[ROM] AlfaWise H96 PRO+ 3/16Gb - 3/32Gb - 3/64Gb - SCV7A 7.1.2 (DDR3/DDR4 and 9377 Wifi Chipset)

[TheBloke]

If so, could someone point me a step by step tutorial on how to load this ROM, and the correct files and programs/tools that I would need to attempt such a thing. I have an micro sd card and a windows laptop.

I just wrote out an extremely long and detailed tutorial.. which hasn't appeared. I think it needs moderator approval or something. So hang tight, hopefully it will appear here soon..

[scooter2014]

Moved to here. Keep in mind this for firmware keep instructions into proper areas

http://freaktab.com/forum/tv-player-support/amlogic-based-tv-players/s912/alfawise/reviews-tests-bt/661033-detailed-install-for-sc-912-firmware

[Dadscab]

2 bugs to report after 5 or so hours of use. 1st is I get a message saying "Lighthome has stopped, open app again" 2nd is, every time I shutdown the box the language changes to Chinese, so I have to switch it back again.

[TheBloke]

2 bugs to report after 5 or so hours of use. 1st is I get a message saying "Lighthome has stopped, open app again" 2nd is, every time I shutdown the box the language changes to Chinese, so I have to switch it back again.

The first thing I did after installing the ROM was uninstall LightHome I really didn't like it.

Personally I have two launchers currently installed: 1) Nova, which I'm using during the setup stage of the box, as it's a standard Android launcher with lots of App slots, and has some useful features like custom gestures (eg I have the Recent Apps list bound to a double-click on the desktop) and 2) Top TV Launcher 2 which I plan to use when the box is installed in its final location connected to a TV and used only by remote.

I paid for both from the Play Store, but both are available on your favourite 'alternative' download site..

Issue 2 is really weird! I haven't seen that at all. Hopefully someone else has seen it and knows what to do.

[superceleron]

2 bugs to report after 5 or so hours of use. 1st is I get a message saying "Lighthome has stopped, open app again" 2nd is, every time I shutdown the box the language changes to Chinese, so I have to switch it back again.

1º one, is a know bug, im going to change the launcher anyway in next build.
2º one is not a bug, go to settings - CEC and disable it if you dont use or if you use it disable "change language bla bla"(bla bla cant remember the rest LOL)

[Dadscab]

Thanks for the help guys.
It wouldn't let me un-install the Lighthome launcher, so disabled it, but I installed Nova and set it as home.

Then I went into SPMC programs/android apps/settings and changed the language to English American, and then back again to UK. And now it's staying on UK.
Cheers, Simon.

[Dadscab]

Success after 3 reboots the language has stayed on English UK.

[TheBloke]

Oh yeah that's right, Lighthome is considered a system app so I disabled it too. Forgot that.

I'm using SPMC now and it definitely seems smoother for video playback that Kodi - it has amcodec which vanilla Kodi doesn't, and it also has a few extra acceleration options like when to accelerate H264 and H265. And I haven't had any crashes, which hopefully is the same for you, Simon.

I noticed that FTMC also adds amcodec, but it doesn't have the other acceleration options that SPMC adds. I don't know if these options are important/useful or not? :



I am still unsure whether there is any benefit to FTMC (instead of SPMC) on the S912 devices like H96 ProPlus? It seems like SPMC has these extra Acceleration options, but maybe FTMC has some other benefit? (I can see that FTMC would definitely be better on an RK device because of RKCodec.)

For now I think I will stick with SPMC but it would be good to know if there is any reason to consider FTMC instead?

[Dadscab]

I've had one crash, funnily enough it was when I was messing about with the language settings in SPMC.
Apart from that it's been very good, I watched some football in HD 1080p using Sports Mania, without a flicker, and that was using Wifi not wired, so I'm chuffed to bits that you helped me to to sort this box out.
Next thing I'm going to do is order a cheap USB PC case fan from ****, so I can sit the box on it to keep it cool.
I'm using one of these at the moment but it's a bit noisy

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B005GYU8H0/ref=mp_s_a_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1501971892&sr=8-8&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=usb+fan&dpPl=1&dpID=51uo8aKne7L&ref=plSrch

[chainz]

Oh yeah that's right, Lighthome is considered a system app so I disabled it too. Forgot that.

I'm using SPMC now and it definitely seems smoother for video playback that Kodi - it has amcodec which vanilla Kodi doesn't, and it also has a few extra acceleration options like when to accelerate H264 and H265. And I haven't had any crashes, which hopefully is the same for you, Simon.

I noticed that FTMC also adds amcodec, but it doesn't have the other acceleration options that SPMC adds. I don't know if these options are important/useful or not? :



I am still unsure whether there is any benefit to FTMC (instead of SPMC) on the S912 devices like H96 ProPlus? It seems like SPMC has these extra Acceleration options, but maybe FTMC has some other benefit? (I can see that FTMC would definitely be better on an RK device because of RKCodec.)

For now I think I will stick with SPMC but it would be good to know if there is any reason to consider FTMC instead?

Kodi 17 on nougat works flawless way better than on Marshmellow so I feel no need to use spmc or ftmc anymore

Sent from my SM-G900I using Tapatalk

[TheBloke]

Kodi 17 on nougat works flawless way better than on Marshmellow so I feel no need to use spmc or ftmc anymore

Sent from my SM-G900I using Tapatalk

Interesting, thanks. I started out using Kodi 17.3 on the same basis - I assumed I didn't need another version, and I'd rather use Kodi 17 than a fork of Kodi 16.

But then I couldn't seem to get flawless with Kodi 17. It was nothing major, but watching Westworld in 1080P (h265/hevc) I could see the occasional minor stutter. Totally watchable, but every now and then I could tell it had skipped a frame or two.

And that was only at 1080P, when the H96 is meant to be capable of 4K!

So if vanilla Kodi is flawless for you, I'm wondering what's going on for me. I need to do some more testing, especially with local videos to rule out any issues with remote streams. I have some 1080P BluRay movie rips at high bitrates which should be a good test.

Maybe it's an overheating issue? I don't have a fan on my H96 yet. I did take the bottom half of the case off to increase airflow. I'm going to try it now with a desk fan pointed at exposed motherboard so that I can completely rule out overheating issues.

Anyway, it's definitely reassuring to know Kodi is flawless for you (and I assume you're at least playing 1080P), so hopefully I can achieve the same. Thanks.

[chainz]

Yeah 1080p. Using the old rom that had Marshmallow it was really noticeable you could tell that it wasn't as smooth as it should be. Then the firmware came with nougat which completely fixed it for me, but maybe I'm used to that and it still is even better using the other programs? I haven't tested the others on this rom.

Sent from my SM-G900I using Tapatalk

[TheBloke]

Yeah 1080p. Using the old rom that had Marshmallow it was really noticeable you could tell that it wasn't as smooth as it should be. Then the firmware came with nougat which completely fixed it for me, but maybe I'm used to that and it still is even better using the other programs? I haven't tested the others on this rom.

Well, if it looks fine to you I would say stick with it!

My trouble is I still feel I am seeing occasional skipped frames. But it appears to be the same in all three apps.

This evening I did a test in Kodi 17.3, SPMC and FTMC, using a download of The Amazing Spider Man (2014) which was the largest 1080P x265/hevc movie I could easily find. A file size of 6.25GB for a movie of 2:20 duration, which is a pretty big file for 1080p x265.

It looks completely fine 99.9% of the time. Just occasionally it feels like a frame or two got missed out - particularly on panning shots. But it's the same in all three apps.

Maybe it's just me imagining it? I don't know. I did the test with the case taken off and a large fan pointing right at the chip. I checked CPU temp using System Info during playback, and it was never more than 43°C, even with the video playing in the background and me moving about between all the Kodi menus. So any issues I may (or may not) have can't be related to overheating.

Tomorrow I will try connecting to the living room TV which is the only 4K TV in the house, and try some 4K files and see if I can notice any issues there. If I do have occasional perf issues at 1080P they should be much more obvious at 2160P. And that will also be a better comparative test of the three different players.

In the meantime at least I seem to have confirmed that there doesn't seem to be any difference between Kodi, SPMC or FTMC at 1080P, and so I will be using Kodi as I'd prefer to use version 17 if possible - it enables a couple of useful extra features (or at least, the skin I use, Aeon Nox Silvo, does some extra things in the Krypton version.)

[sesdave]

just got a Wechip H96 Pro + straight out of box installed SCV2 using burn card Maker 2.0.2 SD then upgraded to SCV 3 from USB using OTA no issue at all. Runs great - 42216 on Antutu. Doesn't seem to run any hotter than my GT1 or S92s on SCV2 7.1 and they haven't got any vents! Well the GT1 does after I drilled some in the bottom and used artic cooling paste but that was when I was on stock rom lol. Nice one superceleron

[TheBloke]

I've just done a 4K file test on my H96 Pro+ and the results are.. not great.

I've not yet connected to a 4K TV, but I played a 2160p file on my 1080P TV which I figured is basically the same test (it still has to decode 2160p even if it displays at 1080p).

I downloaded an episode of Planet Earth 2 (episode 3, Jungles) which is 2160p UHD at 25 frames per second. It's an HEVC/x265 file, size of 14.6GB for 50 minutes. The uploader reports that this is a bitrate of 40.2Mb/s . I copied the file to the internal storage and played it from there, to rule out any network issues.

Like with 1080p, it looks OK for most of the video, but it does have very noticeable judders at several points, and they're much more noticeable than with 1080p footage. Particularly in long panning shots, I can see that it is definitely missing out frames.

I tested in all three apps - Kodi 17.3, SPMC and FTMC, and could see no difference between them. I also tried MX Player Pro, and it juddered in just the same way as the Kodi apps - I tried both of its decoders, HW and HW+, with the same result.

This is quite disappointing because I thought the H96 Pro+ was definitely 4K capable? Does anyone else see this problem? Or maybe my box is slower for some reason. Or perhaps the DDR4 boxes are slower than the DDR3 ones? (Which sounds the wrong way around.. but who knows!)

I ran Antutu and my score is 41,162, which is a bit lower than others I've seen (eg the post above reports 42,216 and I saw a YT video reporting 41,674 on stock Android 7.1.1.) But it's close enough - still in the same ballpark.

However I did see a weird issue: during the Antutu 3D benchmark scenes, the video does not play smoothly (it again seems to drop some frames), and more noticeably, the background music is all messed up. It's really glitchy, like a scratched CD or vinyl record. At some places I can't hear the music at all, it just sounds like one note repeating over and over.

My overall 3D benchmark score was 9181.

For a comparison I tried running Antutu on my Google Pixel phone, and the music was fine during the 3D scenes on there (and its 3D benchmark score was 55,175!)

So I don't know if something weird is going on. My overall benchmark score seems to match other users', but it can't play music properly during those benchmarks, and I can't play smooth 2160p video. I do all my tests (4k file playback and Antutu) with a large fan pointed right at the H96 motherboard, so overheating should not be an issue. And of course I close all open apps and disable background tasks like OpenVPN and Tasker.

I'd be most grateful for any thoughts or reports of the performance other people get. Does Antutu run OK for you, no broken music? Any ideas on why I can't get smooth 2160p playback, and even see the occasional dropped frame with a 1080p video?

[superceleron]

Your box is DDR4, and this rom kernel and dtb are for the DDR3 and theirs little differences from the DDR3 to DDR4. (timings mhz etc, etc...)
So that is why you see some diference!