[ROM] Unofficial OpenELEC for MK808B+ and MXQ

[Iso-playback]

[ROM] Unofficial OpenELEC 5.0.3 for MK808B Plus and Beelink MXQ

Just flashed the 5.0.3 release on my MXQ, seems to work well so far!
Thanks a lot for all your work kszaq!

The automatic framerate switching seems to work as well,
but for a 23.976fps movie it will go for 24.00hz, which results in some lag periodically.
So 23.976hz is not yet supported? I know my Sony TV supports it.


Today I also got an external USB hard-drive, at first it was not detected at all, but after rebooting it was all fine.
Looks like (this) usb drive(s) are only detected if they are plugged in during boot time -- any idea why this is?

At the beginning of this project I asked codesnake if 23.976 & 59.94 could be added to resolve lag and his response was something like being fixed in a later release but you won't see 23.976 just 24 but it will be working.

[kszaq]

The automatic framerate switching seems to work as well,
but for a 23.976fps movie it will go for 24.00hz, which results in some lag periodically.
So 23.976hz is not yet supported? I know my Sony TV supports it.

At the beginning of this project I asked codesnake if 23.976 & 59.94 could be added to resolve lag and his response was something like being fixed in a later release but you won't see 23.976 just 24 but it will be working.

23.976Hz and 59.94Hz modes are supported and you can confirm that by issuing cat /sys/class/display/mode while playing a 23.976/59.94Hz video. It seems like there is a problem with video/screen sync. I think I may have found the reason and I'll make changes and do some tests today or tomorrow. For now if you choose not to turn automatic framerate switching on, you'll get 59.94Hz for 23.976fps videos which should be better-looking than 23.976Hz with periodic stuttering.

Edit: Please download an update and test: https://github.com/kszaq/OpenELEC.tv...es/tag/5.0.3p2

Today I also got an external USB hard-drive, at first it was not detected at all, but after rebooting it was all fine.
Looks like (this) usb drive(s) are only detected if they are plugged in during boot time -- any idea why this is?

It hasn't happened to me. Can you grab a kernel log (dmesg or cat /proc/kmsg) when this happens?

[freezer2k]

23.976Hz and 59.94Hz modes are supported and you can confirm that by issuing cat /sys/class/display/mode while playing a 23.976/59.94Hz video. It seems like there is a problem with video/screen sync. I think I may have found the reason and I'll make changes and do some tests today or tomorrow. For now if you choose not to turn automatic framerate switching on, you'll get 59.94Hz for 23.976fps videos which should be better-looking than 23.976Hz with periodic stuttering.

Edit: Please download an update and test: https://github.com/kszaq/OpenELEC.tv...es/tag/5.0.3p2


It hasn't happened to me. Can you grab a kernel log (dmesg or cat /proc/kmsg) when this happens?

Thanks, will test the update.

Well, that's the weird thing, there's _nothing_ in dmesg when I plug it in.
Not even USB device connected or anything, also can't see the device in lsusb.

When i then type 'reboot' the drive will already blink in u-boot and then also show up in OpenELEC...




//Update
Applied the 20150214.tar ; looks like 24p is good now Did not notice lag so far.

OpenELEC:~ # cat /sys/class/display/mode
1080p23hz

[mike77]

Just flashed the 5.0.3 release on my MXQ, seems to work well so far!
Thanks a lot for all your work kszaq!

The automatic framerate switching seems to work as well,
but for a 23.976fps movie it will go for 24.00hz, which results in some lag periodically.
So 23.976hz is not yet supported? I know my Sony TV supports it.


Today I also got an external USB hard-drive, at first it was not detected at all, but after rebooting it was all fine.
Looks like (this) usb drive(s) are only detected if they are plugged in during boot time -- any idea why this is?

Automatic framerate switching work perfect for me on my MXQ (5.0.3-20150213) . Video playback is very smoothly for 23.976, no lags.
cat /sys/class/display/mode
1080p23Hz
No problems with my usb drives, always detected.
I will try new update.



EDIT:

@freezer2k , you had right!
Usually i use short video samples for check video playback. So i watched some movies and noticed the lags. New update fixed it !

[freezer2k]

Getting these messages after a few hours of movie watching:

[52760.080507@1] balance_pgdat end zone=1, pgdat_is_balanced=0
[52760.080562@1] balance_pgdat, nr_reclaimed=18
[52760.080574@1] balance_pgdat end zone=1, pgdat_is_balanced=0
[52760.080655@1] balance_pgdat, nr_reclaimed=42
[52760.080666@1] balance_pgdat end zone=1, pgdat_is_balanced=0
[52760.080707@1] balance_pgdat, nr_reclaimed=6
[52760.080719@1] balance_pgdat end zone=1, pgdat_is_balanced=0
[52760.082619@0] balance_pgdat, nr_reclaimed=18
OpenELEC:~ # free -m
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 810 743 67 0 10
-/+ buffers: 733 77
Swap: 0 0 0
OpenELEC:~ #


They start after free memory drops below ~100M, Kodi reports a much lower usage though, subtracting its own usage?

Watched a 1080p movie yesterday and noticed green bars/distortions very rarely, 99.9% of the movie was fine. Before that I just configured mem-caching in advancedsettings.xml, so it buffers when streaming over network. Could the reclaimed memory affect the streaming cache, therefore causing distortions?
Memory will fill up regardless btw, also without advancedsettings.xml.
Just watched another 1080p file over network and no had no distortions, not sure what this is caused by.

advancedsettings.xml:
<advancedsettings>
<network>
<buffermode>1</buffermode>
<cachemembuffersize>157286400</cachemembuffersize>
<readbufferfactor>20</readbufferfactor>
</network>
</advancedsettings>

This will use up to 3x more, so max. 450MB of caching memory.
Apart from the messages above, kodi.log and dmesg look clean.

[steocullen91]

I have this on my MXQ. Is sync playback to display working for anyone? On my laptop plugged into my tv on 50hz running KODI 24fps is sped up to 25fps but I can't get the MXQ to up the speed. Any ideas?

[Milite777]

UI ordered one from geekbuying and i get about 7 Megabytes/sec transfer speed. It is also very cheap:
..

Thank you, I'll try it!

Bug found?
Since my first run of this rom I got this bug: randomly I get a gray square on the top-left edge of video, like in this photo:



I'm getting it every 15-20 videos (mp4, mkv, avi, youtube streaming... seems to be a random glitch) and appears only when I'm playing video (never show on main menù). The only way to "clean" my screen it's to reboot my mk808B+

[CoolerKing]

Any chance of a more complete HDMI-CEC driver implementation some day? I keep having problems with my LG TV.. Raspberry Pi 2 detects a "Pulse-Eight CEC Adaptor" and everything works fine, but with the MK808B Plus it just doesn't detect anything. I already tried several HDMI cables and adaptors.

[Iso-playback]

[ROM] Unofficial OpenELEC 5.0.3 for MK808B Plus and Beelink MXQ

Thank you, I'll try it!

Bug found?
Since my first run of this rom I got this bug: randomly I get a gray square on the top-left edge of video, like in this photo:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]10472[/ATTACH]

I'm getting it every 15-20 videos (mp4, mkv, avi, youtube streaming... seems to be a random glitch) and appears only when I'm playing video (never show on main menù). The only way to "clean" my screen it's to reboot my mk808B+

This is a minor bug which is temporary resolved after a reboot. The developers are aware of it and that I'm sure it will be resolved at a later date.

[lowridin_guy]

Noob question, I have an MXQ box. How do I determine if it is made by Beelink of if it is an Acemax model?

[phinc]

Noob question, I have an MXQ box. How do I determine if it is made by Beelink of if it is an Acemax model?

You can tell by the look of the box. The beelink has a power button on the top and a red stripe at the corner with "MX" written in it.
This is the beelink:

[freezer2k]

Just a small update:


Running this for some days on my MXQ S85 now, and overall it's runing really well.

Great work kszaq and codesnake!


Like 5 days uptime and no crashes.
Most movies seem to play flawless, only had this green bars issue, described in my earlier post, once.

Those memory messages still appear in dmesg, and the kodi binary seems to make a certain CPU load all the time, but in general this doesn't seem to affect speed or stability.

I noticed that SPDIF optical audio seems to be slightly behind the HDMI audio, maybe like 300ms; is this a driver issue?
I guess it can be corrected in Kodi settings using a different offset for Audio.

[kszaq]

Like 5 days uptime and no crashes.
Most movies seem to play flawless, only had this green bars issue, described in my earlier post, once

The green bars issue seems to be related in how AMCodec handles displaying videos, I hope we can get a fix from Amlogic soon.

Those memory messages still appear in dmesg, and the kodi binary seems to make a certain CPU load all the time, but in general this doesn't seem to affect speed or stability.

These messages are nothing to worry about. This is kernel reclaiming memory from Kodi buffers. I might try to tune memory settings in Kodi but since it does not affect playing videos I don't think it's worth spending time on. Yesterday I test-streamed >5h of videos from a http server on my laptop and had no issues despite those messages appearing in dmesg.

I noticed that SPDIF optical audio seems to be slightly behind the HDMI audio, maybe like 300ms; is this a driver issue?
I guess it can be corrected in Kodi settings using a different offset for Audio.

I noticed that Kerber/Surkovalex (amlinux.ru) added a patch that might solve this: https://github.com/surkovalex/OpenEL...dio_sink.patch I'll make a test build for you soon.

[freezer2k]

I noticed that Kerber/Surkovalex (amlinux.ru) added a patch that might solve this: https://github.com/surkovalex/OpenEL...dio_sink.patch I'll make a test build for you soon.

Ha, nice!

The patch seems to use 0.250, so 250ms?

That's exactly the value (-0.250) I set now manually in OSD sound settings, which also seem to fix it.


One more thing,
it crashed once more yesterday when unplugging a usb wireless keyboard receiver, so USB seems to be a bit weird. As long as i don't plug/unplug stuff it seems to be stable for days though.

[noosk]

Hi kszaq, nice work on getting openelec to these devices. I am intending to purchase an mxq, but am basing my purchase on this software's ability to decode hvec files. Is it possible to do so at the moment?