[simanwin]

Hi,
Just wondered if anyone had tried kodi on the n100 hardware. The reviews of the box I've found say it's performance is a step up from the n6005 and it also supports vc1 hardware decoding.
A box on the beelink site can be had for just over £200.
Thank in advance for any feedback.

[Klojum]

That box was introduced only 3 weeks ago, I doubt if it's already plenty available in shops.

Seeing reviews, this is also a (minor?) factor:
"As mentioned, this particular processor has limited RAM support to one channel DDR4. This is a limiting factor for integrated graphics which can easily result in double digit performance loss."

So you 'might' even be better off with a J5040 box (UHD605 gpu) with dual-ram support.

[simanwin]

Thanks yes totally agree single channel memory is the big drawback with a bench mark I've just read saying gpu 15% deficit compared to n6005 with dual but performed better than n5105 with dual.
Just seems a little bit more future proof with vc1,WiFi 6, and does support DDR 5 memory which could help close the GPU deficit but will probably wait until a few more reviews are out.

[jepsizofye]

shortcut for future viewers - alder lake n100 specs

it has a generic designation as Intel UHD Graphics with limited specs on that page

second shortcut for future viewers - alder lake gpu specs (includes list of codec based hardware capabilities)

considering VC1 is practically deprecated as newer gpus are not supporting it and nobody is using it anymore makes me think of it as an added feature of a gpu but independent of any future proofing

2018 amlogic can do VC1 decoding

(my offering of specs links is because in order for me to figure out what was being talked about i had to look them up for myself)

[isamudaison]

I've got an AL N95 box (a bit of a step down from the 100) and it is blazing with the libreelec nightlies... I also think you mean it supports AV1 decode in HW (which I've confirmed it does). I very much recommend it.

[jepsizofye]

AV1 would certainly be useful towards future proofing

[simanwin]

Thanks for the info sounds promising and yes I meant v1 hw decode. Are the libreelec builds the nexus 11 nightlies ?

[isamudaison]

Yes, libreelec 11 nightlies/betas. The Alder Lake graphics need the newer Linux Kernels (6.1 IIRC in these LE versions).

[htpcero]

The graphics performance probably impacts gaming type workloads (opengl) but I doubt it matters for a video/audio HTPC since n100 has hardware decoders for all the relevant codecs, includng av1, so very much future proof

N6005 gpu has 32 EUs vs 24 in the N100 so beyond the dual channel thing there is that. Still for compute workloads N100 blows J5040 out of the park (twice the performance) and is a bit better than N6005 as well

[jon_smark]

I have a system based on an Intel Processor N100, which I'm hoping to use as mostly a Kodi box. I am currently running Kodi from Debian, but I've encountered problems with jerky playback of H265 video. Before I spend a lot of time trying to diagnose those, I wonder if someone here already has Kodi running satisfactorily on their Alder Lake-N systems, and if so, could you describe your setup? Though I prefer Debian, I'm willing to use a different distro or Libreelec if it's a better choice for Kodi on this hardware.

[jepsizofye]

I'm willing to use a different distro or Libreelec if it's a better choice for Kodi

the libreelec team has tailored the operating system around kodi and video playback so, in my own opinion, it will always be better than any desktop OS which has not been tailored for use with kodi

[jon_smark]

Thanks for your reply. The only reason why I'm a bit reluctant to try Libreelec is because I have a separate partition for media, and it's my understanding that Libreelec assumes it can take over the whole disk. I could probably get around it, but because of this misfeature Libreelec is still my last resort.

[htpcero]

I am about to upgrade my old HTPC to n100 as well, running on Ubuntu LTS. Before troubleshooting I'd recommend using the Kodi team PPA to source the debs. They embed and patch ffmpeg extensively amongst other customizations that the debian packager is well known not to include.

I am also not able to use librelec because this machine acts as a home server, serving files, running a bunch of scripts and docker containers. I have been using the Kodi stable PPA for probably a decade and I can't recall having any issue with it.

P.s. for alderlake you also want to make sure you run a relatively recent kernel, preferably 6.1. In Ubuntu LTS you can easily get this by installing the latest "OEM" kernel with apt.