[doveman2]

Any chance of a recap of what Newclock 4 offers over Newclock 3.

newclock3 and newclock4 are just names of git branches. The actual "newclock" name is historical.

newclock4 now always uses dvdplayer as the player. So no messing with advancedsettings to choose omxplayer or dvdplayer as default player.
There is an acceleration option to enable "omxplayer". This is much like omxplayer from before and is the most efficient player for hard videos (like raw Blu-Ray).
There is an acceleration option to enable "openmax". This will be dvdplayer with hardware acceleration.
With no acceleration enabled you get dvdplayer with software decode. This allows unsupported codecs (like divx3, msmpeg, sorenson spark) to be played, but only at SD resolution.

There is also an acceleration option to choose dvdplayer or omxplayer automatically. This means you normally get omxplayer, unless you are using alsa audio, or you are playing a dvd or you are playing an unsupported codec, where dvdplayer will be chosen in preference.

newclock4 has a new implementation of the dvdplayer video codec acceleration. This uses YUV buffers rather than GL textures which significantly reduces gpu memory requirments.
It also reduces sdram bandwidth and arm cpu.

newclock4 has a new renderer, rather than rendering with GL ES. This uses the higher quality image scaling that omxplayer has, and means videos look better. This affects dvdplayer (with or without acceleration).

newclock4 has a new video reference clock which improves vsync matching for smooth video (when using dvdplayer). Make sure "adjust display refresh rate..." and "sync playback to display" / "resample audio" is enabled for smoothest video.

So in summary newclock4 makes dvdplayer much more usable, reducing memory usage and cpu and improving video quality. You also shouldn't have to worry about choosing the right player - that will be automatic.

Just wondering if this helps with using HiFiBerry DAC+, which I believe only works with dvdplayer. I've been concerned that this could be a problem if there's certain files that can only be played properly with omxplayer but maybe this change to newclock4 means that we should be able to play almost anything with dvdplayer?

Also wanted to check, can music be played with the DAC+, as I don't think that uses dvdplayer for playback and thus I wouldn't expect it to but on their forums they told me that I can play music in OE with it.