Dolby Atmos with Raspi 5

Even Pi4 can play HDR.

Quote from Stefan M.

Hello,

I have used the combination *elec and Raspbis for quite some time to up-smarten the TVs of various Friends and Family Members. For myself I have always used my Windows Desktop with an NVIDIA graphics card, which I could use to play back Dolby Atmos & Co. The windows desktop has been finally replaced by a Linux desktop, the pc with the NVIDIA card is - ATM - only switched on to play games and view videos. I would like to reduce that to "to play games" and someday to "not at all".

I have read that the new Raspberry Pi 5 supports HDR. That sounds like a good excuse before the treasury committee of my mind to buy a new Raspi (I have enough old ones).

Can the Pi 5 with Libreelec and KODI play back HDR and Dolby Atmos in its full glory? Is this combination fast enough to decode h264-4k-Content, which is unfortunately not supported in hardware any more? (Stupid decision, can't really believe that a little bit of downwards compatibility would have changed the prince more than a few cents)

Yours sincerely

Stefan

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Raspberry Pi 4B plays 2160p HDR (HDR10 and HLG) HEVC content with HD Audio passthrough (DTS HD MA, Dolby True HD, including Atmos extensions etc.) - such as UHD BDs. Would expect the Pi 5 to have the same functionality.

The hardware h.264 decoder in the Pi4B and earlier topped out at 1080p (it's never supported 4K h.264 hardware decoding - so it's not a case of 'not supported in hardware any more' as it never was). The SoC functionality that supported h.264 decoding on earlier Pis was largely unchanged since the first Pi was released AIUI.

AIUI there are reports that h.264 2160p content encoded at the kind of bitrates used for web-based content are decoding in software - at least at 2160p24 level. 1080p h.264/VC-1/AV1 all software decodes OK too I believe.

Quote from noggin

AIUI there are reports that h.264 2160p content encoded at the kind of bitrates used for web-based content are decoding in software - at least at 2160p24 level. 1080p h.264/VC-1/AV1 all software decodes OK too I believe.

Correct. I struggle to find 4K H264 materials, but what I've accumulated over time plays fine and users are welcome to share 30 second clips of specific media for us to experiment with if they like.