How to find most stable build for Wetek Play 1

Cryptonit3 · August 31, 2017 at 12:40 PM

Hi everyone

I have been searching around but cant seem to find definitive answer to where I should be looking for the best builds for Wetek's Play 1 device.

I am currently running openElec with kodi 15.2 on an sd-card which runs pretty good, but I would like to try out the features of newer kodi versions. I tried to load LibreELEC 8.1.0 I believe it was with kodi 17.4 rc and it booted just fine but I got screen flicker and jerky playback after only a minute or two of playtime. Video and audio settings in kodi are set to the same as I had in kodi 15.2.

Any hints would be greatly appreciated

Thanks in advance

CypherZ · August 31, 2017 at 1:01 PM

Use the LibreElec USB-SD Creator from here.

Choose your version and off you go.

**chewitt** · August 31, 2017 at 1:04 PM Official Post

Back-up the old config and clean install the box. I'm never surprised when spring cleaning all the old cruft out of an install solves problems.

Cryptonit3 · August 31, 2017 at 1:12 PM

I did a fresh install of 8.1.0 and I formatted my card before writing the new image. I guess what I am searching for is other peoples experience with the various builds on the Wetek Play 1 device. All I seem to find is people talking about the Wetek Play 2

**chewitt** · September 1, 2017 at 4:58 AM Official Post

I have no personal experience of the WP1 but there's a reasonable population of daily-active installs and the rate of reported issues here is fairly low so I assume there are no major issues. Amlogic support in Kodi isn't perfect, but Krypton exorcised a smorgåsbord of hacks that caused problems in older Jarvis and OE era releases. For any meaningful "playback" support you'll need to start by sharing some Kodi debug logs that demonstrate your problem, then maybe media samples if we need to replicate something. As an aside; WP1 is not a fast box so running from the internal NAND would be advantageous over using an SD card.

Cryptonit3 · September 1, 2017 at 8:55 AM

Thanks for your response chewittt. I did get it to run last night after doing a factory reset of the wetek play, updating the nand os to weOS 1.1.8 and then reformat my sd card and then write the lastest img from the libreELEC utility.

The flicker is gone but playback is not as smooth as with the build I was running before "OpenElec with kodi 15.2".

Maybe the Wetek Play 1 just dosnt have the processing power for the newer kodi versions. I think I read somewhere that something about the hardware acceleration was changed at some time after kodi 15.2, is that correct ? and could that be why I see a decrease in playback performance?

To clarify what I mean by decrease in playback performance, in kodi 15.2 I ran with no auto adjustment of framerate and no sync to display. However in 17.4 if I run with the same settings the playback isnt smooth at all and I need to run with yes to auto adjustment of framerate which runs smooth for the most cases but have stutters here and there which I never noticed in kodi 15.2. The box is connected to a NAD t757v2 and a Panasonic VT20 plasma.

**chewitt** · September 2, 2017 at 6:15 AM Official Post

Kodi Helix and Krypton are quite different and it is never realistic to update Kodi and expect all configuration options to remain the same. Krypton has major changes to VideoPlayer and amcodec - and our objective for Krypton was removing all the ugly high-level Kodi hacking to solve low-level kernel problems and create a sustainable codebase that allows forward progress. If we didn't do that Kodi would have dropped amcodec support completely (as part of the Android move to mediacodec/audiotrack) and there would be no Krypton releases for Amlogic devices. The end result is not perfect or complete although most people find the overall stability and performance with a broad range of media to be improved. Kodi Leia contains the next wave of VideoPlayer and amcodec changes.

Cryptonit3 · September 2, 2017 at 12:04 PM

Thank you for your detailed answer chewitt, this was the answers I was looking for 😀

**chewitt** · September 2, 2017 at 12:43 PM Official Post

To clarify.. VideoPlayer changes in Krypton left Amlogic support completely broken, but we backported work from Leia that solves most of the main problems. Unfortunately the "vpudate" branch changes in Leia quickly diverged beyond a point where we could sensibly backport anything more so Krypton remains in limbo. Your next challenge will be an Amlogic mainline kernel. This will only support S9xx chipsets and maybe S8xx, but not the 8726MX in the WP1. If a viable mainline kernel arrives in advance of Leia we will drop WP1 support and focus on a modern codebase. At the moment it doesn't look like the timing will align, so WP1 will get 9.0, probably..