Anything better than a Pi4 currently?

  • The best case for pi4 is the argon one V1/V2, on/off power management, and for the remote i use for year rii mini keyboard, far better than a simple remote control

    Then you was lucky ^^. We have many reports about bad soldering points in Argon One cases. Rule of thumb: Try to avoid any additional circuit board inside of a case. Such boards increase the risk of contact / soldering issues.

  • The best case for pi4 is the argon one V1/V2, on/off power management, and for the remote i use for year rii mini keyboard, far better than a simple remote control

    Beware the Argon cases with integrated HDMI extension - they can cause issues if you are running in a high bandwidth 4K HDMI 2.0 mode like 2160p60 4:2:2 12-bit. I had to stop using them for Pi 4B Kodi LibreElec installs for this reason, and switched to Flirc cases.

  • All these cases that are not FLUSH with hdmi connector will cause problems. In fact the only really good ones seem to be the official plastic cases.

    Repeat after me: the pi is conceptually NOT living room material. Its a educational device for tinkerers and nerds.

  • All these cases that are not FLUSH with hdmi connector will cause problems.

    This is indeed a problem with a lot of the cases as that won't allow you to full insert the HDMI plug into the socket, causing all sorts of (intermittent or also permanent) contact problems.

    Fortunately though there's an easy workaround: take out your X-Acto knife and trim off 0.5-1mm of the plastic on the front of the HDMI plug. BTDT a couple of times and it fixed my issues.

    Issues with bad solder joints of HDMI adapter PCB boards, like inside the Argon cases, are a lot more troublesome to solve though.

    so long,

    Hias

  • I see Argon cases are getting a bit of heat, but just to note the new Argon NEO 5 is absolutely fine as it's just a HSF, no gimmicks and all the ports are untouched.

    Repeat after me: the pi is conceptually NOT living room material. Its a educational device for tinkerers and nerds.

    And neither is an Intel NUC, you always have to make compromises somewhere with a HTPC.

  • All these cases that are not FLUSH with hdmi connector will cause problems. In fact the only really good ones seem to be the official plastic cases.

    Repeat after me: the pi is conceptually NOT living room material. Its a educational device for tinkerers and nerds.

    Depends on your living room. I have Pi 4Bs in Flirc cases which have been great living room LibreElec boxes. They just sit there working. Early days so far with the Pi 5 - but it seems to be the same (but with a snappier UI). They sit in the AV unit, out of sight, often powered via PoE, and with RF remote controls (usually a PS3 Bluetooth Media Remote or a Vero RF remote) and just work for me. (I've switched to booting some from a USB 3 external SSD)

  • RPi4/5 support HDR10, but not the dynamic version HDR10+ .. otherwise I agree :)

    Hi all,

    I currently have a RPi4 as well and think about an upgrade. HDR10 movies play fine so far, but my TV always only recognizes 8bit colors at most. (When playing from my UHD player I can see 12bit colors.) I am thinking this is due to some RPi4 hardware restrictions?

    What bothers me about the RPi5 is the need for more power and apparently a fan :(.

    Can anybody tell me if the RPi5 will output the full colors available?

    Dolby Vision would be nice too, but I wasn't able to find any good alternative yet. All I need is some device with low power consumption that can play my videos with Kodi, like the RPi4.

  • Here's a question to any fellow Pi 5 testers, are there actually any media files that a Pi 4 could play that a Pi 5 can't?


    I assume not, but I'm aware there may be odd cases like 3D (which Pi 3 had support for) etc

  • Ah interesting, appreciate the info!

    Yep - that's 4:2:2 h.264 (used for broadcast backaul/uplinks) not for feeds to the consumer (4:2:0 is used for that).

    4:2:2 video like that currently causes my LE Pi 5 to reboot - though AIUI the CPU should be fine to decode it in software (as it also should 4:2:2 MPEG2) so this is less likely to be a hardware limitation on the Pi 5, more a software issue that needs some work.

  • 4:2:2 video like that currently causes my LE Pi 5 to reboot - though AIUI the CPU should be fine to decode it in software (as it also should 4:2:2 MPEG2) so this is less likely to be a hardware limitation on the Pi 5, more a software issue that needs some work.

    Is this LE11 or LE12? I did spend a while making sure the software paths for the all the weird formats I would find (which did include 422/444 as well as 10-bit/12-bit) did the right thing. That may be LE12 only.

    If LE12 fails, can you point me at a sample file that crashes and I'll look into it.

  • Is this LE11 or LE12? I did spend a while making sure the software paths for the all the weird formats I would find (which did include 422/444 as well as 10-bit/12-bit) did the right thing. That may be LE12 only.

    If LE12 fails, can you point me at a sample file that crashes and I'll look into it.

    I'll try and check this evening and get back to you. It's 4:2:2 h.264 8-bit or 10-bit that crashed for me (both are in use for broadcast links now)

  • Had a quick look before I left - will DM you a clip when I get a chance.

    I'm running LE 12 - the 20240106 nightly on a Pi 5 (6ca79da is the end suffix)

    4:2:2 MPEG2 content triggers a restart from the LE splash screen

    4:2:2 h.264 content also triggers a restart from the LE splash screen

  • 4:2:2 MPEG2 content triggers a restart from the LE splash screen

    4:2:2 h.264 content also triggers a restart from the LE splash screen

    I've just tested and some similar files are playing for me (nighyl LE12 on Pi5):

    and

    (10-bit, 12-bit, and 444 variants also playing). So I guess there's something different in your files.