Apollo Lake LibreELEC Feedback

    Quote from Karussell

    I'm in the process of building a Apollo Lake LibreElec box so I can try and answer any questions once finished.

    Have you tried piotrasd's build from the Kodi forums? Intel Apollo Lake

    Looking forward to hearing how it goes for you!

    And no I haven't, I don't currently have any 10 bit content (although have passed up several that I wish I could play back now).

    I would like to play back 10 bit, but more importantly I want a stable system, so running Alpha software is about as far as I'm willing to go. I will wait until the fix comes around in some type of official release.

    Once 10bit support comes to a stable release I'll probably just go back to running stable releases so I can get maximum reliability.

    A builds have worked overall very well, but theres still the occasional hangup requiring a reboot that I suspect is due to A software.
    Reboot take all of 10 seconds, but prefer that the wife & guests can just use it without any troubleshooting at all.

    I finished building my J3455-ITX based LibreElec setup and have the following feedback.

    7.95.1 and 7.90.10 both only gave me 1024x768p and no sound through HDMI. Playback was limited to 1080p files.

    I was unable to upgrade to piotrasd's build as it said it was a different build (Intel and not generic x86_64).

    When I tried a fresh install with piotrasd's build everything works as it should. I only get 23.98 and 24hz but that's due to my v1.4 cable (I have a new one on order) only one 2160p HEVC file didn't play correctly all the rest were fine.

    Even running the user interface in 2160p everything was as fast as I wanted. I've only used it for a night but I had no freezes or reboots but i'll report back when I've spent a bit more time using it.

    A quick update.

    It looks like the issues with only getting 1024x768p wasn't to do with the LibreElec builds but was a more general problem with LibreElec>J3544-ITX>HDMI>Samsung TV

    piotrasd's build also stopped working for me and I found it was an issue with HDMI. I've now changed to DVI>HDMI and everything is working as it should. I suspect the standard LibreElec build would also work now. I will try the standard LibreElec build at some point but I just want a working system for the short term.

    Quote from CA_cabotage


    Anyone have any new feedback on Apollo Lake experience as a LibreElec box?


    I've been evaluating my NUC6CAYS with 4K HEVC dev build. Get great 4K 10bit playback at 60Hz on my Samsung UHD TV but the build is still buggy (occasional crashes, lock ups, etc). It's early but I would say the hardware has no problem with 10bit 60Hz playback (Super low load 30% RAM usage and I'd say an average of 15% - 25% processor load... the software is getting there. Looking forward to the final product!

    Edited once, last by lallhands (January 27, 2017 at 10:28 PM).

    Quote from lallhands


    I've been evaluating my NUC6CAYS with 4K HEVC dev build. Get great 4K 10bit playback at 60Hz on my Samsung UHD TV but the build is still buggy (occasional crashes, lock ups, etc). It's early but I would say the hardware has no problem with 10bit 60Hz playback (Super low load 30% RAM usage and I'd say an average of 15% - 25% processor load... the software is getting there. Looking forward to the final product!

    Cool, thanks for the feedback :)

    As you have got an UHD TV: Does it indicate somehow whether the NUC output signal (input into TV) is 8bit or 10bit? Would like to know whether the NUC does also output the 10bit decoded stream as 10bit and not as 8bit, like most devices do unfortunately.

    Edited once, last by infinity85 (January 27, 2017 at 10:18 PM).

    It is a 10bit hevc file. It's using the developmental hevc vaapi driver. I tried playing it on the Braswell which plays 8bit 4K well and it died. I can tell you that the picture quality/color depth is night and day between the 8bit file playing on the Braswell and the 10bit file playing on the Apollo Lake. Not sure how to verify the TV side of the feed but the picture is amazing!

    Look at the following link for performance.

    4_K_Play_Libre_Elec.jpg

    Quote from lallhands


    It is a 10bit hevc file. It's using the developmental hevc vaapi driver. I tried playing it on the Braswell which plays 8bit 4K well and it died. I can tell you that the picture quality/color depth is night and day between the 8bit file playing on the Braswell and the 10bit file playing on the Apollo Lake. Not sure how to verify the TV side of the feed but the picture is amazing!

    Look at the following link for performance.

    4_K_Play_Libre_Elec.jpg


    Yeah, heard that performance should be no big deal, the nuc is perfectly suited for handling all current formats :). Unfortunately I don't know either, how to confirm whether the actual output is 10bit, but this would be the most interesting thing besides HD-Audio passthrough, which still seems to be not working if using HDMI connection and 4k resolutions, if I remember it correctly from forum.kodi.tv.

    Quote from infinity85


    Yeah, heard that performance should be no big deal, the nuc is perfectly suited for handling all current formats :). Unfortunately I don't know either, how to confirm whether the actual output is 10bit, but this would be the most interesting thing besides HD-Audio passthrough, which still seems to be not working if using HDMI connection and 4k resolutions, if I remember it correctly from forum.kodi.tv.

    I have not yet tested the pass-through. I will be testing that this week through my AVR and I'll let you know. The first tests I did were direct to the TV, next I'll move it back and run it through my Onkyo in passthrough and let you know how it goes.

    Hi,

    i recently got the J3455B-ITX board running x86_64-7.90.010 and have a question for other users using this appolo lake based motherboard.

    HDMI-CEC ? Did anyone get it to work? By now i assume it's just not implemented in the boards hardware but would be good to know for sure. I can't find any reference to CEC in the asrock manuals nor on the spec page.

    cec-client-4.0.2 -l returns that it didn't find any devices :(

    Edited once, last by pbr (February 1, 2017 at 12:31 AM).

    With stable Kodi v17 just around the corner, hopefully we start seeing v19 alpha builds within the next few months! I know there's the 10 bit workaround that's already been out there for awhile now, but I'm holding out until 10 bit support at least gets worked into an official Alpha build.

    Just finished installing LE 7.95.3 on my Apollo Lake based "Voyo 'VMac' MiniPC"

    Installed in internal 32GB eMMC using these instructions by CNXSoft without any hassle.
    (Dual boot LibreELEC <-> Win10)
    Only "issue" was that I had to add 30sec. 'wait for network' delay or it started too quickly... :cool:

    So far (2 days of playing around, installng and configuring add-ons) I havent found any issues.
    Playback seems to be just fine, it plays everything I throw in...

    Unfortunately I'm not able to do any deeper tests, my NAS went 'foobar' and according to disc recovery status there is still approx +400 hrs left about rebuild/resync. :cry:
    (2 new 3TB disks will be ordered today and entire 4-drive RAID5 will be rebuilt and data restored from external backup ASAP!)

    DB sharing with 2 RPI's works out of the box (using identical 'advancedsettings.xml') on all players.

    Agree on colour... But mine is hidden anyway so it really doesn't bother me.
    I'm quite sure it's HDMI 1.4a but in my case that's not an issue.
    IMHO it's a pretty good deal.

    [EDIT]
    CNXSoft has the (HDMI) specs ;

    Edited once, last by Jocke.Sve (February 21, 2017 at 6:03 AM).

    I am running LE 7 (not sure which exact version) and changed my mobo to the Asrock 3455 ITX

    I can't get any display post boot. I don't want to update to Krypton. Any variant of LE ver 7 Jarvis that can work with Apollo Lake?

    Also will Dolby Atmos passthrough work with this kit or no?

    I would try using DVI if you haven't already. Mine is a mess when I use HDMI.

    Upgrading to 8 and then downgrading to 7 is a pretty straightforward job if you want to rule os out.

    Have a look here Intel Apollo Lake for HD audio chat. It seems to be a big topic.