(2019-06-09, 18:20)Jalau Wrote: Okay so currently I am using a FireTV Stick 4k however I noticed that 4k HDR streams with a bitrate of 60 MBit/s cause the player to buffer like every minute. The VLC player on the other hand can't even give me a smooth playback on the FireTV. When playing the file through VLC on my PC I am getting like 60% CPU usage across all 4x4.2GHz cores and 30% GPU Usage on my GTX 780. That is why I believe it is a CPU bottleneck and not a network issue. I can play it smoothly on my pc btw.. Question is: Is the high cpu usage caused by downscaling the image? Because both my monitor and my TV/AVR are 1080p right now. I am planning on upgrading the TV very soon though which is why I have the 4k content already laying around. So could there be a world where I don't need to do anything right now but to wait for the new TV because then there wouldn't be anymore downscaling?
If not:
I am thinking about using some old hardware to build a machine that is capable of playing this content without issues. I have a i7 with 4x3.6GHz laying around + a GTX 660. Would that work for a Kodi build that can run HDR, Atmos, 4k Content? In the future maybe even Dolby Vision once it is supported? What other possibilities do I have? I read the suggestion threads however I am still not quite sure what to use because in my head buying a already finished Android TV box or similar will always come with less power for much more money than a DIY build right?
VLC doesn't always use hardware acceleration for all codecs, whereas Kodi will usually do so if hardware acceleration is present, so VLC isn't a great test of video functionality on many platforms (as it is testing the CPU not the VPU video decode module in many cases with many codecs) NB 10-bit h.264 (Aka Hi10 h.264) isn't a great codec for hardware acceleration and will fall back to software decode. The only hardware decode solution currently able to play 10-bit h.264 is the Rockchip I believe. (This was a surprise!)
At the moment an Intel / AMD solution is probably not the best if you want UHD HDR replay. There is some very basic HDR support in Windows - but it's not a polished solution and it's pretty expensive. Linux support of HDR on x86 platforms is currently close to non-existent I believe.
There are a number of ARM-based solution that have good hardware support in Kodi. These are often sold as Android boxes BUT the key thing is that the best solution in most cases is to NOT run Android on them, but instead install CoreElec or LibreElec Linux distributions on them instead. This can be as simple as putting in a MicroSD card with CoreElec on it and then booting with a recovery button held down or similar. The two leading families are AMLogic and RockChip at the moment - with AMLogic support being far more advanced. CoreElec on an S912 platform works well currently, and support for the new S922 SoC is going well. RockChop RK3399 support is also continuing - but is a more recent development so has a few rougher edges (HD Audio support is still not there for instance)
The AMLogic platforms will play 60Mbs UHD HDR10 HEVC/h.265 content with bitstreamed DTS HD MA or Dolby True HD (or DTS:x / Dolby Atmos) audio with very low CPU loads (<10% per core?) as they properly use hardware acceleration.
The other approach is to run MrMC on the AppleTV 4K - which is a fork of Kodi without full Add On support (as they would breach the Apple App Store terms and conditions) This will give you Dolby Vision + Dolby Atmos in Netflix and Amazon (outside of the MrMC app) The Apple TV has a very powerful ARM CPU that is also capable of 1080p 10-bit h.264 software decoding (unlike most ARM platforms) 10-bit h.265/HEVC is hardware accelerated on pretty much everything that supports HEVC/h.265 these days though (early Intel HEVC/h.265 solutions were limited to 8-bit)
There is no current platform that will play DolbyVision content effectively from within Kodi, but ARM platforms happily playback UHD HDR10 content with DTS:x and Dolby True HD+Atmos extensions in CoreELec / LibreElec, though work is still ongoing to output some metadata that may be required to improve picture quality on reduced-capability HDR displays in some edge cases (like projectors)
The nVidia Shield TV is probably the only Android box that many of us would recommend as a good solution that actually runs Android.