[sw4y]

I have to change my initial posting a little bit, because I'm going to send the box back.
It is still a brilliant piece of hardware and does an outstanding job in most cases.

But it fails when it comes to deinterlacing of live tv content (failing may be too hard, because some people might be totally satisfied with what they see).
Due to the kernel problems of the S912 and missing ability of hardware accelaration of live tv content, it produces slight juddering (especially when watching football games) which is (at least for me) an absolute no go!
Makes Live-TV unwatchable.

If you are looking for a box (and live tv is not important) I still would highly recommend the Minix U9 and Libreelec.
Almost everything is working out of the box!

[Aenima99x]

What box are you going to go with instead?
Football is a definite need in this house and I haven't had a chance to watch a lot of LiveTV yet, although I did watch some baseball and didn't notice any judder there....Admittedly though it's much slower than football.
I do miss the speed of the Chromebox, but the 4k and AC wifi are making it tough to go back.

[sw4y]

If you don't see any judder, then stick with the Minix U9. 
Not everybody has problems with microjudders.

I'm going to use a Z69 Box instead, 3Gb of RAM and 32 Gb emmc storage.

https://www.geekbuying.com/item/Z69-Andr...83201.html

Sorry for you, as it has no wifi.

[redglory]

For those who use this box, do you think installing LibreELEC to NAND is going to perform much better than SD card?

[komplex]

For those who use this box, do you think installing LibreELEC to NAND is going to perform much better than SD card?

Run mine like this https://forum.libreelec.tv/thread/9425-h...-for-data/ i done this because i wanted to test the ATV Rom on the Minix forums haven't had any issues or slowness so i just kept it like that

[redglory]

For those who use this box, do you think installing LibreELEC to NAND is going to perform much better than SD card?

Run mine like this https://forum.libreelec.tv/thread/9425-h...-for-data/ i done this because i wanted to test the ATV Rom on the Minix forums haven't had any issues or slowness so i just kept it like that 

I'm think about doing the same.

Need a better SD card though

[atilaks]

Due to the kernel problems of the S912 and missing ability of hardware accelaration of live tv content

Could somebody elaborate more on that please? I currently have Odroid C2 and I use AMLogic Advanced Motion Adaptive Edge Enhancing de-interlacing. I have been considering upgrading to Minix U9. What's the actual problem with the 912 kernel? Will it be fixed eventually?

[sw4y]

This is what kszaq "Kernel-Guru" writes about it:

"Amlogic has not released fbdev Mali libraries and has no plans to release them. These builds use libhybris and Android gralloc Mali driver to provide OpenGL for Kodi - an experimental approach with CPU overhead - meaning suboptimal GPU performance."

My own experience:
If you don't watch any fast sports like soccer, basketball, etc..., than the S912 could be worth a try.
Anything apart from this, the Minix U9 does an outstanding job!

But if Live-TV is important for you and you don't like judders and little stuttering, than stay with your Odroid or go with a S905x Box.

[atilaks]

ok, thanks for explanation

[wrxtasy]

But it fails when it comes to deinterlacing of live tv content (failing may be too hard, because some people might be totally satisfied with what they see).
Due to the kernel problems of the S912 and missing ability of hardware accelaration of live tv content, it produces slight juddering (especially when watching football games) which is (at least for me) an absolute no go!
Makes Live-TV unwatchable.

Hmmm, hardware acceleration and hardware deinterlacing still works for mpeg2 and h264 TV broadcasts last time I watched.
I do remember setting the CPU Govn'r to "Performance" caused mini stutter, video playback issues.
Are you sure all video hardware acceleration options are set to "Always" in Kodi video > player settings for both mpeg2 and h264 ?

I would also try @kszaq's original S912 LE 8.2.x to rule out any new Kernel issue.
I do know @codesnake has a Kodi buffering patch that improves video playback smoothness for AML LE Kodi Leia.

---

@atilaks, you may even want to consider a non LE box to compliment the non HDR ODROID C2 that already runs LE Kodi Krypton.
I highly recommend spending money and getting a complementary Apple TV 4K. You then have a LOT of flexibility to cover pretty much all bases media playback wise. Excellent, high quality TV deinterlacing using MrMC on the ATV4K.
TV channel changing is nearly instantaneous. MrMC is adding some nice cool features to Kodi as well like thumbnail preview - video scrubbing - tvOS style.
I'm impressed how development is progressing

[sw4y]

But it fails when it comes to deinterlacing of live tv content (failing may be too hard, because some people might be totally satisfied with what they see).
Due to the kernel problems of the S912 and missing ability of hardware accelaration of live tv content, it produces slight juddering (especially when watching football games) which is (at least for me) an absolute no go!
Makes Live-TV unwatchable.

Hmmm, hardware acceleration and hardware deinterlacing still works for mpeg2 and h264 TV broadcasts last time I watched.
I do remember setting the CPU Govn'r to "Performance" caused mini stutter, video playback issues.
Are you sure all video hardware acceleration options are set to "Always" in Kodi video > player settings for both mpeg2 and h264 ?

I would also try @kszaq's original S912 LE 8.2.x to rule out any new Kernel issue.
I do know @codesnake has a Kodi buffering patch that improves video playback smoothness for AML LE Kodi Leia.

Hm, that's strange.
I do believe you, because you're much more involved in this whole thing than I ever will be.
But I also do believe my eyes

But I'll do some more investigation!

[sw4y]

Ok, did some more investigation:

@wrxtasy 

When using kszaq's latest stable build (Libreelec 8.2.2.3 (2018-01-06) for S912), everything seems to be ok.

Standard (default) settings in Kodi, hw acceleration turned to "always" for every option.

h264 1280x720 TV channels run fine, hw acceleration & hw deinterlacing is used (playerprocessinfo shows me so) and I have no judders.
h264 1920x1080i TV channels are also ok, no skipped / dropped frames.

Output is set to 8bit (default).
When set to 4:4:4 (4:2:2 or 4:2:0) 10 bit, I get the green screen you know and fixed in your build.

When using your optimized build, I get the judders and stuttering I mentioned earlier.

h264 1280x720 TV channels are unwatchable, 1920x1080i channels have slight judders and deinterlacing errors. 
I also have a lot of dropped frames.

Also playerprocessinfo tells me, hw acceleration & hw deinterlacing is used.

Output is default, 8bit.

When using 10bit output, the green screen issue is gone (you know about that), but hw acceleration & hw deinterlacing also do not work properly.


Can I do more testing or provide you with more information?

And where do you want me to do some reporting?
Here in Kodi forum or over at Libreelec forum?

[wrxtasy]

Thx. I suspected the regular @kszaq S912 AML LE Kodi Krypton would work.

Wait till the LibreELEC team release an alpha version of LE 8.9.X Kodi Leia very soon that will include the new Kernel. Should be OK for those that do not need deinterlaced TV.

Looks like there is some work to do yet on the new Kernel regarding deinterlaced video playback.
It will very likely get fixed as we are very early in the development process.

[atilaks]

@sw4y @wrxtasy

Thank you for all your work. I am just curious, will the new kernel in alpha LE 8.9.x Kodi Leia affect all amlogic boxes, or S912 only?

[sw4y]

Thx @wrxtasy 

Just to let you know - 

I also tested a Libreelec Pre-Alpha from adamg (latest). This version also had no problems with deinterlacing and progressive channels.
But I guess it is using an older kernel, like kszaq's builds do, right?

With this pre-alpha green screen issue is still present of course.