Posts by Shoog

  • 4K Kodi box ODROID C2 vs (random) 912 box. Advice is greatly appreciated!

    VIM2. I got it because it has a supported Sat dTV board. However when the cost of a sat board, power supply and various other bits are taken into account it worked out at around €100.00. If I were to do it over again I would have gone with the MeCool KIII or KII which does there same job in a nicer package. I was sucked in by claims of excellent Linux support which simply wasn't real with the Khadas VIM2.

    Still, as I said if I had the decision to make again it would be for the Vorke V1+ at €140.00 with an external SAT>IP box for sat duties.
    Not much help to your use case I know, but I would be very cautious about going down the S912 path for what in reality will turn out to be no better performance than any of the S905 options.

    Shoog

  • 4K Kodi box ODROID C2 vs (random) 912 box. Advice is greatly appreciated!

    I believe that none of these boards do 4K HDR correctly since they are bottlenecked by the HDMI port, but I could be wrong on this since its a complex area. For me its a none issue.

    If and when Kodi makes my S912 card unusable I will migrate to one of the cheap Intel PC boxes such as the Vorke V1+. The whole field of Android boxes is to much in flux and hardware becomes redundant far to quickly for my taste.

    Its always going to be a pony race with these boxes with new chips coming along fragmenting the ecosystem and stretching the development teams thinner and thinner, meaning worse support for all but the lucky "latest" designs rolling down the tracks.

    Shoog

  • 4K Kodi box ODROID C2 vs (random) 912 box. Advice is greatly appreciated!

    The S912 is less well supported by Linux. It is currently using a cludged Android Kernel which will slowly be forced out by upstream Kodi changes that are coming down the tracks. The s905 chips will be more likely to survive these changes in better shape since it uses a more well established Mali GPU. Coupled to this is the fact that the S905 chips are better supported by AMLogic themselves.
    The only real advantage that the S912 has over the S905 is its gigabit Lan.

    At the moment CoreElec supports S912 chips well, but it has been predicted by the developer team that this will degrade over time as Kodi forces changes to the code.

    Shoog

  • [8.2.4.1] LibreELEC Kodi Krypton - S905 & S912 devices

    Quote from plikmuny

    I want to try 8.2.4.2 Version. Because no matter which kodi 18 Version i try, it has a Video lag at the start and it stops oft while playing.

    I am fed up of changing the Oses....

    Moreover Odroid C2 is not a old Hardware. Now the developers are concentrating on the new upcoming Devices i guess. Did a mistake in buying C2. Should have bought a cheap s905 Box.

    Do you have Video stuttering at the beginning of Video and also in between? I hate it. I have 50mbps here. Even then it sucks....

    only a solution in the short term since Kodi developers are determined to remove all the fixes which make the AML boxes work. They are trying to make AMLogic become more compliant with Linux standards - but since AML don't really care a damn for their small Linux base this is unlikely to happen. Expect these boxes to become more broken as time goes on.

    The stirling efforts of the Open Source community to reverse engineer support into the Linux Kernel are slow as a snail and every time they get something working AML release a new chip with a totally new GPU which breaks things all over again. The real deep culprit is ARM who makes money out of licenses and so will not release source code for any of its patents and strictly prohibit their customers (AML) from doing likewise.

    Intel and RaspPi are the only two manufacturers who will get reliable Kodi support in the future.

    Shoog

  • VPN Manager for OpenVPN

    Quote from doggyofone

    bubblegum57 are you using Nordvpn to stream and bypass geo-blocking that Netflix does. Canadian Netflix is heavily restricted and much of the US content is not available in Canada. My current VPN supplier, PIA, doesn't or can't provide access to US Netflix. Their pricing is awesome, so I'd like to give Nordvpn a try.

    NordVPN was dropped from zombiod support because they kept changing their portals and it was impossible to keep up with them. If you want to use NordVPN then you better be able to do some deep digging into the background code because no plugging will support them in libreelec.

    However it is my small experience that any of the major service providers such as Netflix or the BBC are fairly savy to people using VPN's to watch their geo-blocked content and they blacklist VPN portals within days. There are specialist VPN providers which offer unique portal addresses for their customers which avoids this - but they tend to be the most expensive providers.

    A modem based VPN service would tend to be a way to avoid a lot of the complexities - but again it will cost and you will need to be tech savy enough to set things up.

    Shoog

  • [S812] OTT M8S 2G RAM 8G ROM BCM4335 WIFI

    My box is one of the original BCM4335 M8S S812 boxes, with that as the only branding. I think its board version 4.

    These boxes don't have dtb's as they came before they were introduced and hence why it can be so difficult to find a working LE build. They have boot,img which do the same thing but make them less portable.

    Anyway I have good news as I got it working, I took the file LibreELEC_8.0.0-Begicj-M8S_S812_4335.zip (linked to in this thread) and extracted the file LibreELEC-S812.M8S.arm-8.0.0-update.zip from it. This file is an Android/TWRP format update file and TWRP was able to flash it without any issues. Its up and running and this has allowed me to update the TvHeadend client to a version compatible with my server.

    The only thing I am now stuck on is getting SMB to work with my Leia based server. Can't seem to get the M8S to accept SMB or Zero_config addresses. This is unlike my RP2 running KRYPTON which accepts ZeroConfig links.

    Shoog

  • [S812] OTT M8S 2G RAM 8G ROM BCM4335 WIFI

    So I went through this thread with a fine tooth comb looking for a build which might take me from LE 7 to LE 8.

    All of them produce a box that gets stuck on the boot screen or blank screens.

    I now feel fairly confident that the only version which has a chance to work on my box is the original LE 8 which was the companion to the LE 7.0.2 released in the first page of this thread. It's gone now from all the links so I can only ask, has anyone kept a copy on their harddrive that they can share. The form needed would be the update.zip, which is packaged to load via Android recovery or TWRP.

    Cheers

    Shoog

  • [S812] OTT M8S 2G RAM 8G ROM BCM4335 WIFI

    Ok I understand this is a crypto-thread, but its the only sensible place to ask this question.

    I have an old S812 box running the 7.0.2 build posted at the start of this thread, but SMB is no longer working with my main Leia box server and my LAN port no longer seems to want to connect possibly after a failed upgrade corrupting the dtb (or its equivalent on these boxes).

    I have attempted to update to the various Krypton builds described in this thread - but they all seem to be configured to install from Android recovery. However they will not install from TWRP recovery which is how I flashed 7.0.2 originally.

    None of the linked .TAR update files are accepted when I place them into the update folder, pooping out with MD5 signature failure on the SYSTEM file. There really doesn't seem to be any pathway from an installed 7.0.2 build to a later build - without reverting back to the original Android ROM first.

    Boot from one of the Bables builds on a installed SD card enters a boot loop.

    Has anyone successful gone from LE7 to LE8 on one of these boxes, and if so how ?

    Shoog

  • LE9.0 remote configs ir-keytable Amlogic devices

    IR_KEYTABLE can operate in either keyboard or remote modes. Keyboard restricts you to using just the keyboard buttons defined within Kodi. Remote mode is more flexible. The first thing you need to do is decide which mode your system supports.

    This is where LIRCD comes in as it allows you to create a Frankenstein's monster of a hybrid when using a remote with Keyboard mode and allows you to trigger additional events beyond the standard keycodes of KODI. However it is nowhere well documented how to achieve this in LE, and it tends to disrupted the KODI keyboard keymap as well degrading its behavior.

    I consider the use of Lirc as a work around as highly unsatisfactory and so turn it off for a somewhat pure KEYBOARD remote experience.

    Shoog

  • Choosing a S905 / S905X / S905D / S905W / S912 box guide

    the vim2 is a great piece of hardware but has no heatsink so runs hot. Also it has only two usbs which is a bit limiting. Its possible to add a dvb s card which can be useful if you need it.

    Its cheaper than the u9, but she n you factor in the need for a decent power supply the difference is slim.

    I would go with the MINIX.


    Shoog

  • [RPi2] Freeze during stream

    I get this on certain radio streams from TVH server on my Pi2. Don't know if its the same underlying issue though.

    I am running the latest RPI image, but this problem has persisted over just about all the versions I have tried.

    I have switched off visualizations to test if its related to that - but its to early to tell yet.

    Shoog

  • [8.2.4.1] LibreELEC Kodi Krypton - S905 & S912 devices

    Is this build supporting the latest CVH Media Driver Modules plugin. Need it for my VIM2.

    UPDATE:

    I am pleasantly surprised that both my IP >SAT box and my VIM2 dTV board were detected without adding in special modules - meaning support for the VIM2 board has been rolled into the Kernel. Now to see if everything works.

    UPDATE:
    Unless I am missing something, the driver for the VIM2 dTV board baked into the Kernel is still the old broken one which has not had the benefits of afl1's work to make it functional. No biggy.

    Shoog