Posts by jbinkley60

    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.

    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 ?

    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.

    I've decided to give up on trying to use both the NUC HDMI and USB-C outputs simultaneously. I've ordered an HDMI splitter which will pass 4K @ 60fps over HDMI 2.0 for video and output video / audio @ 1080P @ 60 fps over HDMI 1.4 for my AV receiver to extract the audio. It is supposed to pass full uncompressed 7.1 audio. The user reviews show others using it to do exactly what I want. Once I receive it I'll post my results.