Posts by wrxtasy

Quote from serge123

Hi have added this to S905W and all working good on Kodi 17.6 but cant get my receiver to show Dolby Atmos

soundtrack when playing atmos file Denon AVR-x2300 show multi in + dolby surround?

have set HdMI passthrough and sound settings to 7.1

Do not mess with the Audio channels. Leave them as default 2.0 because you are using Audio Passthrough using 2 Audio Data channels. Such audio data needs to be decoded by your AVR, not the AML LE device.

Read what the text talks about on the bottom of the Audio settings screen when you hover over that option.

All 4K troubleshooting should begin with problem files played directly from a USB connected device to eliminate network problems.

Also Kodi 'Sync Playback to display' needs to be disbled on all AMLogic LE Kodi devices. Its not needed because AML LE has resolution switching and AMLogic Frame Rate Automation to output correct framerates. If you do not mess with @kszaq's LE Kodi Video settings, everything is default setup correctly anyway.

Finally a check has to be done to make sure the 4K AML S9xx device is actually connected to a HDMI 2.0 input on the TV. NOT HDMI 1.4. AVR's should also be taken out of the HDMI chain when troubleshooting.

4K YouTube is useless without HDR. In fact most 4K is nothing but marketing smoke and mirrors from TV manufacturers duping consumers into thinking they can distinguish between an upscaled 1080p high bitrate video stream and a 4K one from a normal lounge to 4K TV viewing distance.

4K HDR YouTube seems to be limited by Google intentionally to their own Chromecast Ultra and a few select TV manufacturers.

The best 4K SDR / HDR OS implementation for Apps like Netflix and Amazon Video combined with a Kodi Jarvis Fork called MrMC exists on the Apple TV 4K. Picture quality is quite superb, with nice 1080p > 4K upscaling. Deinterlacing using YADIF2X when using MrMC and the PVR Addons is excellent too.

The ATV4K tvOS icing on the cake is frame rate matching/switching for virtually all Apps, not just Kodi. Makes for nice smooth video playback no matter what your video streaming source is.

Android TV from Google and its Apps seems like a WIP by comparison with many bugs, especially on the so called SDR / HDR10 capable NVIDIA Shield. Which also has inferior 1080i deinterlaced picture quality and upscaling hardware. We better not mention broken auto colorspace switching either.

Having said all that if you want a full blown version of Kodi Krypton you still need LibreELEC.

If you want Gigabit on MECOOL's you add a Ugreen USB3 > Gigabit adapter.

LE can be installed internally on the U9 too, but a better more flexible option with virtually all the faster eMMC flash storage benefits is to do this on a U9:

[HOWTO] Boot from SD card, use internal memory for data

And install an unofficial Android TV ROM on the device first before doing so.

Works quite nicely indeed !

The U9 and M8S Pro L can do 4K YouTube with their unofficial Android TV ROM's. 1080p Netflix as well.

PS, the 'ancient' non HDR ODROID C2 when Overclocked and using eMMC flash and a Xiaomi Mi Box BT remote is still the fastest AMLogic LE pony getting about. Makes for a nice stable companion to a HDR10 / DolbyVision capable Apple TV 4K.

Quote from librebox

Is s912 more powerful even using libhybris? Is Libreelec stable enough? If in the future I convert the box in a server which SoC would be better?

If I want to watch Netflix HD on it I need that the box supports some special technologies (L1 and HDCP 1.x). Are these technologies available throught Libreelec or I need to use Android?

Any sugestions for a cheap box with all these characteristics and Gigabit Ethernet? I have seen some MeeCool boxes but people say they are inconsistent with the hardware used (lack of reset button, different network card without Libreelec support, ...)

S912's with good quality, fast eMMC flash storage and RAM will be snappier than s905X's. However they run hotter due to more processor cores in the SoC. Decent cooling is important in hot climates, and the best for that is the MINIX U9-H

L1 DRM and HDCP for Android TV 1080p Netflix are included in the MECOOL M8S Pro L and MINIX U9

The MINIX U9 has Gigabit Ethernet. The M8S Pro L has 100M Ethernet. If you want Gigabit add a Ugreen USB3 > Gigabit Ethernet adapter.

Yes S912's are stable when using @kszaq's LibreELEC

The MECOOL's are fine to setup LE, you simply use the 'Reboot LibreELEC' Playstore App to initially install LE because of the missing Reset button.

The S912 M8S Pro L has had NO eMMC flash issues .

The S905X M8S Pro+ has had issues and really should be avoided !

You just do not know what is going to get shipped.

Quote from Mr.Brown

..ppl have old TVs, they still want to use "properly", like some early 4K TVs, that dont have HDR support. Or TVs with rather badly implemented HDR, where its probably just better to have them run at 8/10 bit without HDR at all. Or some older 1080p TVs, they want to continue using.

And that is exactly why I called these cheap AML android media players garbage. I did a few more tests with the Minix U9-H with HDR->SDR conversion on a 4K TV that has no HDR support. In Android Tablet OS, when using the "Movie Player" the image is less dark than with LE, so it has less black crush and less messed up contrast. However the color saturation is still incorrect, it appears washed out. When using stand alone LE, its alot worse with both black crush and contrast.

The HDR->SDR conversion with AML SoC can be considered broken in my book. If someone who has an early 4K TV without HDR support wants a player that converts HDR->SDR correctly, you better not bother with these trash AML players.

People that can afford a 4K capable NUC can also afford to throw away their non HDR 4K TV and buy an actual 4K HDR capable TV anyway !

This 4K HDR to SDR conversion is a very niche use case scenario and not a hell of a lot of priority has been given too it by AMLogic or LE devs.

Having said that visually my cheap non HDR 4K TV seemed to display such 4K HDR content OK, but it's not the best 4K TV to display 4K content with anyway so who knows what it should actually look like.

4K is bullshit without HDR anyway. Trying to visually see resolution differences between upscaled high bitrate 1080p vs 4K sitting an average distance away from a display in a lounge chair (not a desktop PC) is virtually impossible.

4K without HDR is a complete marketing con job IMHO for the average viewer.

Quote from Mr.Brown

Shield TV also doesnt have very good deinterlacing quality for 1080i content (TV content like sports etc.). It cant do Yadif x2 with 1080i. Well the option is there, but the CPU is too weak for that task. It stutters when you enable Yadif x2 with 1080i content.

Very interesting. That is the exact reason why I never bought a Shield, because it really cannot handle every needed Kodi feature. Even the new Apple TV 4K can do excellent Yadifx2 1080i with MrMC. The ATV4K has a beast of a SoC with the new 6 core 2.38GHz A10X Fusion

I've been running in addition to the ATV 4K - an ODROID C2 for everything non HDR, non Apps related.

Been experimenting with auto Kodi resolution switching downwards from 1080p <-->720p for SD content so my 4K TV then handles the SD > 4K upscaling. Currently Kodi can only res. switch upwards.

I used to see that with the Play2 but switched to @kszaq's LE for the C2 and just use one of 'em (i have a few) as a permanent TvHeadend only server with PlayTV tuner. Not seeing that issue since then, and it's all pretty rock solid.

But that C2 / TvH server hardly ever gets rebooted very often at all. I like to keep my servers and client media players seperate.

All that likely does not help much.

Quote from Moebius01

So I've been trying to read through this thread as I try to get this build working on a C2. The one thing I can't quite determine is if anyone has gotten the bluetooth (specifically Harmony remote) working?

I have my C2 working with a Cambridge v4.0 CSR BT USB dongle and a Xiaomi Mi Box remote. But that was only after adding specific Mi Box remote support to LibreELEC: eventlircd: fix Xiaomi BT remote support · LibreELEC/LibreELEC.tv@e2b4df7 · GitHub

I suspect a BT Harmony would need to have similar LE mapping mods applied - unless someone has a working example already.

There is a whole Kodi thread about adding such LE - BT remote support:

Connect Xiaomi Mi Box BT remotes to LibreELEC devices

Most people have been buying the MECOOL M8S Pro L for dual boot LibreELEC / Android TV ROM with 1080p Android TV Netflix capabilities.

The Pro L has guaranteed Widevine L1 and HDCP 1.x - needed for Android TV Netflix - the regular M8S Pro does not, unless you get a mislabeled box.

Both device do not have Gigabit (1000M) LAN but 100M(bit) only.

Quote from Adam86

I just wondered though, is the S912 capable of playing back UHD HEVC content and being able to transcode HD Audio such as DTS-MA or TrueHD into 5.1 Dolby Digital, or would it struggle?

No it will not struggle because there are various co-processors in the AMLogic System on a Chip aka SoC that handle different tasks.

For example even when hardware decoding high bitrate UHD HEVC the VPU does most of the heavy lifting leaving the CPU's doing very little and basically idling.

Those CPU's can then easily handle HD Audio transcoding into Dolby Digital.

It's also why, even before kszaq did some Wizardry with the hybrid GPU video drivers - and we had noticeable Kodi user interface graphics tearing - hardware video decoding was unaffected because the VPU handled that.

Quote from frequenzy

does this mean that wifi for mecool M8s pro + will now work? because im thinking of getting this box

Yes the WiFi on the M8S Pro + now works.

It's still a bit of a lottery if you get a good eMMC flash storage M8S Pro+ box or a bad eMMC one.

Bad ones cannot even do an official Android standard Firmware update without eMMC corruption.

Suggestion - if you only want the box for LibreELEC do not do any sort of Android Firmware flashing or update.

These days you are better off getting the slightly more expensive S912 MECOOL M8S Pro L which has seen no bad eMMC Flash problems. (yet)

Better everything on the Pro L too, vs the M8S Pro +

The updated libhybris / libmali and fbdev optimisations really have made a noticeable difference in GUI speed. Nice work !

Pls. remember to put the MINIX U9 specific .dtb in your device tree directory so we do not have a repeat of this:

[SOLVED] - LibreELEC on Minix NEO U9-H (could not mount LABEL=LIBREELEC_DISK)

Welcome.

I will put out a general warning about the MECOOL M8S Pro Plus again - it seems it is a bit of a lottery still if you are going to get one with properly working eMMC flash storage.

In fact I personally would avoid that particular MECOOL model all together because there are still users over on the Freaktab website having issues with newly shipped M8S Pro+ devices.

All the other MECOOL's do not seem to have such eMMC flash problems.

Branded boxes like the MINIX U1 / U9 and ODROID C2 have proper heat sinks, that will very likely give you greater reliability long term. The MINIX's for example run 20-30 degrees C cooler than 99% of AMLogic devices. If you do not need HDR, the U1 would be a great pickup with it's excellent A2 lite Wireless remote.

The safely Overclocked ODROID C2 (1.752GHz) with eMMC flash is the fastest device I've tested in the AMLogic arsenal - as such it's my day to day LE box. You need to use eMMC storage for speed.

I even run power for it from a USB port on my TV, that is all it needs. You need the USB > barrel pin type power supply cable, although a micro USB cable will do the job as well.

The C2 can use self programmable Lirc for IR remotes. Wireless remotes are better tho

Also added to the C2 is a $4 CSR v4.0 Bluetooth USB dongle and a $10 Xiaomi Mi Box BT remote.

That turns it into nice snappy setup, with great response - even when using Aeon Nox.

AML S912 devices are nice and snappy setups as well. Downside with the extra SoC cores, they can run a bit Hot with generic heatsinks.

I've no experience flashing generic Android boxes with LE to internal eMMC memory.

This is the easier, more flexible setup for LE Kodi running from eMMC IMHO:

[HOWTO] Boot from SD card, use internal memory for data

In the end it really depends on how much you want to spend vs reliability and speed of the device.

The A2 lite is fine. You plug it in and it emulates a keyboard, there is no remote.conf file needed

If you want to remap remote buttons - use Kodi's Keymap Editor Addon - download it from Kodi's inbuilt Programs Repository.

Quote from chessplayer

Hi guys, I would like to come back to this one more time. When you say you will keep that fix in your future builds, does that mean they will end up in adamg's Leia builds as well? The reason I ask is that I am currently trying to prepare a christmas present with Amazon VOD, Netflix, SkyGo and LiveTV working and at the moment I have the situation from the first post with adamg's build while all this streaming stuff works perfectly.

You problem is going to be getting all that stuff working on the one device. I can tell you now 1080p with the Amazon Video App is not going to work properly if at all on any AMLogic Box apart from the 2017 Fire TV Gen3. That device cannot run LibreELEC.

You would have to do your own research regarding SkyGo - DRM Apps support is beyond the scope of this thread.

Relying on Kodi Leia Alpha builds for reliable video streaming from the services just mentioned should be avoided for a XMas presents as well.

You still need a USB stick / SD card to boot into LibreELEC.

Internal Android data is untouched, LE Kodi data is just added to that Android Internal storage partition.

If you do an OTA Update.zip of Android Firmware, the Data partition remains untouched as well - so LE Kodi data also remains intact.

If you use the Low Level USB Burning Tool to flash an Android TV ROM, it will overwrite the internal Data partition. Make sure you do a LE .tar backup before doing something like that and messing with the Android Data partition.

ssh login to LibreELEC then

echo "echo none > /sys/class/leds/blue:heartbeat/trigger" >> /storage/.config/autostart.sh

kszaq might want to put that permanently into platform_init

Quote from bylderup

I´m sad, because problems did not chance. Its only with livetv 1080i 50 Hz 25p .

Changed from dvbviewer client to tvheadend client. Problem remains.

I watch Live / Recorded TV all the time on a S912 MINIX U9-H with TvHeadend at 50Hz 25i and have never seen any of the problems you describe.

I suspect you have hardware issues and/or TV tuner problems that do not play nice with LE on your particular S912.

Are you sure your local Network is operating optimally from your TvHeadend server ?

My TvHeadend server is running from an external, seperate Gigabit S905 LE box.