Sorry, but it's impossible to debug something that works for me. I tested this on LG B8 TV, which supports most of compressed formats. AVRs are known to cause issues, but I have none.
Thanks for your great work. It seems to be some race condition, considering that it works on another Opi PC, maybe it works in a future version again, as it did in the one from last September. As long as the normal version works, I am happy 😊
Kristian Test images are updated to beta2. This time I actually test them and they work as well as before.
Sorry for the late reply, I was away from the device the last days.
Sadly, it still does not work. It is "playing" the sound for a fraction of a second, but then silent. UI sounds work. No difference whether passthrough is set to on or off. Then I installed the normal 10.0 beta 2 version. That works without problems, of course no passthrough. My devices: Orange Pi PC and Onkyo TX-SR507 (a HDMI 1.3a 5.1 receiver).
Done, currently based on 9.95.1 - 10beta1. Please report if it works better or worse.
Sadly, with the new passthrough version sound doesn't work any more on my Orange Pi PC. There is always a quiet, but noticeable noise. The UI sounds work, but all sound in media files or streams do not. In irregular periods there are sounds to hear for a fraction of a second. It makes no difference if I have set 'passthrough' on or off.
Display MoreFinally there was some momentum to crack audio passtrough support on mainline kernel. Thanks to the RPi4 effort, I gained better understanding what needs to be done. I believe that first variant is ready to be tested.
What works:
DTS, Dolby, Dolby+, DTS-HD MA, Atmos
What doesn't work:
Nothing that I could find
[...]
Please share your experience, especially if it doesn't work.
Thanks for your -- as always -- great work! I installed it on Orange Pi PC and it works with AC-3 movies without problems. My configuration: Samsung 1080p TV and Onkyo TX-507 AVR. One issue: It only works with movies. I have AC-3 audio only files (recorded from digital radio) and they are converted to PCM. I am not sure whether this is a general Kodi issue and I should file a request at mainline or depending on the implementations, as it seemed during search that the passthrough settings are implementation dependent. If you are the one who sets it, it would be fantastic if you could do that, I assume it is just a few lines to enable only audio files for passthrough that are passed through as audio tracks of video files. AVR wise it is no problem to receive audio only passthrough via HDMI, currently I play those with standalone omxplayer on a RPi 1 (IMHO too slow for Kodi), which I then could "retire".
Kristian Can you check previous posts for test update which should solve exactly the issue you described? I'll PR that (temporary) fix until I redo VPU improvements.
I tried with libreelec-h3.arm-9.80-devel-20191001231944-47bf1cb.tar
and yippie!!!, it works 
Thanks for your amazing work, jernej ! What do you mean with PR? You hold it back from the normal version? I assume you inform here when you integrate the fix into it, as I will stay with the version that works for the time being and don't do any updates.
Have a fantastic Sunday!
Green image means that particular codec crashed and I haven't found a way to reset it properly. If you reset the board, it will be possible to play that channel. Anyway, this issue with HEVC freezing was observed on H6 with 10-bit videos, but it seems that it's possible to trigger it also with H3. I imagine this is one of the last main issues I have to fix for HEVC.
After half a year, I tried whether recordings of German DVB-T2 HEVC streams (they are 8bit) do work with newest release on Orange Pi PC, sadly, they don't. It seems to be even worse. While with the April version I only got a green screen, but could play non-HEVC files after stopping them, now the video engine is so "damaged" that nothing is played any more, only the GUI still works. Only a reboot helps. Sad that those streams seem to be among the most "tricky" ones and I hope it can be fixed.
I have an Orange Pi PC. When I tried to download the version for Orange Pi PC plus, it was not available. So I used the version for Orange Pi 2 and replaced the DTB with the one for Orange Pi PC from jernej's latest build in his repository. I could see no problems. Was I just lucky? Otherwise maybe it would make sense to unite the Orange Pi H3 versions. With updates in jernej's repository it worked. Or is it not possible to determine the hardware at first installation? With Rasberry Pi it seems to be possible, there is one installer with different DTBs for Model A,B,B+.
Sadly the HEVC files from German DVB-T2 still don't work. The first time after the start of Kodi it is decoded for a few seconds until it stops. After that all files from that source just display a green screen.
Keep up the great work, jernej !
Allwinner project has been recently merged in LibreELEC master repository.
This brings following changes:
1. Nightly builds will follow soon. They will overtake a role of images/updates linked in this topic.
Where do/will I find these nightly builds? I find only the "Milhouse" nightly builds for "generic"(x64) and Raspis.
PS: Happy Easter everyone, especially Jernej!
I just updated first post with new information and also uploaded brand new images.
New image has plenty of improvements, which might not be noticeable at first. However, there are few important ones:
1. H264 decoding should work very well [...]4. improved H265 decoding
Thanks again for your work! I finally had the time to try -- actually the build of 2019-01-10. But I could see no impromevements with the H264 files that were problematic before and the H265 files, which are recordings from German DVB-T2. Would it make sense to provide you with some of these files for you to test?
I added image for OrangePi Lite and new update for all images.
I tested it on an Orange Pi PC. The update worked without a problem, I could update add-ons (from the official repository), the system works without any crashes or other issues, but no improvements with the videos that caused problems before: Some H.264 videos downloaded from the Internet, H.265 recordings from DVB-T2 HD: they are 1080p. The thumbnail that is shown as the info picture is decoded without problems, though.
can you please check OP for update file and install it? H264 should be much better (almost usable) now for non-interlaced content. I also removed some HDMI audio WIP patches which probably cause issues on your setup.
Jernej, sorry for the confusion with the update because of my card, now it worked. Sorry also regarding the sound issue: I now connected it to my (Onkyo) AV receiver and locally decoded sound works, both GUI and in media files. Passthrough with AC3 did not work though, the AV receiver played "white noise". So 'no sound' seems to be an issue special to my TV. HDMI CEC also does not work, but that is probably also special to the TV.
Indeed, much improvement regarding the glimpes with H.264! The videos from the smartphone now work without any 🙂. In general: No "wrong/random color block" glimpses any more at all. With some videos from public TV media libraries text and other sharp contrast blocks "jump", so that the video starts to flickr. Some videos downloaded from the Internet in MP4 containers stop playing after a few seconds. They have main@3 or 3.1 profile, if that helps you. Also the sound in them (AAC) does not work. Probably they are somewhat out of the norm, but they work on a Raspi 1 with Kodi 18 beta 1.
1GB is too small as you only have 512MB for /storage which is where the update file (.tar) and decompressed update files + Kodi data need to coexist at some point for the update to work. 4GB is a sensible minimum, 8GB or 16GB are better sizes to use. 1GB cards will be older and dog slow to use too.
Well, 1 GB cards worked for me in the past, as the media files are on different devices and it's a fast one (for that time). I thought the tar file is directly extracted to the system partition and extra space on the user (/storage) partition would not be an issue. I deleted test files that I had copied on that partition and now there was even space enough for the update 🙂.
can you please check OP for update file and install it? H264 should be much better (almost usable) now for non-interlaced content. I also removed some HDMI audio WIP patches which probably cause issues on your setup.
I tried to update, but it didn't work. I copied the tar and sha256 file to the .update folder and rebooted. After the reboot the files were gone, but the system not updated. When I enter Index of /updates/ or a web server in my LAN in the user configurable update fields I get the message "invalid URL".
I cannot find anything regarding the updates in the Kodi logs. Is there anything I can do to change this?
I use a 1 GB card and system partition is 512 MB. Is this too small?
Hi Jernej,
first, thanks a lot for your amazing work! Here my observations on my Orange Pi PC:
I hope the problems can get fixed, keep up the great work!
