Posts by wrxtasy

  • Choosing a S905 / S905X / S905D / S905W / S912 box guide

    MINIX U1 vs ODROID C2.

    U1 = excellent Wireless A2 lite mini keyboard remote (one of my favorites), AML class leading MIMO, dual antennas AC WiFi, excellent thermal engineering due to a Bloody great big heat sink in a quality hardware case.

    C2 = best HDMI CEC control of all the AML Boxes, still no guarantee it works properly with all TV's / AVR's simply due to manufacturers stuffing about with their own custom CEC tweaks. Honestly you are better off using a Wireless remote anyway for Kodi responsiveness like the MINIX A2 lite remote or the aftermarket Xiaomi Mi Box remote.

    C2 can also be Overclocked safely due to it's nice big heatsink, you can Overclock the CPU, GPU and also the RAM speed. Fastest device in the non HDR AML arsenal when used with eMMC storage and a wireless remote.

    If you want a Wireless remote that can also turn the box OFF / ON using Infra Red buy the MINIX U1. Infra Red has to be used for OFF / ON. It's IR signal is hard coded into the devices boot loader.

    Personally I would just leave these devices on 24/7. They use stuff all power anyway and have good thermal heat disappapation.

    The other option which I use is power the ODROID C2 from a USB > barrel connector power cord, plug that into the TV's USB2/3 port. C2 boots up into LE from eMMC in 9 seconds when TV power is turned on. Not to be used this way if Hard drives are connected to C2. Even WiFi will struggle due simply to WiFi power draw requirements.

    Use a CSR 4.0 Bluetooth USB dongle, a Xiaomi Wireless minimal remote, Overclock and you end up with a snappy setup.

    *** No AML S912 box will do LE software decoding and smooth playback of 720p H264 properly for Netflix due to the relatively slow (vs S905/S905X) hybrid Linux/android GPU drivers used.

    If users have a S912 MECOOL OR MINIX U9 with L1 DRM and HDCP 1.x, dual boot into a unofficial Android TV for 1080p Netflix. That is the only option.

  • S905X h265 8 bit

    H264 10bit aka Hi10P Anime is not a recognised video compression standard. It's a "made up" by the Anime encoding groups to reduce color banding in Anime video.

    So it needs to be CPU Software decoded by all media players.

    You need a Apple TV 4K, NVIDIA Shield or Intel I series machine that has a decent CPU package to do 1080p Anime CPU software decoding and playback.

    H264 8bit and H265 (HEVC) 8/10bit decoding can be hardware decoded on AML S9xx boxes.

  • [8.90.6] LibreELEC 9.0 Alpha for S905/S912 devices

    To find out what HDMI connected display - Gamma and bit depth capabilities are registered with LE for use:

    cat /sys/class/amhdmitx/amhdmitx0/dc_cap

    Forced RGB output is not needed unless you are getting Pink or Green screen on old Sony/Philips TV's.

  • [8.2.2.3] LibreELEC 8.2 for S912

    Quote from adamg

    I would not link to those wrxtasy as the partition layout is different with the LE9 kernel, if anybody uses installtointernal with them it will cause issues,

    Yes I will remove the link. Thx for the headsup.

    I never recommend Installing to Internal anyway, the risks are too high for Newbies. Better to copy LE data partition and just use the USB stick/SD card for LE device bootup.

  • [8.2.2.3] LibreELEC 8.2 for S912

    I just looked at the new Kernel and it appears AMLogic have stupidly Hardcoded some IR Keymaps into the actual Kernel:


    History for drivers/amlogic/input/remote/Kconfig - LibreELEC/linux-amlogic · GitHub

    I will either have to revert what they have done - or someone will have to tell me what LE 9.0 is using, maybe its this:

    LE9.0 remote configs ir-keytable Amlogic devices

    And also enabling Lirc in LE settings.

    I use a Plug N Play - MINIX A2 lite Wireless remote to bypass all this nonsense.

  • [8.2.2.3] LibreELEC 8.2 for S912

    Thx. A

    Just what i was looking for that patch.

    What I have noticed, watching Olympics Ice Hockey that has lots of left right camera movement, is if you use a Performance CPU Govnr you will get mini video playback pauses with this new Kernel and the old Kernel on the S912.

  • [8.2.2.3] LibreELEC 8.2 for S912

    For those S912 users that have had 4K HDR Green Screen playback issues when setting a 422,10bit or 422,12bit Chroma and color depth I've been playing around with @kszaq's LE 8.2.x S912 code (thx mate !), and plugged the newer, improved LE linux-amlogic Kernel into it. The one that is also used for alpha versions of AML LE Kodi Leia 8.9.x that GDPR-2 is releasing.

    Note: there will be no ongoing support due to LE Kodi Krypton reaching stable status.

    Be aware existing IR remotes have been reported cease functioning with this Kernel. I use a USB Wireless dongle - MINIX A2 lite remote.

    There are also slight video playback juddering problems when watching Interlaced TV with this newer Kernel.

    MEGA

    You can follow the discussion over on the Kodi forum if interested, where you will also find a S912 LE 8.2.x .img.gz update to drop into the update folder:

    Auto frame rate switching & dynamic range matching - 4K (HDR10) capable Hardware

    Some useful info here for 422 4K HDR testing (before very first video playback):

    echo '422,10bit' > /sys/class/amhdmitx/amhdmitx0/attr

    echo '422,12bit' > /sys/class/amhdmitx/amhdmitx0/attr

    To permanently set on LE device bootup:

    echo "echo '422,10bit' > /sys/class/amhdmitx/amhdmitx0/attr" >> /storage/.config/autostart.sh


    Want to see the what your HDMI connected display is capable of:

    cat /sys/class/amhdmitx/amhdmitx0/dc_cap

    For those feeling adventurous, you can ramp up the GPU clock to 792MHz for a bit more GUI snappiness, however chipset temps will increase quite a bit and may overheat and crash S912 devices.

    In reality you need good Chipset cooling like the MINIX U1/U9 has:

    echo 2 > /sys/class/mpgpu/scale_mode

    Current GPU clock Frequency:

    cat /sys/class/mpgpu/cur_freq

  • Choosing a S905 / S905X / S905D / S905W / S912 box guide

    Just a warning - Geekbuying are NOT reputable sellers IMHO.

    Over on the Australian Whirlpool forums for example, users are still being sold MECOOL M8S Pro+ S905X devices with well known bad batches of eMMC flash storage. And this is even after the user went to the trouble of specifically asking Geekbuying to make sure they were not being sold a box from the broken batch.

    Geekbuying simply do not care it seems - they just move boxes.

  • Choosing a S905 / S905X / S905D / S905W / S912 box guide

    And GPU performance is only needed to draw the Kodi user interface and when software decoding video like the 720p Kodi Leia Netflix hack.

    S912's with @kszaq's recent tweaks draw the user interface at a normal 60fps now anyway.

    For day to day usage with hardware decoding of virtually all video most S912's are fine provided they do not overheat due to inadequate SoC cooling.