[gazoo]

Hello all. I have two Matricom devices which I used to normally play H.264 files for and worked flawlessly. I have Gbox Q and Q2 (S802, S812 platforms). I've recently installed MythTV for live TV over HDHomerun and was not able to get MPEG 1080i to work at all (freezing, slowing) using Kodi 17. I have since found a few references saying amlogic is no longer being supported but mediacodec is. I remember older versions of Kodi having amcodec in the list of hardware acceleration but now is only mediacodec.

Can someone explain differences between amcodec and mediacodec? It seems the most popular boxes like Minix U1 are also amcodec so I assume that works with new Kodi 17 mediacodec somehow. Is mediacodec some kind of standard framework to talk to hardware? If so why do some work and some don't?

I'm also not really wanting to try going Libreelec. First off, can't seem to get it to work (boot errors) and I also like to have access to Android apps available like Netflix etc.

Is there a list of Android boxes that work with mediacodec/Kodi 17 1080i MPEG2 on hardware acceleration right out of the box?

Sorry for all the questions, but this topic seems to be confusing and confused by many.

[wrxtasy]

A repost from HERE

https://kodi.tv/kodi-v17-krypton-release-candidate-1/

Welcome to Android MediaCodec standards

One of the last custom implementation we had was Amlogic related code which was the device were it all started with Kodi on Android. We had to resolve to this custom implementation back then to access certain hardware parts which Android officially couldn’t yet. Due to this legacy and how we had things implemented we couldn’t switch this off just yet in past releases. ....

The decision was made that from Krypton onwards there are no longer any custom Kodi code hacks, for both Video as well as Audio. Rockchip hacks were the first to go and now AMLogic. Every Chipset vendor now has to use standard Android Application Programming Interfaces (API's) in their Android OS implementation. This decision was made to ease the burdon on Kodi developers with code maintenance. Its all about standardisation across the Android Kodi software.

There is not even a regular Kodi Android code maintainer anymore.
So its bye bye Amcodec and hello standard Google Mediacodec.

If Audio and Video features no longer work with Android AMLogic Hardware its because the Firmware is rubbish, its not following proper Android API implementations. Its why time and time again in the hardware START HERE thread I strongly warn users against buying cheap, unsupported devices with rubbish, buggy Android Firmware.

You could say all the Chickens have now coming home to roost for various Hardware platforms since Kodi Krypton has been released. Android TV's like Philips, Sony and dirt cheap AMLogic devices have been stripped naked and been found wanting in their implementations and support of Mediacodec. And for Audio, the Google IEC Audio standard.

All we can say is users of such rubbish Firmware platforms (for Kodi Krypton) need to bug the hell out of the Seller or Hardware Chipset vendors for bug busted Firmware updates (good luck !) or get real familiar with the Freaktab Website and DIY Firmware installs. There is nothing Kodi can do. The custom code hacks have gone the way of the dinosaur and Android Kodi Krypton onwards is now using standard programming API's, the way Google intended.

---

Reports and personal experiences I've seen so far with Android Kodi Krypton:

- unreliable TvHeadend deinterlacing and mpeg2 / H264 1080i hardware decoding on the nVIDIA Shield.
- unreliable TvHeadend / MythTV / DVBLink deinterlacing and mpeg2 / H264 1080i hardware decoding on the Mi Box (AML S905x)
- unreliable TvHeadend deinterlacing and mpeg2 / H264 1080i hardware decoding on the WeTek devices (AML S812 / S905)

Personally I don't think you are going to find a solution with Android Kodi Krypton and reliable PVR Clients and deinterlacing.
There may be some tweaks coming in Android Kodi v18 Leia.

Use LibreELEC Kodi Krypton on AMLogic S8xx / S905 if you want TV viewing reliability or buy Intel or RPi

[gazoo]

wrxtasy-
There doesn't seem to be one that works for me. The Community builds from balbes150, latest post says - "I think S812 support is dead folks." Great, now what

I downloaded what was there and got weird errors saying Invalid argument, read-only file system, fsk failed, your system is broken beyond repair.

[nickr]

S905 or s905x with libreelec.

[wrxtasy]

I have reliable TvHeadend deinterlacing with LibreELEC Krypton on a old S805 ODROID C1.
But then I optimise specifically for Hardware I personally own ;-)