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+--- Thread: raspberry pi 2 vs banana pro (/showthread.php?tid=227126)
raspberry pi 2 vs banana pro - exquyre - 2015-05-16
I am currently looking into getting a portable kodi machine and was considering buying either the rpi2 or the banana pro, as the latter is only 2€ more expensive where i live. I am partly aware of each boards benefits. The most conpelling pro of the banana pro to me is the built in wifi, sata connector and composite video (as i plan on using the build with new screens that have hdmi input as well as really old tvs that only have composite). Unfortunately the support for the pro is awful and im not even sure if there is hardware acceleration support yet.
So now i am here asking for recommendations on which board to buy. If buying the rspi i will have to buy a really small usb wifi adapter, hdmi to composite and sata to usb connector for the hdd i plan on putting my movies on. Btw, i will use the machine mainly for watching 1080p movies on the aforementioned screens.
Has anyone ever had any experience with the banana pro or at least banana pi? What boards should i use?
RE: raspberry pi 2 vs banana pro - noggin - 2015-05-16
Forget about the Banana Pro. It is based on an Allwinner A20 SoC and the Allwinner stuff has very bad open source support for the VPU (the bit of the SoC that handles video decoding), and is thus a poor platform for Kodi. You REALLY don't want to buy a Banana Pro if you want to run Kodi.
The Pi 2 has very good Kodi support, and massively more effort is put in by the Kodi devs into improving the Pi experience. It just keeps getting better and better. No other ARM platform has this level of support.
The Pi 2 also has built in composite. It is available via the 3.5mm A/V jack. The original Pi had a Composite output on an RCA Phono jack, but the Pi B+, A+ an Pi 2 B moved this to a 4-pole 3.5mm jack (Ground, Left Audio, Right Audio and Composite). Cables are widely available. Example ; http://www.modmypi.com/raspberry-pi/accessories/audio-cables/av-composite-cable-3.5mm-to-3-x-rca-3m In fact it looks very similar to the way the Banana Pro handles composite output?
I've never run Kodi over composite on a Pi - but believe it is possible.
RE: raspberry pi 2 vs banana pro - exquyre - 2015-05-17
Well that basically crushes all the pros of the banana i guess... Ok maybe not the sata and Gigabit ethernet one but well, if the support for the banana is really THAT bad i guess i'll get the rpi2 then. Also aren't 4-pole 3.5mm jacks ground, L audio, R audio and mic in? And thinking about it doesn't hdmi output composite when using an adapter? Hmm, i guess i'll look into the rpi2 some more in detail before buying it, but thanks for warning me regarding the banana, you saved me from making a mistakr as i was actually leaning towards buying it and not the rpi2.
But comparison still concerns me alot... http://www.htpcguides.com/raspberry-pi-vs-pi-2-vs-banana-pi-pro-benchmarks/
These numbers really make me scared of buying the rpi... Is there any module for the rpi2 that lets me use sata natively?
RE: raspberry pi 2 vs banana pro - Ned Scott - 2015-05-17
Don't be worried. Kodi will use all four cores in the Pi 2, which means you will get better performance than the Banana. For pure Kodi usage, the Raspberry Pi 2 is the king of the sub $80 price bracket, IMO.
The Pi 2 has composite video out via the 3.5 mm A/V jack. 4-pole jacks aren't entirely standard, so some use the 4th connector for mics, but many use the 4th connector for composite video. Camcorders have been doing this for years, for example.
The 100 meg ethernet on a Pi 2 is more than enough for streaming even raw bluray videos over the network.
The only way to use SATA on the Pi 2 is an SATA to USB converter cable. It's not fast if you plan on making copies between hard drives that are plugged into the Pi, but it's fast enough for video playback. I've never had an issue playing anything back from an SATA HDD when it was plugged into the USB port of my Pi's. The cables are normally inexpensive and don't require any special set up.
RE: raspberry pi 2 vs banana pro - noggin - 2015-05-17
(2015-05-17, 03:19)exquyre Wrote: Well that basically crushes all the pros of the banana i guess... Ok maybe not the sata and Gigabit ethernet one but well, if the support for the banana is really THAT bad i guess i'll get the rpi2 then.Yep - it really is that bad...
Quote:Also aren't 4-pole 3.5mm jacks ground, L audio, R audio and mic in?Entirely depends on the application. A 4-pole jack is just a connector at the end of the day. What is on the connector can change. Apple used to use 4-pole 3.5mm jacks to carry stereo audio and video from the older iPods and iPod docks, but the same connector will carry headphone and mic connections on an iPhone. There is no universal standard.
The 3.5mm jack carrying audio and video has been common on camcorders for many years (though there isn't a single standard for its use in this application : http://www.raspberrypi-spy.co.uk/2014/07/raspberry-pi-model-b-3-5mm-audiovideo-jack/ (Looks like the Pi B+ and Pi 2 B use the same standard as Apple used to use for iPods)
Quote:And thinking about it doesn't hdmi output composite when using an adapter?No - the HDMI output will be digital (it's not like DVI-I which can carry both a digital and an analogue signal on the same connector - though DVI-I only carries VGA-equivalent video not composite), and AIUI most converters are designed to accept a number of resolutions and scale them to PAL 576i or NTSC 480i composite (though some cheaper models may require you to fix your HDMI at a certain resolution to scale - rather than coping with a variety of input resolutions.) I think most will accept 720p and 1080i though.
Quote:Hmm, i guess i'll look into the rpi2 some more in detail before buying it, but thanks for warning me regarding the banana, you saved me from making a mistakr as i was actually leaning towards buying it and not the rpi2.The Pi and now Pi 2 is by far the best supported ARM platform for Kodi. The Pi 2 switch to a Quad core (which Kodi makes use of) and 1GB of RAM has made a huge performance difference. And because there are very good Pi / Pi 2 devs working in the Kodi team, we get massively better support than other ARM platforms.
But comparison still concerns me alot... http://www.htpcguides.com/raspberry-pi-vs-pi-2-vs-banana-pi-pro-benchmarks/
And just the basic stuff like proper 23.976Hz support, decent de-interlacing, automatic refresh rate switching etc. just works. And the hardware works (some other platforms have very bad bugs or limitations on their video or audio outputs)
Quote:These numbers really make me scared of buying the rpi... Is there any module for the rpi2 that lets me use sata natively?
The Pi 2 clearly outperfoms the Banana Pro in multithreaded applications - and the hard drive and network performance of the Pi 2 are fine for playback of a single stream over the network or from local storage. Neither are limitations for playing Blu-ray quality content. The Pi2 uses a single USB2.0 path for all of its USB and Network functionality, and unlike the other ARM SoCs (which use GigE over USB2.0 and thus get capped at around 480Mbs throughput) the Pi 2 uses 10/100Mbs over USB2.0 network subsystems. (You can - though you don't need to for Kodi - use a USB2 or USB3 (capped at USB2) GigE Network adaptor to increase network speeds - but you are still limited to a total 480Mbs of USB bandwidth if you do)
None of us would suggest that the Pi2 is suitable as a GigE NAS solution - but for a single media player, the I/O limitations are fine. (Lots of people bought Allwinner solutions like the Banana Pro because they thought the connectivity was so much better that they would make a better Kodi box. Then they discovered Kodi was a non-starter on them, and converted them into small cheap NASs)
There is no better supported low-cost Kodi solution out there.
RE: raspberry pi 2 vs banana pro - exquyre - 2015-05-17
Thank you for explaining all of this, i suppose i will be getting the rpi2 and the adapters then. Thank you a lot. This community is incredible.
RE: raspberry pi 2 vs banana pro - sjude68 - 2015-06-03
Thanks for the replies on this post. I purchased a BananaPi Pro before Raspberry Pi2 was available but now stuck with it.
I have a Raspberry Pi Rev A, which is the first release and raspbmc with updated Kodi works fine but it is slow. On the BananaPi Pro I loaded Android 4.4 and then installed Kodi which works fine after Kodi starting but Kodi takes a long time to start and crashes sometimes.
I actually wanted to use the GPIO pins on Bananapi Pro but could not. Raspberry Pi would always be a better option.
RE: raspberry pi 2 vs banana pro - edup_pt - 2015-12-23
What about Odroid C1? I read in this review (http://www.androidauthority.com/raspberry-pi-2-vs-odroid-c1-vs-hummingboard-vs-mips-creator-ci20-599418/) that has better video decoding performance than pi over kodi.
"The ODROID C1 and the HummingBoard i2eX both did an excellent job of displaying the video. Both managed consistently to show the video at its full frame rate, and neither taxed the CPU too much in doing so. The same can’t be said for the Raspberry Pi, which disappointingly could only manage 9 fps, instead of the needed 23.97 fps."
"According to The Raspberry Pi Foundation the way Kodi works on the Pi is it bypasses the GUI rendering, which means the frame rate reported by the codec overlay won’t be accurate (i.e. the Pi is actually performing better than reported)."
With your comments wrt rpi 2 and Kodi support and this performance review of Odroid C1, I'm now confused of what I should buy.
I'm more interested in video performance too, in my case, YouTube videos.
Thanks for any help.
RE: raspberry pi 2 vs banana pro - noggin - 2015-12-23
The C1+ is a very good choice if you want HEVC (8 bit) decode and don't need 3D MVC (i.e. Full HD 3D) and HD frame packed output or audio better than PCM 2.0/DD/DTS. The Pi 2 is a good choice if you don't need HEVC, but want 3D MVC and 5.1/7.1 PCM audio output (which allows lossless decode of all but 192kHz 5.1/7.1 HD Audio, PCM Audio, FLAC etc., and allows AAC multichannel audio to be decoded without a transcode to Dolby)
Both offer a very decent level of performance, decent deinterlacing, with the Raspberry Pi 2 having a slightly better CEC implementation, and a much newer Linux kernel (so newer devices are more likely to have driver support) The C1+ also has an Android option which is reasonably well supported, if a little old. The C1+ runs an older kernel, and Hardkernel/ODroid have said they have no plans to develop a newer one. The Pi / Pi 2 has official OpenElec support and very good Kodi developer support. The C1+ has good support from one or two people with an unofficial OpenElec build, but doesn't appear to have the same level of developer support as the Pi / Pi 2. The C1 has Gigabit Ethernet and doesn't share this with its USB bus, so is a better solution for NAS or high-tuner-count TV Headend servers. The original ODroid C1 had some design errors (poor CEC design) and a firmware fault that ODroid seemed to want to ignore without the community pushing hard to get it fixed (audio and video dropouts over HDMI), which was similar to one that the Pi / Pi 2 developers tracked down and fixed (HDMI clock issues)
I have both, but personally find the Raspberry Pi 2 is a better solution for me (better driver support and 5.1 PCM output are key for me) and have consigned my C1 to be an experimental TV Headend server for a SAT>IP tuner. (I can't get it to work with my DVB-T2 tuners yet...)
For pure media playing duties - then the choice is between HEVC decode (C1+) and 3D MVC/HD Audio decode (Pi 2). If neither are important to you, I'd probably go with the Pi / Pi 2 because of the legendary support - it even has its own forum here... (There are Kodi devs here who are involved with the Pi Foundation and roll out firmware updates to fix issues that they find regularly. This doesn't happen with any other SoC - even Intel aren't as responsive...)
RE: raspberry pi 2 vs banana pro - noggin - 2015-12-23
(2015-12-23, 08:02)edup_pt Wrote: What about Odroid C1? I read in this review (http://www.androidauthority.com/raspberry-pi-2-vs-odroid-c1-vs-hummingboard-vs-mips-creator-ci20-599418/) that has better video decoding performance than pi over kodi.
"The ODROID C1 and the HummingBoard i2eX both did an excellent job of displaying the video. Both managed consistently to show the video at its full frame rate, and neither taxed the CPU too much in doing so. The same can’t be said for the Raspberry Pi, which disappointingly could only manage 9 fps, instead of the needed 23.97 fps."
"According to The Raspberry Pi Foundation the way Kodi works on the Pi is it bypasses the GUI rendering, which means the frame rate reported by the codec overlay won’t be accurate (i.e. the Pi is actually performing better than reported)."
With your comments wrt rpi 2 and Kodi support and this performance review of Odroid C1, I'm now confused of what I should buy.
I'm more interested in video performance too, in my case, YouTube videos.
Thanks for any help.
Sounds like the reviewed Pi or Pi 2 was either CPU decoding stuff (which would be the case for HEVC) or they were reporting the GUI frame rate (which the Pi / Pi 2 caps to a relatively low refresh rate by default). The hardware acceleration on the Pi and Pi 2 allows for high bitrate H264, MPEG2 and VC-1 stuff to be decoded (including interlaced VC-1 which Intel boxes can't do in hardware under Linux) without dropping or skipping frames.
The big benefit of the Pi 2 over the Pi is that the CPU got a big performance bump, so everything feels much snappier, and stuff like CPU lossless decode of HD Audio, 1080i deinterlacing with a decent algorithm (a modest overclock is required for this) become possible.
And pretty much all ARM SoC Kodi platforms bypass the GUI for video replay, and instead use a VPU/MFC hardware video decoder, which will render the replayed video on a different level, with the GPU just rendering the GUI alpha-blended on top.
RE: raspberry pi 2 vs banana pro - wrxtasy - 2015-12-23
(2015-12-23, 11:16)noggin Wrote: I have both, but personally find the Raspberry Pi 2 is a better solution for me (better driver support and 5.1 PCM output are key for me) and have consigned my C1 to be an experimental TV Headend server for a SAT>IP tuner. (I can't get it to work with my DVB-T2 tuners yet...)Thats because a certain someone (like me) has been a bit busy testing other AMLogic gear. I will throw the proper patch in the C1's Kernel soon for additional DVB tuners and do a test compile and then let you know.
Noggin has summed it up pretty comprehensively.
I have both as well, but don't need the HD to PCM Audio and 3D the RPi2 gives me and have gravitated to the C1 as its a noticeably faster OpenELEC device than the RPi2. Makes a fine TvHeadend server if the correct drivers get put into the Kernel for the DVB-T/T2/C tuner support.
See here for a comparison:
http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=210987&pid=2059100#pid2059100
RE: raspberry pi 2 vs banana pro - noggin - 2015-12-23
(2015-12-23, 12:37)wrxtasy Wrote:(2015-12-23, 11:16)noggin Wrote: I have both, but personally find the Raspberry Pi 2 is a better solution for me (better driver support and 5.1 PCM output are key for me) and have consigned my C1 to be an experimental TV Headend server for a SAT>IP tuner. (I can't get it to work with my DVB-T2 tuners yet...)Thats because a certain someone (like me) has been a bit busy testing other AMLogic gear. I will throw the proper patch in the C1's Kernel soon for additional DVB tuners and do a test compile and then let you know.
And that is the fundamental difference between the platforms. wrxtasy is doing an amazing amount of work for the C1/C1+ - but he's a single person. The results are great - but you are dependent on a much smaller ecosystem than with the Pi and Pi 2. (When I asked over at ODroid forums for some assistance getting a more recent DVB-T2 tuner to work, as it wasn't supported in their relatively old kernel, and because the Media_Build V4L process was breaking at multiple stages - apart from wrxtasy - I was met with a 'too difficult' reply)
wrxtasy has been doing an amazing job - and I'm very grateful to him.
The Gigabit Ethernet and USB 2.0 on a separate bus make the C1/C1+ a much better candidate for high-bandwidth IO stuff like NAS and TV Headends with multiple tuners. The downside is the kernel support is older.
There still isn't a single, low-cost, perfect box. Unlike wrxtasy I don't need HEVC, but do want PCM 5.1/7.1 and occasionally play some 3D stuff, so the Pi 2 is a better bet for me. (I also use them for lots of other things - like music players, Asterisk PBXs, some basic home automation etc.) so am more familiar with the overall ecosystem, and can support myself better in the Pi 2 environment.
RE: raspberry pi 2 vs banana pro - Ned Scott - 2015-12-24
(2015-12-23, 08:02)edup_pt Wrote: What about Odroid C1? I read in this review (http://www.androidauthority.com/raspberry-pi-2-vs-odroid-c1-vs-hummingboard-vs-mips-creator-ci20-599418/) that has better video decoding performance than pi over kodi.
"The ODROID C1 and the HummingBoard i2eX both did an excellent job of displaying the video. Both managed consistently to show the video at its full frame rate, and neither taxed the CPU too much in doing so. The same can’t be said for the Raspberry Pi, which disappointingly could only manage 9 fps, instead of the needed 23.97 fps."
"According to The Raspberry Pi Foundation the way Kodi works on the Pi is it bypasses the GUI rendering, which means the frame rate reported by the codec overlay won’t be accurate (i.e. the Pi is actually performing better than reported)."
With your comments wrt rpi 2 and Kodi support and this performance review of Odroid C1, I'm now confused of what I should buy.
I'm more interested in video performance too, in my case, YouTube videos.
Thanks for any help.
Read the update note in the article, just below that, in italics. They read the FPS info wrong.
RE: raspberry pi 2 vs banana pro - wrxtasy - 2015-12-24
Yes Ned, people should not read too much into the OSD Codec info page. Then there is this...
On all (non patched) versions of Kodi running on all AMLogic platforms, the OSD frame Skips counter produces a false error and confuses the FCUK out of Newbs, when Visually video playback is actually perfectly fine.
(I wish Koying would just patch this Skips counter business out permanently in mainline Kodi and be done with it!)
Instead rely on your built in Human viewing Hardware, those being your EyEballs
RE: raspberry pi 2 vs banana pro - noggin - 2018-06-09
(2018-06-08, 12:18)patrickjburt Wrote: The connectors of LCD LVDS interface and Camera interface are different.
Current Raspberry Pi camera module does NOT work with Banana Pi. In addition, Banana Pi may be able to connect external LVDS display but not Raspberry Pi since it never enable its DSI connector.
The DSI Connector on the Pi has been enabled. The Pi Foundation 7" Touch Screen uses the DSI connector on Pis - I have one in front of me now.
The Pi is pretty versatile when it comes to displays :
1. HDMI
2. Composite
3. DSI via the Pi Foundation LCD display
4. DPI/MIPI via GPIOS and the GertVGA equivalent resistor ladder.
All the above are direct GPU/VPU solutions and supported via standard Raspbian installs, though you can of course use SPI, I2C and even UART and GPIO driven character and pixel-based displays too if you wish, though they are more in the realms of driver territory (or using something like fbtft)