No harware HEVC support

[NikAmi]

First of all, I just want to say that I really like this forum and all the guys posting on it seem really knowledgeable and helpful. Now that the ass kissing is out of the way, I wanted to talk about one of the glaring deficiencies I see with these new S802 boxes. We all no that there is almost no 4k content out there and that the best chance of getting 4k content is through streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon which have stated that they will only deliver this content using the HEVC codec. This is already not optimal because instead of focusing on upgrading the quality of their 1080p stream, they have started a new pixel war and are sacrificing bit rate to accomplish the increased pixel density. From what I have read, h.264 currently delivers superior picture quality at high bitrates compared to HEVC, but HEVC is useful for minimizing bandwidth requirements for lower bitrate streams. That being said, these boxes are touting their 4k capabilities, but do not have hardware HEVC decoding support. They claim that HEVC is supported through software decoding, but have buried that the chip can only handle 720p software decodes. What does this mean? As far as I can tell, this box will never be able to handle Netflix or Amazon 4k content even if those services upgrade/release their apps to support it. Apparently Tegra 4 is able to software decode HEVC at 4k so it would be great if one of these manufacturers would make a box based on that SOC. I'd love to know if anyone else has other/contradictory info on this matter. I know its not that big of a deal because at $120 per player, I can just upgrade to a better box when one becomes available.

[noderat]

4K2K is in my opinion a joke. I don't like HEVC support being missing but really I'm not going to have this box for more than a year and the next one I get will support it. HEVC isn't even close to mainstream yet.

Sent from my mobile device. Please excuse any typos.

[MINIX]

First of all, I just want to say that I really like this forum and all the guys posting on it seem really knowledgeable and helpful. Now that the ass kissing is out of the way, I wanted to talk about one of the glaring deficiencies I see with these new S802 boxes. We all no that there is almost no 4k content out there and that the best chance of getting 4k content is through streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon which have stated that they will only deliver this content using the HEVC codec. This is already not optimal because instead of focusing on upgrading the quality of their 1080p stream, they have started a new pixel war and are sacrificing bit rate to accomplish the increased pixel density. From what I have read, h.264 currently delivers superior picture quality at high bitrates compared to HEVC, but HEVC is useful for minimizing bandwidth requirements for lower bitrate streams. That being said, these boxes are touting their 4k capabilities, but do not have hardware HEVC decoding support. They claim that HEVC is supported through software decoding, but have buried that the chip can only handle 720p software decodes. What does this mean? As far as I can tell, this box will never be able to handle Netflix or Amazon 4k content even if those services upgrade/release their apps to support it. Apparently Tegra 4 is able to software decode HEVC at 4k so it would be great if one of these manufacturers would make a box based on that SOC. I'd love to know if anyone else has other/contradictory info on this matter. I know its not that big of a deal because at $120 per player, I can just upgrade to a better box when one becomes available.

probably you should wait for RK3288, 4K HEVC decoding.

[6hzzz]

S812

[Yusi]

So the S802 can only decode 720p HEVC, not 4k HEVC?
But 4K h.265 works?

[NikAmi]

HEVC is another name for h.265. So the system can only decode 720p for HEVC/h.265. It can, supposedly, decode 4k h.264.

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