[username145]

Anyone tried running the Pi 2 as both a PVR back end and client, and recording to an external HDD? How well does it cope? How did the B+ do?

[wrxtasy]

My RPi 2 arrived yesterday....

Anyone tried running the Pi 2 as both a PVR back end and client, and recording to an external HDD? How well does it cope? How did the B+ do?

I will likely give it a go as I am running TvHeadend on an 8 year old ATV, acting as a house TV server.....

---

My thoughts compared to my well tweaked and max Overclocked RPi B+... (which was actually not slow, especially with a BT remote control)

(Tested with OpenElec 5.0.2 and Turbo Overclock - also force_turbo=1)

- faster, like everyone else has found. Even with no overclocking. Kodi GUI a wee bit faster, refresh rate switches my TV faster and the speed when importing a large media library is on par with my 4 core 2.7Ghz i5 iMac - very fast
(Media library storage structure helps here, see this post for details: http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=...pid1910911)

---

High Bitrate files streamed over ethernet using NFS

- Jellyfish - 80Mbps (1080p / H264) - Failed - skipped and dropped frames. Buffering issues, as video plays when first paused and the buffer completely fills. My ATV1 + CHD + Kodi 14.1 plays this with no issues.

- Jellyfish - 60Mbps - Passed

- Samsung Demo Oceanic Life - 40 Mbps (H264 / 1080p / Profile - High 5.1) - Passed with no pixellation I see on some low powered devices.

---

H265 / HEVC using NFS

- Some 60 sec. Bongo drums band clip - 1280 x 720p @ 25 fps - 1.3Mbps - Passed ! 4 cores hit a Max of 90%. Picture quality however far superior to H264, very watchable. Not a lot of Action Scenes tho.

Any higher resolution, bitrates or higher fps results in dropped frames and lots of stutters and pauses.

- Big Buck Bunny 1280 x 720 @ 24 fps - 1.37 Mbps - Failed, but only just, small skips and stutters.

FFmpeg improvements may help in the future for H265 software decoding in Kodi on the RPi2.

[popcornmix]

FFmpeg improvements may help in the future for H265 software decoding in Kodi on the RPi2.

Currently FFMPEG has no ARM optimisation for HEVC (H.265) in kodi. Upstream some ARM optimisations are appearing:
https://github.com/FFmpeg/FFmpeg/commit/...de423ea7dc
https://github.com/FFmpeg/FFmpeg/commit/...26b6563879

so performance should improve in the future.

[wrxtasy]

Thanks,
I had a funny feeling something in software was coming down the pipeline..

Good News as even H265 - 1280x720p @ 2Mbps would be very watchable.

[voochi]

Good News as even H265 - 1280x720p @ 2Mbps would be very watchable.

The problem with having a very hard decoding limit of 2Mbps (or whatever) is that you need to make sure your encode never goes above it. ie you need to encode using CBR or CVBR.

That negates a lot of the advantage of a more efficient codec.

Not to mention HEVC doesn't have as much of an advantage at lower resolutions anyway.

So overall, playing 720p HEVC 2Mbps...its better than nothing but of pretty limited usefulness.

[MatteN]

- Jellyfish - 80Mbps (1080p / H264) - Failed - skipped and dropped frames. My ATV1 + CHD + Kodi 14.1 plays this with no issues.

Also have problems with that file using OpenELEC, with OSMC Alpha 4 it plays with no issues.

[popcornmix]

Also have problems with that file using OpenELEC, with OSMC Alpha 4 it plays with no issues.

OE 5.0.3? There was a problem with OE 5.0.1 that harmed streaming performance.

[MatteN]

Also have problems with that file using OpenELEC, with OSMC Alpha 4 it plays with no issues.

OE 5.0.3? There was a problem with OE 5.0.1 that harmed streaming performance.

Even when playing from usbstick.

[popcornmix]

Even when playing from usbstick.

Possibly. The fix wasn't network specific.
It was a fix to make high resolution timers work.
Not having this was observed to affect NFS streaming performance, but it may well affect other use cases.

[jpcolin]

Hi,
I just configured my Pi2, not bad but i expected a little in menus, i took my advancedsettngs from my Pi1, maybe this is the problem?
any advice on this?

Thanks

<advancedsettings>
<videodatabase>
<type>mysql</type>
<host>192.x</host>
<port>3306</port>
<user>xbmc</user>
<pass>xbmc</pass>
</videodatabase>
<musicdatabase>
<type>mysql</type>
<host>192.x</host>
<port>3306</port>
<user>xbmc</user>
<pass>xbmc</pass>
</musicdatabase>
<cputempcommand>cputemp</cputempcommand>
<gputempcommand>cputemp</gputempcommand>
<showexitbutton>false</showexitbutton>

<network>
<cachemembuffersize>5282880</cachemembuffersize>
<readbufferfactor>10.0</readbufferfactor>
<!--alwaysforcebuffer>true</alwaysforcebuffer-->
</network>
<fanartres>720</fanartres>
<imageres>512</imageres>
<video>
<defaultplayer>omxplayer</defaultplayer>
<defaultdvdplayer>omxplayer</defaultdvdplayer>
</video>
<audio>
<defaultplayer>omxplayer</defaultplayer>
<streamsilence>false</streamsilence>
</audio>
<!--loglevel hide="true">1</loglevel-->
<lookandfeel>
<enablerssfeeds>false</enablerssfeeds>
</lookandfeel>
<omx>
<omxdecodestartwithvalidframe>1</omxdecodestartwithvalidframe>
</omx>
<gui>
<algorithmdirtyregions>3</algorithmdirtyregions>
<nofliptimeout>0</nofliptimeout>
</gui>
</advancedsettings>

[Milhouse]

Hi,
I just configured my Pi2, not bad but i expected a little in menus, i took my advancedsettngs from my Pi1, maybe this is the problem?
any advice on this?

There's just far, far, too much crap in there - so much that is obsolete, irrelevant or just plain wrong. If you don't know why you're adding stuff to advancedsettings.xml, so that you know when to remove it, then please - don't add it.

This is all you need (for OpenELEC, which is what I believe you have):

Code:

<advancedsettings>
    <videodatabase>
        <type>mysql</type>
        <host>192.x</host>
        <port>3306</port>
        <user>xbmc</user>
        <pass>xbmc</pass>
    </videodatabase>
    <musicdatabase>
        <type>mysql</type>
        <host>192.x</host>
        <port>3306</port>
        <user>xbmc</user>
        <pass>xbmc</pass>
    </musicdatabase>

    <lookandfeel>
        <enablerssfeeds>false</enablerssfeeds>
    </lookandfeel>
    <omx>
        <omxdecodestartwithvalidframe>1</omxdecodestartwithvalidframe>
    </omx>
</advancedsettings>

I only left the last two settings in as I can understand why you'd want to disable RSS, but equally this is better done in guisettings.xml (ie. just disable it in Settings). As for omxdecodestartwithvalidframe, it appears to still be supported.

[wrxtasy]

Also have problems with that file using OpenELEC, with OSMC Alpha 4 it plays with no issues.

OE 5.0.3? There was a problem with OE 5.0.1 that harmed streaming performance.

Just updated to OE 5.0.3, and this time paused at the start of video playback to let the buffer fill.

Jellyfish 80 Mbps does play correctly if I let the buffer fill and then start play.

Even 100Mbps plays but quickly overwhelms the buffer.

Advancedsettings Tweaks will likely result in better results without first pausing playback.

[username145]

Possibly dumb question, but how laggy, if at all, is the UI on the Pi 2 on Confluence? And during playback?

My RPi 2 arrived yesterday....

Anyone tried running the Pi 2 as both a PVR back end and client, and recording to an external HDD? How well does it cope? How did the B+ do?

I will likely give it a go as I am running TvHeadend on an 8 year old ATV, acting as a house TV server.....

Thanks, my rather old HTPC is dead and I'm a bit on the fence with the Pi 2, though it doesn't look like it'll be in stock here till March so I'd be waiting either way

[wrxtasy]

Not laggy at all, pretty much everything is now as quick as Kodi running on my quad core 2.7Ghz i5 iMac, even when the RPi 2 is not overclocked. Even a heavy Skin like Aeon Nox is snappy.

The only really laggy thing I found on my well tweaked old RPi B+ was scanning back in a large media library over a local network. With 4 cores now on the RPi2 used for networking and low level housekeeping duties, everything is nice an quick.

Great value for the price paid.

[username145]

Not laggy at all, pretty much everything is now as quick as Kodi running on my quad core 2.7Ghz i5 iMac, even when the RPi 2 is not overclocked. Even a heavy Skin like Aeon Nox is snappy.

The only really laggy thing I found on my well tweaked old RPi B+ was scanning back in a large media library over a local network. With 4 cores now on the RPi2 used for networking and low level housekeeping duties, everything is nice an quick.

Great value for the price paid.

Thanks, gotta say that is really impressive. I now look forward to replacing my bulky, relatively sluggish Core 2 Duo!