Posts by jbinkley60

This is very interesting because I have a NUC8i7BEH and my results are exactly opposite. Dolby Digital and DTS work fine in passthrough mode whereas DTS-HDMA and TrueHD have no audio in passthrough mode. I am connecting to a Yahama RX-A3020 receiver. Using my older NUCs, a NUC 5I7RYH and NUC 6i5SYH both worked fine with 8.2.5 with passthrough on all formats. From what I have been following here in the forum I was under the impression that new Linux drivers are needed for the Coffee Lake NUCs to support bitstream audio such as DTS-MA and TrueHD. This is why I found your results so interesting.

I have a very similar setup with a Raspberry Pi 3B+, customer IR receiver and a harmony 650. I did the 8.2.5 to 9.0.1 upgrade and Harmony stopped working. I changed dtoverlay=lirc-rpi to dtoverlay=gpio-ir in /flash/config.txt and rebooted the Raspberry Pi and the Harmony started working perfectly again. I did this on multiple Raspberry Pis.

I've upgraded my wireless connected Raspberry Pi 3B+ and am not seeing any issues with frame skips and similar for live streaming MPEG2 broadcast TV. I have seen the frame skipping audio/video sync issue playing MPEG2 recorded broadcast files especially when fast forwarding or rewinding and having HW decoding enabled. Adjusting the deinterlacing settings has helped but isn't perfect.

I'd suggest folks read this wiki page with regards to changes in IR controls with v9.0. I was able to resolve the issues I had with my IR controller since lirc is no longer supported with v9.0 .

Is your connection wireless or wired ? I haven't upgraded my wireless connected Raspberry Pi 3B+ yet to 9.0 . It is still running 8.2.5. My 9.0 Raspberry Pi is on a wired connection. I'll upgrade the wireless one soon.

I am running LibreElec 9.0 on a 3B+ using the unofficial SiliconDust PVR software with SiliconDust Quatro tuners and not having any frame skipping issues. These are MPEG-2 12mbps streams. Do you have the MPEG-2 decoder license on your Pi and have you looked at the CPU utilization when playing the MPEG2 streams ? I have the MPEG2 license on mine and CPU utilization is 12-14% with 1080P 12mbps live streams.

It is working fine for me using HDHomerun Quatro tuners. I am using the unofficial HDHomerun PVR client and upscaling 720P and 1080i MPEG2 live broadcast video to 3840x2160P 60fps to my TV. Similar upscaling also occurs on PVR recorded TV content.

Their webpage does say it is HDMI 2 compatible. How about setting the refresh rate to 30 and then try 3840x2160P. ? If that works then try 60 and see what happens. Also have you tried a different cable ? I've had cable issues in the past which impacted 4K playback.

I am a fan of Mezzmo with the Kodi addon. I've been running it for years. Their support is spectacular. As and FYI, I've completed testing of HEVC with a Raspberry Pi 3B+ and have successfully played 1080P @ 15 mbps successfully.

Thanks. The splitting of audio / video is less of a concern than seeing things like bitstream passthrough stops working when the video resolution changes on my gen 8 NUC and I am just plugged in direct with both audio /video going over the same connection. I'll do some more testing today and see what I find. I suspect the kernel iteration comment is spot on. With the HDMI splitter, which has full HDMI EDID support, LibreElec just sees the HDMI splitter as a single device with full 7.1 capability which works fine with the older NUC and my Vero 4K+. If I disable bitstream passthrough on the gen 8 NUC for DTS HD/MA and True HD and leave passthrough enabled for everything else then everything plays fine.

I'll try the Intel forums but it typically takes a number of turns with them to get responsive if you aren't running Windows 10. I was hoping someone else here had an 8th generation NUC and could tell me if they are seeing the same thing or not. I have a Windows 10 SSD with Kodi on it. I'll install it and try bitstream audio passthrough and see if I see the same thing. Hopefully I can get to that today.

The HDMI splitter arrived and is working perfectly. The only thing I needed to do was connect the HDMI 2.0 passthrough output to my Samsung TV on splitter output 1 and the HDMI 1.4a output to my Yamaha AVR on splitter output 2. I originally had them reversed and it wouldn't work. So now I have HDMI 2.0a 4k@ 60 fps coming out of my 8th gen NUC going through the splitter and passing the same out port 1 and reducing the resolution to 1080P @ 60 fps out port 2.

So just when I was ready to declare victory this has uncovered an interesting issue with DTS HD/MA and Tru0HD passthrough with the NUC. The short version is that the only configuration where these work with passthrough is if the NUC is connected straight to my Yamaha receiver and the video is set for 4k @ 30 fps. If I have the NUC connected to my Yamaha receiver and change the refresh rate or resolution (i.e. 1080P @ 60fps, 4K @ 24 fps etc..) the passthrough stops working for these uncompressed audio formats. So through the splitter they don't work but it appears to be a NUC / software issue and not the splitter. If I take the SSD with the LibreElec build from this NUC and put it in my older 5th gen NUC the audio passthrough works fine through the splitter. If I hook up my Vero 4K+ instead of the NUC passthrough runs tine too.

I know there have been some threads regarding uncompressed audio passthrough with the newer NUCs but most of them have been with the 7th generation units and not the 8th gen. It feels like this may be a driver issue especially when I can break it simply by changing the resolution or refresh rate.

Any thoughts ?

Thanks. That explains what I was seeing and trying to do unsuccessfully with two different outputs running 2 different resolutions. The HDMi splitter approach seems like the right answer.

Quick question on whitelisting. Is the whitelist global across all interface outputs on a device or on an interface by interface basis ? This is aligned to my other thread about attempting to use both the HDMI and display ports on a NUC.

Out of curiosity what is your refresh rate set for ? If it isn't set for 60 does changing it to 60 fix the issue ? I am curious because I've something a bit similar on my NUC8i7BEH that also has an HDMI 2.0 output feeding an upstream HDMI 1.4a device. Have you also used the whitelist to try and limit to 1080P ?

I run LibreElec too on my Raspberry Pis. The licenses come from the Raspberry Pi folks are are tied to the hardware. See this link.for the MPEG2 license key and this link for the VC-1 license key. VC-1 is an old container found on older Blu-Ray DVDs. If you are in the US, with today's exchange rate these licenses are around $3 and $1.50 respectively.

I concur with HomerJau on playing content with my 8th gen NUC. HEVC/HDR leverages Kodi tone mapping and plays fine. Eventually it will be pure HDR once the Intel drivers and other code updates occur. There's a separate thread on this topic you've been involved with.

I have 2 of the HDHomreRun Quatro tuners and have purchased the MPEG2 licenses for my Raspberry Pis. If you have the HDHomreRun Extend units you can transcode out of MPEG2 and should be fine. If you have the HDHomeRun Connect or Quatro tuners then I would highly suggest the MPEG2 licenses. They are cheap and only take a few days to receive. They make a big difference on CPU utilization.