Posts by shad

Quote from loki7777

I think the story is: either netflix or unlocked bootloader(CE/LE).

Not sure what Netflix has to do with my post. If it's meant as the reason for people to buy these Android devices, I'm not too sure it makes sense, because most of these devices aren't properly certiefied and often get blocked or work semi well or not at all for DRM stuff. But who knows, maybe that's the reason for most...

Personally I couldn't care less about Netflix. Smart TVs make it possible to watch Netflix, cheap, but solid Amazon FireTV Sticks make it possible etc. If it works with LE - great, but it wasn't the point of my post.

The point was the quoted summary of the issues and consequences from the point of view of media players and projects like CE/LE/OSMC/... this thread is about.

I just thought that projects like LE/CE/... do help those companies to sell their devices and indirectly encourage them to continue with the stance they have regarding cooperation.

And I wondered, how Vero 4k+ fits in into this mess, because the situation is a bit different here, because the hardware and the software comes from the same company.

Quote from buzzmarshall

With these embedded devices its pretty hard to speculate on the future as for which is the best as there are basically 2 forks in the road going on.

Projects like Kodi and LE are focused on following the future by moving into the mainstream kernel which represents a better method of supporting different hardware which goes outside just the perview of linux on embedded devices like the typical Android boxes, and in doing so has been removing pieces of code that were based on the vendors bsp's which tend to be done in a out of tree manner specific to themselves... In this case Amlogic is the mostly mentioned in this thread. Doing so has meant some pieces of the overall setup need to be either fixed or outright created and its mostly being done by various open source groups which takes time. hence some things at this time still need to be fixed.

The alternative approach taken by projects like CE or AE or any of a number of other forks is to try and maintain the devices by using parts of the older vendor packages which has 2 basic effects to it... one is that basically a number of devices still currently work ok with the current Leia version while two being stuck on some older packages such as the kernel and some of its support packages. Currently running on older stuff like this seems like the better way as overall it pretty much works, but once Matrix is finally released who knows where it will leave any of these distro's that took this direction.

There is just no way to know when or even if any of the issues will be fixed as overall things appear to be going in the right direction but its been a long road and the end still hasn't been reached yet.

Its probably best to look to buy based on what your current needs require rather then try and make a purchase based on how long and good some device may be like you typically would when make a normal computer or laptop.

The only way to avoid this whole mess is to basically just give up on trying to run a JEOS system like LE or CE and stick to running the Android version that came on the device as then whatever the devices abilities are can simple been seen by reading the spec sheet of the device to see if it supports the features you want.

People need to remember... Companies like Amlogic Rockchip and others never intended for anything Other then Android to run on Their device which is what the device makers paid for in support and IP licenses. Its NOT until people try and run Linux that most of these issues really have any relevance... but if you really want Linux then its either pick a distro like CE which works but is vested in older vendor packages (which will eventually break) or pick LE and make sure to buy a device that is currently supported by LE for the time being.

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A quite depressing situation... I wonder if most people are buying these devices because of Android or because of CE/LE/... If the latter is the case, teams should just drop support for devices which belong to vendors not providing help/information etc., even if it means to drop support for all/most. If people would stop buying their devices because of this, maybe then they would decide to be more cooperative. I know, a lot of "ifs" there, but still...

What about devices like Vero 4k+? They provide both: the device and the software. Not CE/LE, but similar, I think. Do they face the same problems as well, or do they have an NDA with Amlogic and have all the sources, (GPU-)drivers etc. they need?

Hm, considered the time passed since the first questions about AV1 support in all the forums and the fact that YouTube, Netflix & Co started to stream AV1 encoded content and so on, I thought that's something for the next 1-3 years and that there are more devices offering AV1 HW support. Looks like that's not the case... Will have to figure out what else to get then.

Greetings,

I’ve been waiting for Ugoos (due to their reputation) to release the X4 family devices using S905X4 (because of AV1 HW support), but now that those are out, it appears that S905X4 is dead and won’t be supported at all (by CoreELEC at least) due to a locked video driver or something.

Now I’m a bit lost and would like to ask, what box / SoC with AV1 HW support should I look at, which is supported by LE? Any new recommendations one year since the last post here?

Don't remember having read something similar, but it just came to mind:
If booting another OS (LibreElec) is not possible, wouldn't it be an option to run it from an virtual machine, which runs on AndroidTV OS? Did a quick search and apparently there are virtualization solutions for android.

Quote from spitzbube

Hi all,

I initially created the OpenELEC port to Hisilicon Hi398CV100 in github in the beginning of 2016.

Unfortunately I was very busy since then and I also saw that the successor Hi3798CV200 is more often used in newer boxes. I never bought such a new box but it was always my goal to make a similar port of OE to the new processor.

It seems that LE has now got more attraction. Maybe I will try to build it first for my old CV100 box.

Hi spitzbube,

I've stumbled over the Dinobot 4k (Hi3798MV200) and Dinobot 4k SE (Hi3798CV200) boxes by accident and found them interesting as they would allow me to continue using Enigma2 software for TV&PVR stuff and to use Android for some DRM protected streaming services like DAZN. Using Kodi / SPMC on Android should work too, but my first thought was if LibreELEC would work on one of these boxes as well.

I was a bit "disappointed" when I found out, that LibreELEC dosn't support HiSilicon chips / devices. Although 2-3 years ago there was an OpenELEC image for the previous model, according to the manufacturer. It wasn't quite ready though, but still.

Then I found this thread and your post and the hope increased a bit again. From what I've read here, Kodi 18 as base should make it easier than before. So I just wanted to ask, if you are still interested and motivated to give the HiSilicon support a go?