Posts by noggin

Quote from chewitt

I think it was a "timing" problem more than anything else. Not long after Slice launched (late) RPi2 came along, and the lack of CM2 card meant the specs looked weak, and then RPi3 arrived to drive nails further into the coffin. CM3 eventually caught up, but that was some time later again and by that point the day-jobs of the "Five" had also multiplied via Pi success and the company they'd formed hadn't sold enough product volume to really be viable. These days the Pi Foundation owns the IP/designs, but while I think having them create/release an "official" HTPC box would be good for their own sales it would also put them into competition with their ecosystem in a negative way.. but I should ask Gordon anyway

That all makes sense - the CM1 vs Pi 2 was very unfortunate timing - and the CM1 was just a little bit underpowered (though with the MPEG2 and VC-1 licences it was still a very capable HD and SD media player).

ISTR there was an issue with the continued use of the original Slice skin in Kodi - but hadn't realised that the Pi Foundation now owned the IP and designs. I totally understand why the Pi foundation wouldn't want to compete with others in the ecosystem. However they do make the DVB-T2 HAT - and that integrated into a modern Pi 4-based Slice (once the HDR and HD Audio stuff is implemented) would be lovely.

None of these after market cases really come close to looking as well designed as the Slice though - though the Argon cases are some of the nicest looking out there at the moment IMO.

I think the Slice was very much a passion project from the developers - the fact it didn't evolve and continue to be manufactured suggests it didn't make that much money (and it was very much a premium product).

Quote from YURIART

woah
all those term are making my brain fry

i have Rasp Pi 4B with Kodi, will it play h265, 4k, FLAC video formats?

Are the videos SDR or HDR?

Alternatively - if an M2 SSD is a suitable replacement - then Argon have a Pi4B case with integrated M2 slot coming (if not here yet)

Quote from espaun206

Which tv box with Amg soc currently supports 4: 2: 2 H264 or H265 videos either by hardware or software? S922x?

i tried a rpi4 and it doesn't work with 4: 2: 2 H264 or H265 videos

Very few boxes support 4:2:2 video as it isn't a consumer format (DVD, DVB TV broadcasts, Blu-ray, UHD Blu-ray, Netflix, Prime etc. are all 4:2:0) so there is no reason to implement it in chipsets aimed at consumer devices.

4:2:2 h.264/h.265 is only used by broadcasters on contribution circuits - not final-leg distribution - so unless you are building a box for feed hunters (a small market) 4:2:2 isn't really a 'must have' feature.

None of the AMLogic chipsets that I am aware of support 4:2:2 hardware decode for this reason - so you need a box fast enough to decode it (and if it's interlaced also YADIF or W3DIF 2x deinterlace it) with CPU power.

The only ARM media player platform that I know that can currently do software decode (and deinterlace) of 1080i25 for MPEG2 and h.264 4:2:2 is the Apple TV 4K (the ARM SoC in that is a beast)

The other BIG advantage of the Apple TV 4K is that it has hardware acceleration support for 4:4:4 and 4:2:2 h.265/HEVC decode - because Apple use that codec for their Airplay/Sidecar iPad dual display function which compresses desktop video to h.265 for carriage over WiFi or Lightning/USB Type-C connection (to avoid reducing the chroma res to 4:2:0 and it all going smeary when you use your iPad as a second display) The Apple TV also has that functionality. I've played 2160p50 4:2:2 h.265/HEVC on the Apple TV in mrMC with very low CPU (but it was still not perfect because of some A/V sync issues)

If you want MPEG2 and h.264 4:2:2 with LibreElec then a decent Intel or AMD solution is probably your best bet - I used to use a Haswell i5 NUC to play 4:2:2 stuff and it coped - just - once multithreaded software decode of h.264 was implemented in ffmpeg. However the LibreElec implementation seemed to do a 4:2:2 to 4:2:0 conversion without interlaced aware chroma decode/conversion so you had saturated areas deinterlaced with p25 rather than p50 motion (a known issue in ffmpeg)

The Gumstix CM4 to CM3 converter form factor is also a bit bigger than the CM1 and 3/3+ isn't it - it's significantly deeper. Would it even fit in a slice?

The ODroid C4 is worth a look (it has HDR support) - but that's better suited to CoreElec at the moment, rather than LibreElec.

Quote from pletopia

Kodi 19.x "Matrix" - Alpha 2 | Kodi | Open Source Home Theater Software

Ah - I thought you meant a LibreElec Matrix alpha release.

Also if you are running 4K then your audio extractor also needs to be 4K friendly - counterintuitive as this may seem. The reason for this is that HDMI audio is not carried separately to the video, it's actually embedded in the video signal (it's carried in the blanking period of the HDMI video signal where there isn't active video).

If you are running a higher data rate video signal (4:2:2 2160p60 for instance) then your extractor also needs to support the higher bandwidth.

Quote from pletopia

Looks like we are in Kodi 19 alpha land now instead of just nightlies .. woohoo

Link?

Quote from pila

As I have found them for 11€ a piece delivered, I ordered few. Using them for DVB-T2 h265 TV at RPi4 with all current LibreELEC 9.2.5.

They work OOTB, just needed to be activated in TVh. They display DVB-T2 (channel 40, 626 mHz ) normally. No transport or continuity errors. Strangely, in TVh, PER and Uncorrected Blocks pop up. I have almost never seen that in many years of using several other tuners at any of my systems. Nothing visibly wrong with the picture; then again I have tested them for just a few hours. In this usage, lack of tuner's h265 support is not an issue as tuners just have to deliver a DVB-T2 stream, RPi4 will display it (h265). To use T2 channel, I had to manually change desired channel from T to T2 which may not be clear for many users.

Same as MyGica T230 and T230C2, sync problems with sound being ahead of the picture when recording and changing channels, but that is an LE problem.

Yep - the DVB-T/T2 tuner does no video decoding - so MPEG2, h.264/AVC, h.265/HEVC make no difference - it just sends the video streams to other devices to decode.

The TV Headend DVB-T vs DVB-T2 setting can be confusing as not all tuners need it (The first gen DVB-T2 stick, the PCTV 290e, had a driver that automatically switched to T2 when you pointed it at a T2 mux and didn't need T2 to be explicitly defined in TV Headend for instance. Most newer sticks do need you to set the T vs T2 delivery system parameter)

I had lots of errors on the PSB3 DVB-T2 stream in London - which is a 40.25Mbs DVB-T2 stream using 8MHz bandwidth, 256QAM and 32kE carriers with 2/3 FEC (aka DTG-6 mode) at 545.833MHz. They were visible.

Quote from philbio

I've attempted to get audio passthrough working (with the latest nightly build) on the second hdmi port (HDMI 2) without success, the avr (Denon AVR-4308) is detected in libreelec however no audio is sent to the receiver (video is sent to HMDI 1 which is working), have I misunderstood the passthrough feature? Thank you

I don't think there is any suggestion that you can take video from HDMI1 and audio from HDMI2 ?

The HD Audio passthrough option adds the option for 1080p modes (but not 2160p?) to bitstream passthrough HD Audio codecs like Dolby True HD and DTS HD Master Audio and High Resolution Audio (sending the compressed bitstream to your AVR for your AVR to decode to PCM), whereas previously on the Pi they had been decoded in software within Kodi and output as PCM 5.1/7.1 (which apart from Atmos should be lossless - other than losing metadata that some downstream AVR processing may use for loudness control etc.)

Also some TVs are not good at displaying the video resolution of the BIOS splash screen quickly enough for you to see the BIOS POST menu. PC monitors are often a bit better in this regard in my experience. Also in my experience cabled keyboards are often better than RF remote keyboards as BIOSs sometimes don't recognise the RF receivers quickly enough.

Quote from JohnWayne111

Just a question ... HDR with PI 4 will come in future? I´m aware, nothing is final, but just on technical aspect it is possible and well get enjoying this feature?

The Pi is capable of decoding 2160p 10-bit HEVC, and we're told the hardware supports output of 10-bit video with Infoframes to flag HDR and switch TVs into HDR mode. (These are the three things necessary for 'standard' HDR10 replay)

HD Audio bit streaming (for HD video output) has been added recently to the Pi 4B+'s capabilities - so stuff is happening to develop the platform.

If you want HDR now - then look at some other platforms (though these are using custom Kodi builds to enable HDR) - if you are prepared to wait then HDR support for the Pi 4B+ should happen at some point - but there is no real timeline in the public domain for when.

One thing to be aware of is that if your TV only supports HDR UHD at 50/60fps at 4:2:0 the Pi 4B+ is not going to besuitable - as it can't output 4:2:0 (which is required for some TVs). There isn't that much 50/60fps HDR stuff - but BBC iPlayer is 50fps for UHD HDR streaming for instance.

Quote from roidy

noggin How's the Herobox working out for you with HDR content?

The price has just dropped to £152 on Amazon and I'm tempted to try one out.

I haven't been using it much for LibreElec recently. I've currently repurposed it as a DVB-T2 archive box (it permanently records the UK PSB3 Freeview HD Mux - recording BBC One HD, BBC Two HD, ITV HD, C4 HD and C5 HD from a DVB-T2 USB tuner - giving me instant access to the last approx 14 days of broadcast TV from the UK's main channels)

Quote from smp

Yes.

Not an issue for me though. The panel is 8-bit with FRC. I will probably get a better result with RGB 8-bit + GPU dithering than with 4:2:0 12-bit.

If your panel is 120Hz won't feeding your TV 10bit or more and letting FRC do the work be a better job (as the FRC can work at 120fps and thus can dither between the two 60Hz frames, or 5 x 24Hz frames - whereas with a GPU you'll be displaying the same dither twice at 60fps or 5 times at 24fps? )

I thought the whole point of HDR 24p working pretty well with 8bit+FRC was because you got a lot of frames to do the FRC dithering on for every source frame? If you dither in the GPU then you don't get the same effect ?

Quote from smp

That was actually an issue with my older Samsung TV.

I just tested with another TV (Samsung UE43TU8000) and 4K 60Hz HDR videos play just fine, no video distortion.

is that still 8-bit output though?

You can send 2160p60 8-bit 4:2:0, 4:4:4 or RGB with an HDR EOTF flag and the TV will happily switch into HDR10 or HLG mode - but because you've lost 2 bits of video data you will get banding?

Some (often early) displays would only accept 2160p60 with 4:2:0 as they had HDMI 1.4b-bandwidth limited "HDMI 2.0" inputs, whilst others have different functionality on different inputs (some Sony sets are not 'full HDMI 2.0' on HDMI 1 and 4, and are only 'Enhanced' on inputs 2 and 3 (3 is usually the ARC HDMI too).

Quote from Klojum

Nothing yet. The latest #0717 build from Milhouse did play the 3D video (which is an upgrade from LE 9.2.3 which crashed), but the display is still showing two images.

So that sounds as if 3D MVC decode is working, but not being output as frame packed 1080p24 (i.e. not outputting it as 1920x2205 with 45 lines of blanking between each eye feed).

Does the Pi 4B output frame packed 3D when converting SBS and TAB for output as frame packed?