How do I know if a machine supports CEC?

    I've come to the conclusion that the RPi4 (running LibreELEC-RPi4.aarch64-12.0-nightly-20230520) will not do what I want - record 2 programmes using my Hauppage tuner whist watching a movie. I've tried several approaches (eg record to SD card, record to USB HDD, force_turbo=1) and I get varied effects (eg audio lost, freezing, video speed up, loss of sync between audio & video) so I've decided I need to buy a more powerful machine.

    I've found the Intel page which tells me which NUCs support CEC but I can't find anything which tells me about other machines. Since other machines are generally at a lower price point than Intel I'd like to be able to consider them. Does anyone know a resource which I can use to see if a machine supports CEC before I buy it?

    Be careful on the “NUC supports CEC.” Only some do. And only fully with the pulse8 adapter. (I have a full herd of them 6,7,8,10,11,12)

    Technical Product Specifications for Intel® NUC Products
    Links to technical specifications for Intel® NUC products.
    www.intel.com.au

    Page 18 - section 3.1.1 - ref: AA in the below PDF

    https://www.intel.com/content/dam/support/us/en/documents/intel-nuc/NUC11PA_TechProdSpec.pdf

    Not all have this connector (my nuc12 does not have)

    I'm going by this information for the NUCs

    HDMI CEC Information for Intel® NUC
    Information about the HDMI CEC header for Intel® NUC products, including a description and pin numbers.
    www.intel.com

    and looking only at the onboard CEC section.

    How good is the Pulse8 adapter I've found mixed views about it whilst driving myself insane about CEC.

    I’ve mentioned it to you before but have you tried a Sat>IP tuner. Those DVB USB dongles are just a heart breaker.

    On the RPI4 you have four USB ports sharing one PCIe lane and I’ve no idea what you have attached simultaneously to your USB ports but I have a feeling that’s the source of your bottleneck.

    What I can tell you from my own setup is that the RK3328 (Rock64) and RK3399 (RockPro64) will comfortably handle CEC. I have the Sat>IP tuner and have no issues watching and recording up to 4kUHD

    <<Those DVB USB dongles are just a heart breaker.>>

    With my twin RPi3 setup it works well, it works fine on the RPi4 as long as I only record one programme

    <<On the RPI4 you have four USB ports sharing one PCIe lane >>

    This is almost certainly the problem. For testing I had Hauppage dual tuner, 3TB powered HDD, wifi keyboard dongle, ethernet

    <<and have no issues watching and recording up to 4kUHD>>

    My antique eyes would, or at least can't see the difference so why bother <G>

    You mean one dedicated RPI3 with TVH server and the other dedicated to LE. Well if it’s working on a dedicated RPI3 it should be more than be capable working with an identical setup in RPI4.

    Ensure on the LE PVR addon in the Stream Settings that HTTP is enabled and the MPEG Pass Thru profile is set as default in TVH.

    Btw you need to stop going to Specsavers. The difference with 4kUHD is very noticeable 😂

    petediscrete

    Different setup - I want to reduce it to a single box so that its easier for my wife when things go wrong - back to the old IT standby switch it off, switch it on

    <<. The difference with 4kUHD is very noticeable>>

    I politely disagree with you.

    Still looking for a way to say a box supports CEC if you know one.

    Well if you want to ease the WAF it’s gotta be a dedicated STB. Remember this is a project not a commercial product. No warranty expressed or implied. Try at your own risk (of divorce that is 😂 )

    I highlighted a solution. A combination of a dedicated Sat>IP server and any client around the house can use it. Hide it away out of sight if needs be. I gave you the settings for LE and TVH to optimise the stream playing.

    The two RK boards I mentioned above will more than capably handle any streams you can throw at them, decode your streams up to HEVC locally and handle CEC without any issues.

    This is all from personal experience but again you can keep looking and hope you make the correct purchasing decision. The choice is entirely yours.

    Remember they said the same about SD v HD. Now nobody would watch SD now if they had the choice. A correctly matched TV and PVR will demonstrate the quality of a 4kUHD picture but of course you do need the corrective lenses from an optician to match. Obviously cataracts and 4kUHD don’t really play well together (btw I’m in my 70s just in case I’m accused of ageism 😂)

    Quote from LybsterKodi

    I'm going by this information for the NUCs

    https://www.intel.com/content/www/us…l-nuc-kits.html

    and looking only at the onboard CEC section.

    How good is the Pulse8 adapter I've found mixed views about it whilst driving myself insane about CEC.

    The onboard CEC is very specific [read as - limited / useless / crippled] - it is bios based. There is a WMI exposure to the operating system via ACPI. You will not see it in LE when you start LE. I have been working on CEC / HA both in a LE development capacity, home automation and commercial automation for a few years now. Yup - CEC - leaves a lot to be desired. The Kodi implementation of CEC isn’t too bad - doesn’t do everything but depends on the special/corner cases you are trying to solve. Note: LE/Kodi does turn my TV and AVR on and off - but not via CEC. Note: I also don’t use libCEC but use the kernel CEC.

    But answering the question around the internal NUC “Pulse8” - it works fine. Caveats on CEC based on my commentary above - :) - I’d love it to make toast - but it ain’t going to.

    The last sentence copied from https://www.intel.com.au/content/www/au…l-nuc-kits.html gives it away

    Code
    The following Intel® NUC Kits have the above external CEC header and an onboard HDMI CEC controller that the BIOS controls. The onboard HDMI CEC controller only supports bidirectional power on/off control:

    petediscrete

    First, thank you for trying to help. However, as you can guess I'm not going to opt for a sat>IP tuner and I really don't care about 4KUHD (at 72 I've seen enough overhyping, but to be fair moving from SD to HD in the US was a big deal, not so much in the UK, and please do not get me started on about PC screens that need to be at 200% to have readable text).

    I'll have a look at the Rock machines and see if I can find any performance comparison.

    heitbaum

    Thanks for that - it explains the very limited command set table :(

    At least I now have some idea where I'm going and the fact that I'll need to add £40 to my budget for the Pulse8 USB adapter

    Out of interest is there any usable documentation regarding CEC out there - if there is I was searching for the wrong terms.

    Thanks for that link, it rather demonstrates the lack of any useful technical information :)

    I'm guessing you're more hardware oriented than I am (lots of years writing applications, especially database/business) and you've pointed out a weakness in the RPi ie <<On the RPI4 you have four USB ports sharing one PCIe lane >> does this also apply to the Rock machines?


    I realise this is in reference to my wife but what does WAF stand for?

    Some reading on CEC when I was puzzling it out.

    CEC-HDMI - UDOO X86 II Docs

    Thread

    cec-ctl on Generic

    I was following th thread on CEC-client on RPI. And note that the direction suggested was CEC-CTL.


    On the generic nightly matrix image it is not there. Is there a reason for that? It would be good to have cec-ctl available on the Intel NUC.

    I was reading this reference. I have some issues with the way that my CEC environment behaves, and being able to pass though commands to the CEC devices would probably give me a good workaround.

    CEC-HDMI - UDOO X86 Docs
    heitbaum
    October 27, 2020 at 10:54 AM

    It will lead you down many rabbit holes. Note: it all “might” work (and it all doesn’t) lots of caveat. But as a project it was a good learning - though deep. And my requirements were complex. Since then I have replaced much of the AV equipment - TV, AVR, NUCs - but the other hangers on are still there and work.

    My advice is if you do end up chasing the rabbit - I did. You may need to run a customised image (I have been upstreaming much - but some of my corner case automation stuff is not suitable for upstream.)

    Quote from LybsterKodi

    Thanks - this is reminding me of IBM 4341 mainframe assembler - that made my head hurt as well.

    Yup. You’re in the right mindset now :)

    This is probably the best answer once you deal with the hardware purchase. - “The Kodi implementation of CEC isn’t too bad - doesn’t do everything but depends on the special/corner cases you are trying to solve.”

    I probably paint a more pessimistic picture than the normal use case. But I was trying to do all that crazy :)

    You’ll have similar latencies across all SBCs when it comes to USB usage. All I have attached to USB on the Rock64 is a 256Gb stick for recording, a DAC feeding two monoblock amps, and a mini keyboard/mouse. No USB hubs here. Keeps trailing wires to a minimum.

    That setup doesn’t overburden the processor and leaves it to do what it does best. I think many user’s expectations are high when it comes to SBCs. At the end of the day the SBC is a tinkering board for project creation as is LE. Not everything is going to work as expected but when it does it’s a bonus.

    I can see why many users opt for the RPI. Most of the heavy lifting is done by others. Personally I opted for the RK range as the graphics are superior in my opinion and everything I throw at it just works. I wouldn’t recommend one SBC over another. All I can do is give feedback on my own experience.

    I linked that post just to outline the emphasis on Pulse Eight when it comes to CEC.

    Yes WAF (Wife Adjustment Factor) is an endearing term from yesteryear, found mainly in the project world when an attempt was being made to migrate the project from work bench to daily use in the home. Actually home automation projects were at the forefront for this back in the day. If it took two remote controls to switch off a light v walking across the room to press a switch the WAF was low and it was back to man cave 😂

    heitbaum

    Just to double check - if I buy a Pulse8 USB - CEC Adapter I can hook it onto any PC and it will work? Or are there more gotchas? I have an old HP Compaq 8510W I can use to try things out on before committing to a better spec SFF PC.

    I'm reading the Amazon reviews and I found this

    Needs separate power USB connection to work

    in a 1 star review and it baffles me. I know I need to plug it into a USB port but "separate power"?