(2022-03-26, 09:30)meridius Wrote: HI all
I have been wanting to upgrade my 15-year-old i3 HTPC running XBMX 12.1 windows 7 to the latest 4K support. I have been looking at the Intel Core 13-1200T or any other CPU that supports built in GPU to be able to support HDMI 2.1 and all the formats that are out there. is this a wise choice ? or a amd CPU. or not to bother and still wait for something that supports all things that i might of missed ?
I am looking to get a 4k AMP and TV this year and wanted to upgrade my system. I Have read i need windows 11 because it supports better HDR and 4K is this true ?
Am i wasting my time or is there things i need to look out for and which is the better support for kodi for playback all standards.H.264 codec (also known as AVC), VP9 and AV1 hardware support.
thanks all
The key codec you'll require for a lot of UHD material is h.265/HEVC - as that is the codec used for UHD Blu-ray, and by a lot of the DRM streaming services (though they may also now be using AV1 on some platforms - though this is a pretty new codec).
HDR10 is the most widespread HDR format (it's the core HDR format that UHD Blu-rays use) - and ideally playback solutions will pass-through and use the static HDR metadata this format supports (though some TVs ignore it)
Dolby Vision is a much trickier HDR format to support (though it can deliver higher quality HDR than HDR10) - and really still only relevant for Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV+ DRM services etc., and Dolby Vision UHD Blu-rays played on a UHD Blu-ray player, though those services and discs will fall back to HDR10 if you don't have DV.
HLG is used mainly by TV broadcasters (all the BBC iPlayer UHD HDR stuff is in HLG for instance).
HDR10+ is an improved version of HDR10 that offers some of the dynamic data benefits of Dolby Vision (but not a lot of the other DV benefits)
Almost all Kodi platforms that support UHD HDR are limited to HDR10 (and some have HLG support and HDR10+). Some platforms people run Kodi on will support Dolby Vision outside of Kodi - and one or two support some limited DV formats within Kodi.
A lot of us moved away from HTPCs when UHD & HDR arrived, and started using smaller, cheaper, quieter ARM-based SBCs and TV boxes that could run LibreElec or CoreElec (which are Linx OS distributions optimised for Kodi use) that run silently and support HD and UHD hardware decoding of the main formats (h.264/AVC, h.265/HEVC, MPEG2, VC-1 etc.) along side both HD Audio bit streaming (including Atmos) or lossless decode to mulitichannel PCM. These boards and boxes are in the <$200 and in some cases <$100 area - and offer pretty much all the video playback that HTPCs do (and support HDR10, HLG, SDR etc. switching and metadata in ways that Windows doesn't as easily do so). You end up paying less for the entire ARM system than you would pay for for just an Intel CPU, or motherboard or GPU or in some cases PSU and Case, and you avoid any fans. (A lot of us store our media on servers connected to our players over a network connection, with the noisier server located away from our viewing environment)
Linux driver support for HDR on Intel CPU/GPUs is lagging behind the ARM stuff too - though some improvements have been made in this regard. Windows support for HDR does exist - but it's a much more complex proposition for Windows to cope with HDR than LibreElec or CoreElec on ARM.
Where Intel (Windows and Linux) platforms and HTPCs do still often have the edge is in super slick UI response and CPU-intensive skins, as well as the option to use your PC for CPU-intensive stuff like retro game emulation. However for pure media playback duties with a relatively straightforward skin - ARM boxes or boards have definitely started eclipsing HTPCs for many.