[mdisbrow]

I was recently gifted a rpi4 and not entirely sure it’s an improvement over what I have. I currently use a t95k pro amlogic S912 running CoreElec. It’s kind of slow scraping and navigating the menus. I set up the rpi4 with LibreElec and it definitely does both of those Noticeably faster. Both are hardwired to a 1gb Ethernet port, so I don’t believe it’s my internet speed causing this. Does one box offer more in terms of hardware decoding over the other? Basically, by switching to the rpi, am I sacrificing anything in terms of video or audio quality? I’ve tried googling this and have gotten conflicting information.

[noggin]

I was recently gifted a rpi4 and not entirely sure it’s an improvement over what I have. I currently use a t95k pro amlogic S912 running CoreElec. It’s kind of slow scraping and navigating the menus. I set up the rpi4 with LibreElec and it definitely does both of those Noticeably faster. Both are hardwired to a 1gb Ethernet port, so I don’t believe it’s my internet speed causing this. Does one box offer more in terms of hardware decoding over the other? Basically, by switching to the rpi, am I sacrificing anything in terms of video or audio quality? I’ve tried googling this and have gotten conflicting information.

Raspberry Pi 4B is still very much in alpha territory - with some video and audio aspects definitely a work in progress.  S912 is definitely much more developed and probably more stable.

Pi 4B currently doesn't offer HD Audio bitstreaming/passthrough and so all Dolby True HD and DTS HD MA/HRA stuff will be losslessly decoded to PCM 5.1/7.1 (and no Dolby True HD+Atmos or DTS:x height stuff - just 5.1/7.1 legacy)  If you don't own an AV Receiver - probably not an issue.  The CoreElec Amlogic stuff does support HD Audio passthrough/bitstreaming.

Pi 4B  currently doesn't support HDR video replay properly.  (It will decode 10-bit HEVC - both SDR and HDR - but doesn't output HDR content as HDR).  As almost all 4K movie and TV content is HDR - then this may be an issue for you.  If you only watch HD SDR stuff (i.e. Max 1080p stuff) then again this isn't an issue.  The S912 CoreElec builds correctly playback UHD HDR as UHD HDR (though there were rumblings they only had an 8 bit video path?)

The Pi 4B CPU is pretty speedy but will need a decent fan or heatsink case solution if you do CPU heavy stuff (video replay alone isn't that CPU heavy) - and to be honest I'd go for something like a Pimoroni Fan Shim or Heatsink enclosure. 

However the S912, although it may be a bit less speedy in CPU terms, may be quite a lot more stable.  

The Pi 4B will likely become significantly more stable this year, and HD Audio + HDR video playback support will hopefully arrive this year.

[wrxtasy]

I was recently gifted a rpi4 and not entirely sure it’s an improvement over what I have. I currently use a t95k pro amlogic S912 running CoreElec. It’s kind of slow scraping and navigating the menus.

For some reason GPU Max clocking has been removed in CoreELEC 9.2.x

To crank it up to 792MHz, from memory...

Code:

echo "echo 2 > /sys/class/mpgpu/scale_mode" >> /storage/.config/autostart.sh

A faster microSDHC also helps like the the Samsung EVO ones, but nothing is as fast an eMMC storage.

CoreELEC Kodi on AMLogic S9xx chipsets is much more mature vs anything LibreELEC on the RPi4 currently.

[mdisbrow]

I was recently gifted a rpi4 and not entirely sure it’s an improvement over what I have. I currently use a t95k pro amlogic S912 running CoreElec. It’s kind of slow scraping and navigating the menus.

For some reason GPU Max clocking has been removed in CoreELEC 9.2.x

To crank it up to 792MHz, from memory...

Code:

echo "echo 2 > /sys/class/mpgpu/scale_mode" >> /storage/.config/autostart.sh

A faster microSDHC also helps like the the Samsung EVO ones, but nothing is as fast an eMMC storage.

CoreELEC Kodi on AMLogic S9xx chipsets is much more mature vs anything LibreELEC on the RPi4 currently.

Will overclocking the S912 real produce noticeable results in ui speeds? I may give that a try. Where do I need to input that code?

[mdisbrow]

I was recently gifted a rpi4 and not entirely sure it’s an improvement over what I have. I currently use a t95k pro amlogic S912 running CoreElec. It’s kind of slow scraping and navigating the menus. I set up the rpi4 with LibreElec and it definitely does both of those Noticeably faster. Both are hardwired to a 1gb Ethernet port, so I don’t believe it’s my internet speed causing this. Does one box offer more in terms of hardware decoding over the other? Basically, by switching to the rpi, am I sacrificing anything in terms of video or audio quality? I’ve tried googling this and have gotten conflicting information.

Raspberry Pi 4B is still very much in alpha territory - with some video and audio aspects definitely a work in progress.  S912 is definitely much more developed and probably more stable.

Pi 4B currently doesn't offer HD Audio bitstreaming/passthrough and so all Dolby True HD and DTS HD MA/HRA stuff will be losslessly decoded to PCM 5.1/7.1 (and no Dolby True HD+Atmos or DTS:x height stuff - just 5.1/7.1 legacy)  If you don't own an AV Receiver - probably not an issue.  The CoreElec Amlogic stuff does support HD Audio passthrough/bitstreaming.

Pi 4B  currently doesn't support HDR video replay properly.  (It will decode 10-bit HEVC - both SDR and HDR - but doesn't output HDR content as HDR).  As almost all 4K movie and TV content is HDR - then this may be an issue for you.  If you only watch HD SDR stuff (i.e. Max 1080p stuff) then again this isn't an issue.  The S912 CoreElec builds correctly playback UHD HDR as UHD HDR (though there were rumblings they only had an 8 bit video path?)

The Pi 4B CPU is pretty speedy but will need a decent fan or heatsink case solution if you do CPU heavy stuff (video replay alone isn't that CPU heavy) - and to be honest I'd go for something like a Pimoroni Fan Shim or Heatsink enclosure. 

However the S912, although it may be a bit less speedy in CPU terms, may be quite a lot more stable.  

The Pi 4B will likely become significantly more stable this year, and HD Audio + HDR video playback support will hopefully arrive this year.

Thanks for the response. I have a 2.1 channel sound bar that does better than the tv speakers but nothing great. I’m tempted to just pick up an odroid n2 and get the faster cpu along with CoreElec.