Posts by JonnyGators

Has anyone given any thought to a better setup process than hostname and wifi? Like an actual user friendly navigateable setup process that asks questions, guides through the essential setup to configure things ideally to a setup? Or perhaps even a few basic options (what am I connected to? A - atmos receiver, b - 5.1/7.1 receiver, c - speaker bar, d - analog output - to at least give a chance of a functional default starting point?)? I mean, you don't even ask what time zone the person is in, which guarantees the majority of users are going to be faced with an incorrect time on the clock and have to hunt that down as a side mission while trying to setup their audio. I'm not trying to be ranty or combative here, but as someone that has devoted 20+ years to providing white glove service to ensure our tech is helping end users rather than contributing to their problems, I just find software that is designed to be hard to use as rather offensive. I provide all my infinite patience to my end users - I have none left for dev and support people that contribute to the tech problems of the day.

Will poke around for that expert mode ac3-eac3 setting. I did enable a pass through option, and the output is set to hdmi and recognizes the receiver, and the cable should be good, but I don't recall if the pass through option I enabled referenced ac3, perhaps another option was hidden from me and I need to get into that expert mode.

I do find it can be rather confusing as an end user to still have a channel number option in place when my goal is trying to set it to pass through - the channel options go from 2 to 7.1, none of which are applicable. I assume if I get the pass through set properly, that bypasses that option, but that option remaining in place is rather unclear. If it no longer applies because another setting like pass through exists, shouldn't it become grayed out or disabled? Or if it still applies in certain circumstances, shouldn't that be made clear somewhere on the screen? I like to understand what I'm doing, but I can't if the configurations are unclear and ambiguous.

A yes/no question that I suspect is a no. Which would have been damn useful information years ago, and ought to make the Pi ineligible to legally claim to have HDMI ports, as if they cannot adhere to standards to pass through supported signals, they aren't really HDMI ports then.

But if someone here dares to think the answer is a yes, be prepared to show proof, and include detailed instructions how proven results were achieved.

This thread was based on a Pi3, which I set aside in favor of a Pi4, which setup a bit better - although a setup process that actually prompts to set a time zone would be a welcome feature rather than just assuming the entire world lives in a single time zone, thus making the time wrong by default for the vast majority of users.

Question for the developers - what was your actual intended experience here?

I setup a microsd card with the lastest libreelec version, connected my Pi to my receiver via hdmi, set the receiver to the right input, turned on the TV, and booted up the Pi.

It booted up to kodi, let me set a hostname, let me find my wifi network, and - now I have a kodi screen that is configured completely wrong with no clear direction to go in.

Poking around the settings, I see the following problems right off the bat:
- audio is set to bluetooth with no other options (uh, hello? HDMI is literally what I'm using and what you're already sending video signal to - why wouldn't you send audio there, or have that available as an option to select?)
- video resolution is set to 1024x768 with no higher options. Seriously?
- clock is set to wrong time with no option to set or automatically update, despite being connected to internet. Even Microsoft can figure out how to do this right from the start.

So please developers, please explain to me why you think this is an acceptable starting point, and what you intend your end users to do from this state to actually make use of your product. Because for anyone that cares at all about end user experience, this is a completely unacceptable starting point!

For those looking for useful instructions - allow me to demonstrate how to actually answer a question.

The enabling of the audio output on the 3.5mm audio jack can be done by doing the following:

Open an ssh session into the pi, signing in as root and the root password set when setting up the pi (I use putty in windows to do this)

enter:

mount -o remount,rw /flash

This sets it so you can edit the config file.

to edit the config file, use the command:

nano /flash/config.txt

edit the file by adding in the line

dtparam=audio=on

Exit out of nano by pressing ctrl-x, when prompted to save type Y

To set things back into read only mode, use the command

mount -o remount,ro /flash

Restart the pi - this can be done from the ssh session with the command of:

reboot

Once Kodi restarts, you need to change the audio output to the now available option of the 3.5 output.

(That this only enables the option to easily set it as an audio output, rather than actually enable it, makes it that much stupid that the option isn't there by default. To intentionally add a barrier to an option that end users may want to easily select is the exact opposite of what programmers should be doing!)

go into settings - system - audio

highlight Audio output device

highlight/select ALSA;bcm2835 Headphones bcm2835 Headphones.

With that output now selected, you should now hear audio coming out of the jack, and can now judge for yourself whether or not this is an adequate option for your purposes, rather than some developer trying to make the decision for you.

I just want to get sound out of an audio player. This is ridiculous that no one can fix this glaring bug that renders the whole thing unuseable!

I fail to see the logic of a default installation of an audio player application having the audio output disabled.

Do you not understand it's an AUDIO PLAYER!?!?!?!?

This is about the dumbest programming setting I have ever encountered in my entire life!

Reading through this thread, I do not understand at all what is supposed to be made of this information to manually re-enable the audio output. Again - for an AUDIO OUTPUT PLAYER!!!!!

Could someone please for the love of god fix this stupidity, so I can actually listen to the audio that is being played on my audio player?