Official LE13 Test Images for Amlogic (Kodi-22)

    This thread is for discussion of AMLGX (aarch64) development images for LE13 with Kodi 22 (P). There are no real-world "Amlogic" enhancements in LE13 since previous LE11/12 images so previous disclaimers on what does and does not work still apply. Please do not post "bug reports" on hardware decoders; they are experimental and incomplete code, there are known issues with them, and you should expect to find those issues. As a general rule there is a low pace of development and you should have similarly low expectations of fixes.

    These are official nightlies: https://test.libreelec.tv/13.0/Amlogic/

    These are my own builds: https://chewitt.libreelec.tv/testing/ <= You will receive zero support on these images. They are experimental. The version number of these never changes but the dates tell you when it was created, and that corresponds to development here: https://github.com/chewitt/LibreELEC.tv/commits/amlogic

    Enjoy :S

    Thanks!
    I've tested it a bit on a 's912 tv box and seems to work Ok, but I have a couple of questions:

    Is it possible to use remotes (meson-ir NEC/RC6) other than the default?

    I found that H264-10bit (Anime) is not recognized, and the board always uses HW decompression (with bad results). The legacy builds do switch to SW decompression in those cases.
    Is it possible to solve the problem, or at least to add a switch/setting to always use SW decode for H264?

    Follow https://wiki.libreelec.tv/configuration/…ration-advanced to configure any remote.

    I don't have the code knowledge to implement a software-decode path for 10-bit H264, so given the general lack of development on the decoders it's rather unlikely to happen - although I will ask the Pi devs (who have done the work on ffmpeg side). IIRC the 10-bit H264 format is not supported in Amlogic silicon so software fallback is the only option (and hence the legacy images do that).

    Thanks! Remote configuration works!

    Quote from chewitt

    IIRC the 10-bit H264 format is not supported in Amlogic silicon so software fallback is the only option (and hence the legacy images do that)

    Yes, the cpu is powerful enough for that, or at least it was in the legacy images.

    However I tried a few H264-10bit files and these don't work at all: With the HW decoding enabled it gives garbled results; With it disabled it's not decoded at all (black screen - audio only).

    Does the PI have a working software decoder?

    I downloaded and played three VP9 videos with extension .webm and resolutions 1920x1080 &1280x720. All are played in software with decoder ff-vp9-drm_prime(SW). No blank screens or crashes.

    is the N2+ a good candidate for LE or could have better experience with Raspberry Pi4?

    Wanted to buy N2+ for some time, thought it could be good for LE since lot of Mediaboxes seem to use the same chipeset; Thanks.

    N2+ is a nice board but the poor state of hardware decoding for newer Amlogic hardware in upstream kernels has impact. H264 and VP9 work well enough but we're forced to software decode HEVC and that limits HEVC to 1080p. CE with vendor kernels runs better on the hardware although the number of people using LE on boards like N2/N2+ seems to be slowly increasing. Despite all the loud noise made in forums the silent majority still have comparatively simple 1080p oriented media collections (as proven by the massive number of users still using RPi3 hardware) so LE meets their needs.

    RPi5 is the gold-standard for overall performance and support with LE and RPi4 is functionally the same in most areas and a good slightly-cheaper alternative. If I had RPi4 and was weighing up the decision to upgrade to RPi5 it's not a clear choice as the functional specs are so similar. However if you're shopping new, I'd go RPi5 as the CPU performance bump is rather noticeable.

    did not find the raspberry pi1-2-3b so impressive when compared to other sbc i have like pine64 or rock64; and i have for all those raspberry pi the media codec licenses; but provdieded the newer model are alot faster, it is reasonable that they are very good supported because of the huge adoption rate; biggest dislike is the built-in wifi which is a big annoiance; and not easy to disable on newer raspberry; when one wants to buy cm4 or cm5, without wifi functionality, they are even more expensive; than base model if one factors in io/board;

    thank you, maybe i skip the raspberry pi4 altogether and try the pi5, but i tend to prefer the rockpro64 or n2+;

    is the rockpro64 better for LE or in a similar situation as N2+?

    the rock64 is not so stable as desired, unfortunately.

    I used RPi3 in the past but always preferred a NUC or Amlogic box that was faster, albeit the Pi board was always a bit more reliable with media. Then RPi4 came along and moved the goalposts; same reliability but now acceptably fast and with good 4K/HDR support for newer HEVC media that I've ripped. Then RPi5 came along; functionally the same but making the RPi4 feel like some ancient slow thing from a decade ago as it's NUC fast. RK3399 is fairly well supported in the kernel now (much better than Amlogic) and on-paper it has more codecs than RPi4/5 .. but software maturity isn't in the same top-league as RPi4/5.

    Have a look for dtech threads with LE 9.2 images for some devices (no idea about that one). There's nothing newer - there's no real-world mainline kernel support for 8726MX chips.

    I think nightlies need me to finish working on a Linux 6.10 kernel bump and send a pull-request, but that might take a while as work and life have a higher priority at the moment. Hopefully before the end of August, insh'allah.