'just work'"?

Thanks!

**chewitt** · July 15, 2022 at 8:50 PM

AV1 is still rather new so there isn't much 'open' hardware supporting it in circulation and the few 'streaming' sources that offer AV1 content also support H264/VP9 so it's "nice to have" not "must have" for now. The RK3588 SoC is promising; but boards for that are only just starting to be released, they aren't particularly cheap (not that anything is these days) and nobody wrote V4L2 drivers for the AV1 codec in the SoC yet (although there are firm plans to write it and we know the Collabora developer who has the task for a commercial project).

Hardware recommendation with hardware AV1?

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