[Soujirou Seta]

Plex, via network (computer like media server and DV compatible tv) supports dolby vision without problems even in free version, why can't Kodi support it too?

[TheBuz]

I don't have the statistics at hand, but isn't Android the #1 platform on which people use Kodi? Everyone I know that is into home entertainment, has an Nvidia Shield Pro (2019) with Maven's Kodi build (which has MKV DV support) on it. I've been using it since April 2020 to playback DV content without any issues. If you want your movies to be shown in the correct resolution/aspect ratio/refresh rate/color space with support for all popular video formats, then Windows most certainly isn't the way to go. If you don't care for lossless audio support/passthrough, even an Apple TV 4K (2021) would be a better choice than a Windows based solution (for this purpose).

I am curious though: is there a specific reason Kodi's own builds can't/won't playback DV in MKV containers on supported hardware?

Maybe, but my HTPC is also my Living room Gaming PC, i have a button on the Kodi menu that closes Kodi and opens Steam, when I am done in Steam Kodi reopens.

Android has as ways been unstable and slow for me (even the Sheild) just can't match the responsiveness of a Windows machine, all my media is stored on a 80TB NAS, and Windows beats Android for networking as well. Plus it caches the entire movie to RAM so if the network goes out for any reason we can still finish the movie.

Kodi autostarts on windows, with android it's a more janky to get things to autostart, windows is also easier to configure with Home assistant.

There's no benefit for me at least to constantly flip between 2 devices (other than for Dolby Vision) I'm sure there's dozens of us.

Dolby Atmos works great in Windows (after some tinkering)

Sure Android just works, and is great for most people, but it doesn't do half of what I need it too, guess I'll just wait for HDR10+

Or Dolby could just stop being ****heads that would also work.

[jjd-uk]

Kodi uses a software package called ffmpeg for most of our media handling capabilities. At present we use ffmpeg v4.4 that only supports DV for mp4 where the hardware has a DV decoder. The road to DV for mkv has been a long one, first of all Plex did it for their own version of ffmpeg but never bothered submitting it to the main ffmpeg code repo. Other people in the open source community picked it apart to produce patches and submit it the ffmpeg team, however it did not meet their standards for inclusion so further work was needed. I think Maven was perhaps using these not acceptable patches in the beginning. Eventually the work to get what was needed into an acceptable for the ffmpeg team was completed earlier this year so the code was included in their ffmpeg 5 releases. So the hold back is that Kodi is still on ffmpeg 4.4, however work to get an update to ffmpeg 5 is being done, but a lot changed between ffmpeg 4.4 and 5.0 so we're not sure it'll get done for v20. The alternative is to take the acceptable patches used in ffmpeg 5 and add them to our version of ffmpeg 4.4, however no one the Kodi Team has deemed this acceptable for Kodi yet, I guess because there's hope the full update to ffmpeg 5 will get done. However it seems there's no one within the Kodi Team who cares enough about the DV to drive this forward, so it seems it hangs on when ffmpeg 5 makes it into Kodi.

[Hitcher]

Plex, via network (computer like media server and DV compatible tv) supports dolby vision without problems even in free version, why can't Kodi support it too?

One is a company and one is FOSS.

[jjd-uk]

Everyone would have had DV from mkv much early if Plex we're FOSS friendly, as they rely on many of the same FOSS packages we do, but they never submit their work back to these packages. They do the bare minimum of providing a source code download, so someone has to do the very tedious work of trying to unpick what they've changed, only to then find they're changes are little more than hacks. No doubt they will go to ffmpeg 5 to where its done properly if they haven't already, so their hacks can be removed.

[ashlar]

There is movement on that. For instance: https://code.videolan.org/videolan/libpl...quests/207 (this is not Kodi but still...)

Any chance of getting something like this on Kodi?

(I don't know why discussion has moved to DV on Android, this being the Windows subforum...)

[kalima]

It's really a "to-have" features. I moved to maven build since one year just for this.

I'm not dev but this feature need to be priority for Kodi Team.

Kodi lose many users to plex for this.

And again i'm not dev but i suppose if one dev can make a Kodi alternative build with necessary stuff. You can do it too.

[scott967]

I don't see the relationship of a "maven build" arm64 apk to windows?
Any way, if interested you can look at the active Kodi / xbmc pull requests on github and get a feel for development status.

scott s.
.

[PatK]

this feature need to be priority for Kodi Team.

As mentioned in post #2, Dolby DV is proprietary encoding, this feature is only going to be useful to the bleeding edge enthusiasts who worship at the dolby club. (marketing hype doesn't mean it's better) There may be patches & mods that will allow decoding & conversion on the fly, but direct throughput is un-likely and in violation of DV without a lic. agreement. Thank-fully most media formats have alternate variations that do not rely on commercial codecs and offer comparable execution.

Kodi lose many users to plex for this.

Don't think this is a race for users or competition, some Kodi users appreciate the advantages, open source, and free aspects of the software.

suppose if one dev can make a Kodi alternative build with necessary stuff. You can do it too.

The issue is not so much capability, but one of legality, MS could lic. DV and include it with every o/s so software like Kodi could take advantage. The same could be said of gfx card hardware, they could include it with their builds (it's all about the $). Patience; work-rounds will be an eventuality.

[Soujirou Seta]

I really hope that the best media manager (KODI) has Dolby Vision as soon as possible.

[TheBuz]

DV is really is the last piece of the puzzle for me, Dolby Atmos is working great with passthrough.

I don't think HDR10 is really a great alternative, DV is not all about 12-Bit (which no-one can use yet).

Dolby Visions metadata is dynamic, so the HDR information is updated each frame, which is why it looks so much better than HDR10 at 10-Bit.

DV should fall back to HDR10, but I have never had that happen in Kodi.

There is a lot of content in Vision now, a lot. Seems to be the way the industry is going.

I understand this a Dolby created problem, and I understand why Dobly don't care about anything outside the streaming apps, and they are almost using it like Macrovision.

I understand this isn't a high priority of the Kodi team, so I'll just wait patiently, with my folder DV content ready to switch.

[nekrosoft13]

VLC somehow figured out to get Dolby Vision to work on PC.

Maybe Kodi will follow at some point...

https://technology.purplepedia.com/digit...by-vision/

[TheBuz]

VLC somehow figured out to get Dolby Vision to work on PC.

Maybe Kodi will follow at some point...

https://technology.purplepedia.com/digit...by-vision/

VLC still has the same problem as Kodi, Some Windows devices work, only some. These are mostly laptops and all-in-ones. Preconfigured with a Dolby Vision licence.

There is still no universal way to do it, (or hack it) that means all self-built or "old" Windows machines still won’t play DV via VLC or any other 3rd party apps

VLC will play DV on Windows machines that are certified with a DV licence but that's it, Kodi could do the same, but there’s not much point. it's a small fraction of the Windows ecosystem that can support DV, and only tiny amount of those will be running Kodi.

until there's a universal way to play DV on 3rd party apps, without the entire Windows device (not a sum of just parts) being certified, it won’t happen.

Hopefully a smart person will work out some way to do DV passthrough or DV to HDR+ or Dolby will stop being an ass and let the End User buy a real licence for their OS. But that doesn't look like it's happening any time soon

[jjd-uk]

You need an Intel CPU that has Dolby Vision support built in, which is not all of them, and AMD doesn't have any support of Dolby Vision at all. In addition only pure UWP apps can do Dolby Vision, which Kodi isn't, so would need a complete rewrite of Kodi which isn't going to happen.

[TheBuz]

As far as I am aware there is/was an official UWP Kodi app. But in other news, UWP is officially discontinued by Microsoft, replaced by the "Desktop Windows App"

The intel CPU is an artificial requirement by Dolby, because GPUs can handle and passthrough Dolby Vision, with an Intel or AMD CPU. They do already, but just with games.

GPUs will not passthrough DV for Video, just games (as the game is licensed) it's all very stupid, and all Dolby's stupidity.