HDR issues with mediacodec on kodi

[Balegas]

I got a brand new Mecool km9 that shipped with Android TV 9. I was pretty satisfied after setup, everything seemed to be fine, but after trying HDR movies it became very frustrating.

The issue I experience is the following:
When playing HDR movies in Kodi Leia that do not have a standard resolution (say 2160p), the video is stretched to occupy the whole screen. I believe this related with the MediaCodec that is used by kodi and the hardware acceleration. If I turn off hardware, cceleration the video displays in the correct proportions (but very sluggish of course). Similarly if I use the mediacodec non-surface(not sure what the difference is) but in this case there is no hdr.

I don't see many people reporting the same issue. I am not sure this is somehow related with the new Android TV version or kodi's version. I thinking of installing stock Android 8.1 or some custom firmware that comes with Amcodec, but I didn't want to go through without knowing others experience.

[mo123]

I got a brand new Mecool km9 that shipped with Android TV 9. I was pretty satisfied after setup, everything seemed to be fine, but after trying HDR movies it became very frustrating.

The issue I experience is the following:
When playing HDR movies in Kodi Leia that do not have a standard resolution (say 2160p), the video is stretched to occupy the whole screen. I believe this related with the MediaCodec that is used by kodi and the hardware acceleration. If I turn off hardware, cceleration the video displays in the correct proportions (but very sluggish of course). Similarly if I use the mediacodec non-surface(not sure what the difference is) but in this case there is no hdr.

I don't see many people reporting the same issue. I am not sure this is somehow related with the new Android TV version or kodi's version. I thinking of installing stock Android 8.1 or some custom firmware that comes with Amcodec, but I didn't want to go through without knowing others experience.

It's broken and will never work.
Mecool didn't implement proper MediaCodec support required for video playback in the device.

[Balegas]

And if I downgrade and use Amcodec?

[mo123]

And if I downgrade and use Amcodec?

You mean AMLCodec?
Then only FTMC or SPMC can work with it and you won't be able to use new addons.
You will most likely also need to whitelist the amlcodec.so file in the firmware, look at the SPMC github issues how to do it.

[Balegas]

I will try to do that. I don't mind staying in an older version, as long as it works. Thanks for the help.

[bajann]

No amcodec on Amlogic devices with 8.1android....

[Balegas]

So it's absolutely crap.