Amlogic proprietary support is going to be removed come Kodi 19.
I thought this day would never come.
Now all Android devices must use MediaCodec and are all treated equally.
Kodi developers will now also have more time to fix Android bugs that will benefit everyone.
Changes will perhaps be merged in a month's time.
It means old devices eg. S805, S812, S905, S905X running old versions of Android like Kitkat, Lollipop, Marshmallow or Nougat will need to use older versions of Kodi 17/18 to have working video playback and audio passthrough.
It's already the case for no name devices since they need to use SPMC or FTMC because Kodi 17/18 already had problems on them.
LibreELEC is also removing support.
So if you have an old device that doesn't have mainline Linux v5 kernel support then you will have to stick to an old version of LibreELEC or build yourself a new image based on Linux 5 support and hope there are drivers and code for the components in your device.
CoreELEC will still support old devices for a while so users can still use that.
The changes are needed so new devices like S922, S905X2 can have better compatibility with LibreELEC.
Rockchip, Allwinner & Amlogic devices are all switching over to Linux v5 kernel support since they all use the same HDMI chip and are all going to use the same audio passthrough drivers.
It will be easier to support multiple devices that use the same drivers, same video standards on mainline Linux kernels instead of each chipset company's devices all use their own proprietary methods full of bugs based on old kernels.
S922, S905X2 and S905X(devices like Xiaomi Mi) already support MediaCodec well so will be able to use Kodi 19 without problems.
On other devices you might have problems with passthrough and video playback that is worse than before, but basic streaming like h264/h265 should still work normally.
Now Amlogic manufacturers can concentrate to use MediaCodec instead of the AMLCodec that was full of hacks in Android and improve video playback and audio passthrough support for their users like other manufacturers already did.
I thought this day would never come.
Now all Android devices must use MediaCodec and are all treated equally.
Kodi developers will now also have more time to fix Android bugs that will benefit everyone.
Changes will perhaps be merged in a month's time.
It means old devices eg. S805, S812, S905, S905X running old versions of Android like Kitkat, Lollipop, Marshmallow or Nougat will need to use older versions of Kodi 17/18 to have working video playback and audio passthrough.
It's already the case for no name devices since they need to use SPMC or FTMC because Kodi 17/18 already had problems on them.
LibreELEC is also removing support.
So if you have an old device that doesn't have mainline Linux v5 kernel support then you will have to stick to an old version of LibreELEC or build yourself a new image based on Linux 5 support and hope there are drivers and code for the components in your device.
CoreELEC will still support old devices for a while so users can still use that.
The changes are needed so new devices like S922, S905X2 can have better compatibility with LibreELEC.
Rockchip, Allwinner & Amlogic devices are all switching over to Linux v5 kernel support since they all use the same HDMI chip and are all going to use the same audio passthrough drivers.
It will be easier to support multiple devices that use the same drivers, same video standards on mainline Linux kernels instead of each chipset company's devices all use their own proprietary methods full of bugs based on old kernels.
S922, S905X2 and S905X(devices like Xiaomi Mi) already support MediaCodec well so will be able to use Kodi 19 without problems.
On other devices you might have problems with passthrough and video playback that is worse than before, but basic streaming like h264/h265 should still work normally.
Now Amlogic manufacturers can concentrate to use MediaCodec instead of the AMLCodec that was full of hacks in Android and improve video playback and audio passthrough support for their users like other manufacturers already did.
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