Openelec HTPC Playback Quality Problem
#1
Hello,
I recently built a HTPC that consists of the following

I3-6100
Asus H170I-PLUS D3 Mini ITX
A-Data Premier SP550 120GB SSD
8gigs DDR3L 1600 Ram

Openelec - fritsch.fruehberger.net/openelec/v15_2_EGL
TV - Samsung 65HU8550
AVR - Denon X3100w
All HDMI 2.0 Cables
NAS - Sinology DS215j
Ethernet Cables - Cat6

My Blu-ray collection has been ripped into MKV at full quality - 1:1 with the disc.

Before this setup I streamed from the same NAS to my Sony BDP S5500. The blu-ray player only supported playing DTS HD-MA (it would not play TrueHD). Playback was perfect. Because of the lack of support for TrueHD, I built the HTPC described above.

I have been running the HTPC for a few weeks now and have noticed a drop in quality in the following areas -
- Playback is too dark (increasing the brightness from Kodi results in a washed out grey look)
- Movies that looked great using the blu-ray player can look out of focus in Kodi.
- There can be slight jitter with playback in Kodi as well. Pressing "o" during playback shows zero dropped frames. skipped frames through 15min of a movie might get to 30.

I have made sure that the TV and AVR are receiving movies at 24p(or 23.974p) or whatever framerate mediainfo states.

Does anyone have any advice to get me back to the quality I had streaming through the blu-ray player? It would seem that my HTPC is powerful enough for this not to be a problem.

If this is not the correct section to post in or if more information is needed, please let me know.

Thanks in advance.
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#2
Debug Log .... as to quote the maintainer: "No log, no issue" Wink
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#3
(2016-01-29, 00:37)David1977 Wrote: Debug Log .... as to quote the maintainer: "No log, no issue" Wink

Kodi will not let me install the Kodi Log Uploader. It says installation failed. I have rebooted twice...

Instead of using the Kodi Log Uploader, I've accessed the log files through SMB and extracted the zip file. There is a list of Kodi, System, Hardware, Audio, Network, varlog, input, filesystem, journal-cur, journal-prev. Which file should I upload to pastebin?

Thanks for your help
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#4
Here is the log file of a movie that displays the jitter, brightness and out of focus problems.

http://xbmclogs.com/py2lvuhym

Thanks
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#5
Does anyone have any ideas for me? Is this a Kodi issue or Openelec or ??

Thanks for any guidance here.
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#6
you have an issue with full range RGB vs limited range between kodi and AVR/TV. make sure you've read the thread you got your OE build (which is unofficial btw) and understand how to configure color space correctly.
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#7
Thanks so much for looking into it wsnipex. Much appreciated. I'll do some research on the RGB range

Is there an official build that supports the current hardware I am running? I tried updating to the new 6.0.1 but got stuck on a load in page.
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#8
I suggest you try fritsch' v17 builds first: http://fritsch.fruehberger.net/openelec/...er_testing
support thread(you probably know it already) http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=231955

edit: moving to linux support
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#9
Thanks for the help. After getting my head around the color range issues, I think I resolved the issues.
Another thing that completely resolved the jitter issues was outputting at 1080p instead of 2160p from Kodi, passing thru the AVR and letting the TV upscale. Seems like Kodi has a hard time upscaling 1080p content to 2160p.
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#10
It's your GPU not kodi :-) Kodi uses lanczos3 algorithm in a shader. If you use "bilinear" for the job it will do it nicely, but quality sucks.

Best is: Set your kodi to 1080p60 and enable Adjust Refreshrate to match video.

The referenced builds and also upcoming kodi v16 will then change resolution for 4k content and output it directly. While 1080p content is scaled by the AVR/ TV.
First decide what functions / features you expect from a system. Then decide for the hardware. Don't waste your money on crap.
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#11
Thanks for the insight and clarification Fritsch.
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