[Matt Devo]

Hi Guys, new member here so please go easy on me. I have done a lot of research on this subject but I'm kind of confused at this point. I may have more than one problem. Here is my situation. I bought a ASUS Chromebox (Celeron) late last year around Christmas. I prepared the box and installed a dual boot Chrome/OpenElec system using the EZ Setup script and set up the box to the recommended settings. (Running OpenELEC 6.0 / Kodi 15.2 (stable: 6.0.398-Intel_EGL) and the stock firmware.

so far, so good

I had problems right off the bat when streaming video. It would play for a while and then I'd get stuttering video (almost like slow motion) and the audio would drop out. If I paused it for a few seconds and then hit play again it would work for a while. This was with WiFi. Thinking that I had a network issue I plugged the box directly into my router. It seemed a little better but the problem persisted especially with HD content, SD tended to work OK. I tried a bunch of recommendations that I found on this forum but nothing seemed to work. I kind of got frustrated and gave up for a while. Now I'm interested in getting this thing going again. One of the tips I found recommended disabling hardware acceleration. I did that and it appears that most of the stuttering is gone. I feel like I made a lot of progress. Yet the underlying question is, why doesn't the hardware acceleration work? And does it really matter?

what you're describing doesn't sound like a playback issue, but the only way to be sure is to try with local (vs streaming) media. Hardware acceleration works perfectly fine with these boxes, esp with the version of OE you're running.

I also notice that OpenElec has been replaced with LibreElec. I'm wondering, should I pursue an upgrade? Will this allow me to use hardware acceleration? If so can I perform an upgrade using the EZ Setup or must I upgrade by USB? If it is the latter then I will probably have some more questions.

Thanks in advance.
-Tom

you should upgrade if you want to move to Kodi 16.1 (or the 17 pre-beta builds). Upgrade instructions are linked on the wiki, and do not require running the script nor a USB.

[Natural Sound]

I had problems right off the bat when streaming video. It would play for a while and then I'd get stuttering video (almost like slow motion) and the audio would drop out. If I paused it for a few seconds and then hit play again it would work for a while. This was with WiFi. Thinking that I had a network issue I plugged the box directly into my router. It seemed a little better but the problem persisted especially with HD content, SD tended to work OK. I tried a bunch of recommendations that I found on this forum but nothing seemed to work. I kind of got frustrated and gave up for a while. Now I'm interested in getting this thing going again. One of the tips I found recommended disabling hardware acceleration. I did that and it appears that most of the stuttering is gone. I feel like I made a lot of progress. Yet the underlying question is, why doesn't the hardware acceleration work? And does it really matter?

what you're describing doesn't sound like a playback issue, but the only way to be sure is to try with local (vs streaming) media. Hardware acceleration works perfectly fine with these boxes, esp with the version of OE you're running.

Thanks Matt. If by local you mean playing video (mostly MKV's in my case) via a USB stick or hard drive, yes that seems to work fine. Streaming recorded programming on MythTV, network storage or internet streams is where I seem to have trouble. I was originally thinking that I had a network problem but my ROKU/Plex setup on the same network works fine.

[Matt Devo]

Thanks Matt. If by local you mean playing video (mostly MKV's in my case) via a USB stick or hard drive, yes that seems to work fine. Streaming recorded programming on MythTV, network storage or internet streams is where I seem to have trouble. I was originally thinking that I had a network problem but my ROKU/Plex setup on the same network works fine.

plex is transcoding everything down to a lower bitrate, which is likely why you're not seeing any issues. If MythTV is just recording the raw ATSC/DVB/S stream, then it's playing back somewhere around 20Mbps, which shouldn't be an issue, but can be in some environments.

My brother had a similar issue with his Chromebox, even audio streaming would skip from time to time. Doing a full reset on his router and then setting up fresh fixed that, now he can stream 50Mbps bluray ISOs without issue. Something to consider as well.

[Natural Sound]

Thanks Matt. If by local you mean playing video (mostly MKV's in my case) via a USB stick or hard drive, yes that seems to work fine. Streaming recorded programming on MythTV, network storage or internet streams is where I seem to have trouble. I was originally thinking that I had a network problem but my ROKU/Plex setup on the same network works fine.

plex is transcoding everything down to a lower bitrate, which is likely why you're not seeing any issues. If MythTV is just recording the raw ATSC/DVB/S stream, then it's playing back somewhere around 20Mbps, which shouldn't be an issue, but can be in some environments.

My brother had a similar issue with his Chromebox, even audio streaming would skip from time to time. Doing a full reset on his router and then setting up fresh fixed that, now he can stream 50Mbps bluray ISOs without issue. Something to consider as well.

Again, thanks but that is one of the first things I tried. I expect that my issue is something unique. I'll keep trying different things until this is resolved.

[Matt Devo]

Again, thanks but that is one of the first things I tried. I expect that my issue is something unique. I'll keep trying different things until this is resolved.

how about performing a file xfer from another box to see the sustained throughput? it's definitely something network related if local media plays back without issue

[Natural Sound]

Again, thanks but that is one of the first things I tried. I expect that my issue is something unique. I'll keep trying different things until this is resolved.

how about performing a file xfer from another box to see the sustained throughput? it's definitely something network related if local media plays back without issue

Will do Matt. I kind of suspect my antiquated Actiontech Q1000 router. I've had intermittent problems with it before.

[TonyPh12345]

Another thing to try would be to set up larger cache on the Kodi system -- and watch the statistics as you're playing. If the amount cached begins to fall (ultimately getting close to Zero when you'll see dropouts) -- either your server or your network is having problems maintaining the flow of data.

[olympia]

Hi Matt,

I am using the USB Pulse-Eight CEC adapter and I also had to add an edid emulator to have it work perfectly in the way I want (I had no luck with custom edid).
It works OK that way, but now I have a real bird's nest of cables and also I am not fully happy to have a hdmi cable "broken and extended" two times.

To clean up the mess a little bit, I was looking at the Pulse-Eight internal NUC CEC adapter what is assuming a hdmi header in the motherboard. Does the Chromebox also have such MB header to get that connected?

[Matt Devo]

Hi Matt,

I am using the USB Pulse-Eight CEC adapter and I also had to add an edid emulator to have it work perfectly in the way I want (I had no luck with custom edid).
It works OK that way, but now I have a real bird's nest of cables and also I am not fully happy to have a hdmi cable "broken and extended" two times.

To clean up the mess a little bit, I was looking at the Pulse-Eight internal NUC CEC adapter what is assuming a hdmi header in the motherboard. Does the Chromebox also have such MB header to get that connected?

I've looked briefly at the Pulse-Eight stuff in the past, and unfortunately I don't believe the Chromeboxes have the necessary header to make use of the internal CEC adapter

[olympia]

That's what I was afraid of, it would have been too nice...

[schumi2004]

<wrong thread>

[xi_Slick_ix]

Hi Matt, quick needy user question:Is there a way to automatically toggle between two different operating systems using Seabios? I want to run LibreElec and Lakka on my chromebox, and if every reboot the chromebox then booted to the next OS without user interaction, that would be a quick, smooth system to jump back and forth.

Any thoughts,

Thanks!

[Tobor]

Wow, thread started May of 2014. I've owned my Chromebox since shortly after these instruction appeared, and it has been working beautifully ever since. Thanks Matt.

tobor

[Matt Devo]

Hi Matt, quick needy user question:Is there a way to automatically toggle between two different operating systems using Seabios? I want to run LibreElec and Lakka on my chromebox, and if every reboot the chromebox then booted to the next OS without user interaction, that would be a quick, smooth system to jump back and forth.

Any thoughts,

Thanks!

that's a bootloader (grub) function, not a firmware one. Back when I was dual booting OE and SteamOS on another machine, I used an OE addon to reboot to SteamOS (it would modify the grub entries on the fly), and reboots from SteamOS would put me back in OE. That's probably the easiest way to get what you want

Wow, thread started May of 2014. I've owned my Chromebox since shortly after these instruction appeared, and it has been working beautifully ever since. Thanks Matt.

tobor

=) Two years later and it's still a very good option for many people, esp with used/refurb boxes available around $100.

[busbeepbeep]

Wow, thread started May of 2014. I've owned my Chromebox since shortly after these instruction appeared, and it has been working beautifully ever since. Thanks Matt.

tobor

same here. Thanks Matt