Official LE12 Test Images for Amlogic (Kodi-21)

This thread is for discussion of AMLGX (aarch64) development images for LE12 with Kodi 21 (Omega). There are no real-world "Amlogic" enhancements in LE12 over LE11 images so please read the previous disclaimers on what does and does not work in LE11 release announcements and avoid posting "bug reports" on hardware decoders; they are not complete code, there are known issues, and you should expect to find them. As a general rule there is a low pace of development and you should have similarly low expectations of fixes.

Official nightlies: https://test.libreelec.tv/12.0/Amlogic/

Experimental builds: https://chewitt.libreelec.tv/testing/ <= You will receive zero support on these images. They are experimental.

Enjoy

The developer who was contracted to work on the decoder went down the rabbit hole of persuing a stateless implementation. This would be awesome to have since it means no closed-source firmware blobs, but it turns out Amlogic doesn't expose a bunch of low-level stuff needed and this was not discovered until he'd already burned through 4-5 months worth of funding. There is still a strong commitment for further work (starting over with a stateful implementation) but right now the war-chest is lacking funds and we'll need to wait a while until business profits refil the coffers. It's annoying, but c'est la vie, this kind of setback does happen.

I wouldn't expect any real-world changes from LE11 images to LE12; ffmpeg and Kodi evolved a little but the underlying kernel is currently the same and that's really what dicates how things behave. I'm working up enthusiasm for a bump to Linux 6.5.x but most of the development in the kernel since Linux 6.1.x is refactoring (rearranging deckchairs on the titanic) and the early stages of adding support for new hardware generations (but nothing we'll be able to use).

I have no interest in aarch64 LE11 images. You can try to create them yourself, but there were build issues when LE12 first switched so you'll probably hit issues and need to backport things. IMHO it's not worth the effort. And LE12 nightlies will eventually turn into LE12 release images .. but with the same LARGE BOLD TEXT warnings on state and usability (nothing has really changed). The number of people using the AMLGX images continues to increase with time, but the image won't flourish without better decoders, and chasing user numbers has never really been a personal motivation or team objective.

_emanuel_ I can add them back, but no plans to upstream them as long as there's no functional difference between v1/v2 boxes. I note that there's been some movement on MIPI-DSI support (due to the MNT Reform Laptop) so it could be interesting for you to see if the 3" display on the v2 box can be got working?

_emanuel_ I picked the MIPI-DSI patches currently on the mailing list to https://github.com/chewitt/linux/commits/amlogic-6.7.y so use that branch for device-tree experiments. AFAIK the kernel does not support output on MIPI and HDMI at the same time currently, but the folks working on the MNT Reform laptop + BananaPi CM4 (A311D) module should investigate that. So focus on getting normal output on the LCD working first. NB: The two patches I didn't pick to my branch (which are important for prior-art) are:

[v8,11/12] DONOTMERGE: arm64: meson: khadas-vim3l: add DSI panel - Patchwork

[v8,12/12] arm64: dts: amlogic: meson-g12b-bananapi-cm4: add support for MNT Reform2 with CM4 adaper - Patchwork

The Khadas TS050 driver is already upstream in the kernel (hence the compatible can be used). Same for the Innolinux LCD used in the Reform laptop. You might end up needing to author a driver for the LCD panel; I'm not sure what part is used in the DB2?

EDIT: found some more useful stuff:

I think this one is a better template to follow, but with the cmd data and sequences from the MediaTek driver (which won't work as it's based on a BSP kernel source): https://github.com/torvalds/linux…-tv101wum-nl6.c

Quote from abohemo

I installed the update on Dreambox 2 and it worked efficiently all audio and video formats 1080p encoding works but 4k does not work

Known. There is a long-term effort to rework the drivers being funded by Libre.Computer, but this already had one false start and the next step needs some information from Amlogic (discussions are taking place). Until something comes to fruition G12A/B and SM1 boxes are effectively 1080p max since they software decode everything except H264 and software encode everything; hence the official release focus on older GXBB/GXL/GXM hardware which has more code support (albeit rather unfinished code).

tomaszc Thanks for the tip-off. AMLGX images should have switched to aarch64 (not x86_64) bakck in October but something was missed. This should fix that when merged https://github.com/LibreELEC/actions/pull/71 .. I rarely use the official AMLGX releases (as I have my own) so hadn't noticed

Would you like to install the needed tools? (y/n)yes 

_emanuel_ You probably need to type 'y' not 'yes' so it didn't install anything (and so it's still missing and the build fails).