[bomberbuckley]

Hi there,

I'm new to Kodi. I have a Raspberry Pi B+ with Kodi installed and the enigma 2 plugin linked to a Vu+ Solo 2 set top box. The RP is connected to an old LG LED TV (not smart) & the ethernet connection is wired over cat6. My plan was to buy a new RP3 but I decided to test 1st on the B+, the results were much better than anticipated Smile

My live TV results are...

HD channels stream perfectly (I can choose interlaced or de-interlaced and there is no stuttering or buffering)

SD channels stutter a lot if I have de-interlaced selected but SD channels stream well (not perfectly) when I have it interlaced.

I presume the stuttering is because the B+ can't handle the de-interlacing? The SD channels are watchable but the interlacing is a bit annoying. So my questions are...

1) Can the RP B+ output an interlaced signal from my set top box to the TV?

2) Can the RP3 output an interlaced signal to the TV?

3) Why is the RP struggling with the SD streams when it's really good with the HD streams?

4) If the RP3 cannot output an interlaced signal I presume the hardware on the 3 would handle the de-interlacing on the SD channels much better and would sort my problem, yes?

I can transcode on the set top box side and have tested but the results are the same as above. My goal is to make use of the 2nd TV but without a new set top box or any crazy cabling. All channel data plus an EPG comes across and I can control via CEC which is awesome. If someone could answer the above questions that would be great any other advice would be more than welcome too!

Thanks!!


Some more info...

OSMC 2017.01-1 (kernel: Linux 4.4.27-6-osmc)
Version: 16.1
Skin: OSMC
Resolution: 1920x1080
Refresh Rate: 50 (Living in Ireland and all TV signals are 1080 50i or PAL

I had previously had ares wizard installed and the post was banned!! I've now uninstalled it. Hope it wasn't anything dodgy :/

[nickr]

The RPI will deinterlace for you.

[bomberbuckley]

The RPI will deinterlace for you.

Thanks Nick,

Can I get an interlaced output though? It will be used mostly for sport so would like to keep away from progressive. And if it is possible it would take a lot of work away from the RP...

[nickr]

I don't think you can. Either your tv or kodi will have to deinterlace. Is your tv better? Who knows?

[popcornmix]

Can I get an interlaced output though? It will be used mostly for sport so would like to keep away from progressive. And if it is possible it would take a lot of work away from the RP...

Kodi doesn't support "native" deinterlace on any platform. See:
http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=144827
http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=203666

[noggin]

Hi there,

I'm new to Kodi. I have a Raspberry Pi B+ with Kodi installed and the enigma 2 plugin linked to a Vu+ Solo 2 set top box. The RP is connected to an old LG LED TV (not smart) & the ethernet connection is wired over cat6. My plan was to buy a new RP3 but I decided to test 1st on the B+, the results were much better than anticipated Smile

My live TV results are...

HD channels stream perfectly (I can choose interlaced or de-interlaced and there is no stuttering or buffering)

SD channels stutter a lot if I have de-interlaced selected but SD channels stream well (not perfectly) when I have it interlaced.

I presume the stuttering is because the B+ can't handle the de-interlacing? The SD channels are watchable but the interlacing is a bit annoying. So my questions are...

1) Can the RP B+ output an interlaced signal from my set top box to the TV?

2) Can the RP3 output an interlaced signal to the TV?

3) Why is the RP struggling with the SD streams when it's really good with the HD streams?

4) If the RP3 cannot output an interlaced signal I presume the hardware on the 3 would handle the de-interlacing on the SD channels much better and would sort my problem, yes?

I can transcode on the set top box side and have tested but the results are the same as above. My goal is to make use of the 2nd TV but without a new set top box or any crazy cabling. All channel data plus an EPG comes across and I can control via CEC which is awesome. If someone could answer the above questions that would be great any other advice would be more than welcome too!

Thanks!!


Some more info...

OSMC 2017.01-1 (kernel: Linux 4.4.27-6-osmc)
Version: 16.1
Skin: OSMC
Resolution: 1920x1080
Refresh Rate: 50 (Living in Ireland and all TV signals are 1080 50i or PAL

I had previously had ares wizard installed and the post was banned!! I've now uninstalled it. Hope it wasn't anything dodgy :/

Can I check that you have bought and installed the £2.40 MPEG2 licence from the Raspberry Pi store?

Details here http://wiki.openelec.tv/index.php/Config...cence_Keys and here http://www.raspberrypi.com/mpeg-2-license-key/

HD channels are likely to be H264 - and the Pi comes with an H264 decode licence as standard.

SD channels could well be MPEG2 (that's still the standard in many countries for SD - including the Freeview UK channels in Northern Ireland. The RTE stuff in the North is H264 I think - not sure what the Republic does - think they may have gone H264?).

** EDIT - Doh! You're using Enigma - so will be watching DSat. If you're watching Freesat stuff - then SD channels will be MPEG2, HD channels will be H264. Unlike on Freeview HD (and I think the Republic equivalent) no SD stuff is H264 at the moment. If you're using the Irish Ka-band stuff - I'm afraid I don't know what they are doing **

Without a purchased and properly installed MPEG 2 licence key, the Pi will fall back to software decode and software deinterlace (i.e. using the CPU). The Pi isn't really powerful enough for this (single core Pis struggle even with the decode - let alone the deinterlace), so you will get poor quality results.

You also need to ensure MMAL Advanced is selected as your deinterlace type. (Thats available as an option in the Video section of the player OSD - and you usually apply it to all files)

If this doesn't fix things (or you've already got the key properly installed) - try switching between OMX and MMAL playback in your playback video hardware acceleration settings. (That's a setting in Kodi Settings)
(MMAL deinterlacing applies to both OMX and MMAL acceleration)

576i SD MPEG2 and H264 decode and deinterlace very well on all models of Pi from a Zero, via a B to a B+.
1080i HD H264 will decode and bob deinterlace on all Pis.
1080i HD H264 will decode and deinterlace with MMAL advanced on a Pi2 B (some mild overclock may be required) and on a Pi3 B it works out of the box.

If none of these solve it - have you confirmed the Enigma PVR Add-on is working OK for other Pi users. Sometimes there are issues with some PVR backends and their add-ons on some platforms now and again. (For a while TV Headend used to crash Kodi the first time you tuned to each HD channel)

(Note - you don't need the £1.20 VC-1 codec licence for TV - but if you play un-recompressed Blu-ray rips it is worth having as some Blu-rays are VC-1 rather than H264)

[noggin]

Can I get an interlaced output though? It will be used mostly for sport so would like to keep away from progressive. And if it is possible it would take a lot of work away from the RP...

Kodi doesn't support "native" deinterlace on any platform. See:
http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=144827
http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=203666

Or more accurate to say - Kodi doesn't support "native interlace output" (i.e. no deinterlace and scaling and preserved field order). All Kodi platforms (apart from a few personal custom builds some people have made) will need to deinterlace native interlaced content, and then re-interlace if the output chosen is interlaced.

I know this seems perverse when compared to hardware players (like those based on Sigma chipsets etc.) but it's a function of the flexibility that Kodi offers. If you offered native interlaced passthrough you'd have to inhibit all vertical scaling, and mean your OSD would drop to SD when playing back SD etc.

Also - to properly handle interlace pass through you need proper and full control of the output field order - and this is also something not available on lots of video platforms (which handle interlaced output as essentially a a downstream process AIUI) - and would need to cope with both TFF and BFF content interchangeably (Not all video standards agree on field order...)

[bomberbuckley]

Thanks for the replies everyone!

Overnight I had suspected the MPEG2 license was an issue as all the SD sat channels were MPEG2. I bought the license now and things look MUCH better

I don't know much about de-interlacing methods so thanks for the guidance on MMAL advanced, I've set that as default to all media now.

It's a shame we have to de-interlace at all seeing as all TV media and monitors are interlaced.

I'm quite surprised how well my 5/6 year old RPi handles the video!! The only reason to update to a RP3 would be improvement in navigation in GUI

Thanks again for all the help!!

[noggin]

It's a shame we have to de-interlace at all seeing as all TV media and monitors are interlaced.

Actually - not the case any more. Whilst broadcasters (*) send 576i and 1080i in the UK and Ireland, almost all non-soap drama, most documentary etc. is actually shot progressive at 25fps not interlaced, and is interlaced for broadcast (in a way that preserves the 25p progressive look). Sport, entertainment and news is usually shot at 50i native interlaced though.

And unless you have a CRT TV (or a very early Hitachi plasma) your monitor or TV is natively progressive, and will have to deinterlace an interlaced signal anyway. All that deinterlacing in the Pi does is move the deinterlacing from the TV to the Pi, it still has to happen somewhere :-)

In Europe 720/50p is more common (which is a 50fps native progressive standard) and Germany has just started 1080/50p. All the UHD stuff is 2160p progressive. Interlace is on the way out. At last...

I'm quite surprised how well my 5/6 year old RPi handles the video!! The only reason to update to a RP3 would be improvement in navigation in GUI

If you are watching HD stuff, you'll only get MMAL Bob (MMAL Advanced drops down to MMAL Bob on 1080i stuff) on a single-core Pi (Zero, A/A+, B/B+) which will give you reduced vertical resolution. If you watch on a small TV you probably won't notice it much, or of you don't have a Full HD panel or a UHD set. If you DO have a large screen and a Full HD or UHD TV, then the Pi 3 would be a good upgrade, as you will get MMAL Advanced working properly on HD 1080i stuff. If you watch the BBC News Channel you see the increase in vertical resolution on the BBC NEWS logo and text on the crawling 'ticker' at the bottom of the screen on a Pi 3. If this stuff doesn't worry you - stick with your original Pi!

*** EDIT - ignore the deinterlacing stuff. I'm out of date - see below for update from popcornmix. The amazing developers have managed to get MMAL Advanced running at 1080i on single core Pis it seems ***

Thanks again for all the help!!

No worries. Glad it was easy to help you solve.

(*) In the UK our Freeview HD 1080i stuff is actually broadcast using a hybrid of interlaced and progressive encoding - flipping between 1080p and 1080i on-the-fly.

[popcornmix]

If you are watching HD stuff, you'll only get MMAL Bob (MMAL Advanced drops down to MMAL Bob on 1080i stuff) on a single-core Pi (Zero, A/A+, B/B+) which will give you reduced vertical resolution. If you watch on a small TV you probably won't notice it much, or of you don't have a Full HD panel or a UHD set. If you DO have a large screen and a Full HD or UHD TV, then the Pi 3 would be a good upgrade, as you will get MMAL Advanced working properly on HD 1080i stuff. If you watch the BBC News Channel you see the increase in vertical resolution on the BBC NEWS logo and text on the crawling 'ticker' at the bottom of the screen on a Pi 3. If this stuff doesn't worry you - stick with your original Pi!

Actually on Krypton builds HD deinterlace should use advanced deinterlace on all models of Pi if you have the hardware codec licence.
As most of the work is on the GPU this should be okay even on a Pi1.

However I don't want to discourage an upgrade. The performance difference between a Pi1 and Pi3 is huge (about a factor of 10 in arm side benchmarks).
Not critical for the actual video playback which is mostly handled by the GPU, but a great help to the gui speed and some heavier loads like BluRay ISO.

[noggin]

If you are watching HD stuff, you'll only get MMAL Bob (MMAL Advanced drops down to MMAL Bob on 1080i stuff) on a single-core Pi (Zero, A/A+, B/B+) which will give you reduced vertical resolution. If you watch on a small TV you probably won't notice it much, or of you don't have a Full HD panel or a UHD set. If you DO have a large screen and a Full HD or UHD TV, then the Pi 3 would be a good upgrade, as you will get MMAL Advanced working properly on HD 1080i stuff. If you watch the BBC News Channel you see the increase in vertical resolution on the BBC NEWS logo and text on the crawling 'ticker' at the bottom of the screen on a Pi 3. If this stuff doesn't worry you - stick with your original Pi!

Actually on Krypton builds HD deinterlace should use advanced deinterlace on all models of Pi if you have the hardware codec licence.
As most of the work is on the GPU this should be okay even on a Pi1.

Ooh - great to know.

I've noticed Krypton has a lot of nice new functionality with regard to this sort of stuff.

I've just put a CM3 in a WD Media Stick case - and hadn't bought the MPEG2 licence. However the 7.95.1 LibreElec release (no special upgrade) software decodes Freeview 576i MPEG2 with only about 20% max CPU on any core, and you can now do an MMAL deinterlace on it (previously I think MMAL deinterlacing only worked for hardware decoded content). Was this to do with an update I saw that allowed ffmpeg YUV data to be passed to MMAL for deinterlacing. With a Pi Foundation WiFi USB dongle I'm able to stream TV Headend stuff fine. It makes quite a neat little remote streaming solution (and CEC volume control is always great to have).

I'll probably still buy the licence as I have some old MPEG2 1080i stuff kicking around (early Blu-rays mainly)

However I don't want to discourage an upgrade. The performance difference between a Pi1 and Pi3 is huge (about a factor of 10 in arm side benchmarks).
Not critical for the actual video playback which is mostly handled by the GPU, but a great help to the gui speed and some heavier loads like BluRay ISO.

Yes - agreed.

[popcornmix]

I'll probably still buy the licence as I have some old MPEG2 1080i stuff kicking around (early Blu-rays mainly)

Software decode of 1080i live TV is actually okay with bob deinterlace on Pi3. Advanced deinterlace does push it over the edge so the codec licence is worth having.
Not tested MPEG-2 BluRay lately - that is rather higher bitrate.

Not sure what ventilation/cooling is like on WD stick, but HD software decode may require some type of heatsink. Again shouldn't be a problem with codec licence.

[noggin]

I'll probably still buy the licence as I have some old MPEG2 1080i stuff kicking around (early Blu-rays mainly)

Software decode of 1080i live TV is actually okay with bob deinterlace on Pi3. Advanced deinterlace does push it over the edge so the codec licence is worth having.
Not tested MPEG-2 BluRay lately - that is rather higher bitrate.

Not sure what ventilation/cooling is like on WD stick, but HD software decode may require some type of heatsink. Again shouldn't be a problem with codec licence.

Yep - that was my thinking behind the licence. At £3.60 for both it's hardly a huge expense (though when compared to a Pi Zero :-) )

The WD Stick is quite low-tech in case terms - it's a plastic sandwich for the carrier board with gaps for 2 x USB A, a Micro-USB B and the HDMI that sticks out. There is a little plastic button that presses on a push button switch on the carrier board which is power on/off and long-press for eMMC flashing. There is a decent sized airgap along one edge which may well help with ventilation. I'm going to run it without a heatsink and see how I go - but will buy the codec licence. It's a neat solution to add high quality Live TV/PVR to a portable bedroom TV.

Only annoying thing is that the current LE builds don't seem to include drivers for the common USB->Ethernet modules you get, so I'm stuck with WiFi.

[popcornmix]

Only annoying thing is that the current LE builds don't seem to include drivers for the common USB->Ethernet modules you get, so I'm stuck with WiFi.

Is this a device that is supported by raspbian?
If so it is probably just a kernel module that needs to be enabled. LE may be willing to add it (it does make some sense for Pi0, model A and CM).
Report output of "lsusb" and "lsmod" when running on raspbian to identify what the device is.

[noggin]

Ignore me popcornmix. I must have messed something up during testing. The units I have now work OK - in fact very well (As does my Freeview HD USB tuner)

*EDIT - though within a few mins I get a thermometer symbol so I suspect a heatsink or similar will be needed - which won't work nicely in the case* (Off topic - sorry)