[wrxtasy]

Disclaimer right off the bat...I have no affiliation or relationship with the companies linked below...

I decided to fire up a RK3399 developer board (ODROID N1) I was given sometime last year and install the latest LibreELEC 9.0 Kodi Leia on to it.
It's very similar to the Rock PI 4 below.

I've been pleasantly surprised to say the least, how smooth and snappy LibreELEC Kodi Leia was on such a Rockchip Chipset.

What is currently working:

• HDMI CEC if your HDMI connected A/V equiptment decides to play nice..
  
• The very big surprise is Hardware decoding of 10bit h264 aka Hi10P Anime !
  
• For video hardware decoding virtually everything works (see below)
  
• Even high quality, full motion hardware deinterlacing for Broadcast TV use.
  
• When the Netflix servers decide to co-operate 1080p Netflix video plays back smoothly using the Kodi Leia Netflix Addon.
  
• 5.1 AC3, 5.1 DTS. HD audio is decoded to 7.1 LPCM only at this stage. (works well with my Yamaha AVR)
  
• auto refresh switching with support for all video Frame Rates
  
• auto resolution switching (had a few issues with 4K content for this)
  

What currently does not work & limitations:

• DD+ and HD audio passthrough, inc. Atmos. (its coming soon, use LPCM)
  
• Full 4K HDR10 support. Some HDR10 Metadata is missing from the HDMI datastream. (also coming) - more info from @noggin HERE
  
• Kodi Leia HDR > SDR tonemapping only works when CPU Software decoding
  
• Some old VC-1 content seems a bit stuttery if SW decoded.
  

Many thanks go to the LibreELEC Kodi developer @Kwiboo

An example of what's available....RockPro64's (click) are very similar.

Rock PI 4 tech Specs (click)

• RK3399 SoC containing..
  
• 6 core CPU package with dual 1.8GHz Cortex-A72 and quad 1.4GHz Cortex-A53
  
• ARM Mali T860MP4 GPU, supports OpenGL ES 1.1 --> 3.2, Vulkan 1.0, Open CL 1.1 1.2, DX11
  
• Dual channel RAM - LPDDR4@3200Mb/s
  
• eMMC 5.1 flash storage 8G/16G/32G/64G/128G available
  
• micro SDHC support
  
• M.2 connector supports up to 2TB M.2 NVME SSD
  
• USB 3.0 OTG x1 & USB 3.0 HOST x 1
  
• USB 2.0 x2
  
• USB Type C PD 2.0, 9V/2A, 12V/2A, 15V/2A, 20V/2A for power supply
  
• HDMI 2.0a (4K @60Hz)
  
• Gigabit Ethernet
  
• Inbuilt Dual band 2,4/5GHz AC WiFi (optional)
  
• Inbuilt Bluetooth 5.0 (optional)
  
• 3.5mm Audio Jack
  
• MIPS (Camera) CSI, GPIO, RTC and POE connectors
  

Rock Pi 4 FAQ (click)

LibreELEC 9.0 Leia on such RK3399 devices is running a v4.4 Linux Kernel which is stable and provides for great external peripheral connectivity.
The current list of LibreELEC supported Rockchip devices is found HERE (click)
You cannot buy any old Rockchip device off the street and expect it to work properly - yet !

Rockchip LibreELEC forum support found over HERE

You only need 1GB RAM for any sort of smooth, snappy LibreELEC Kodi device. LE is a fast, lean and mean, minimal Linux OS

I will say it now, pound for pound the RK3399 is the most powerful Chipset for a 4K Linux based Kodi media player on the market today.
Especially when you look at the prices of the USD $39 - $64 Rock PI 4's (click)

It's early days yet and there are a few rough edges but I suspect 2019 will be a breakout year for Rockchip devices and Linux Kodi support.
More to come...