Competition Winners, Black Friday and Debian Stretch - OSMC

We mentioned that we were working on migrating OSMC to the latest version of Debian, codenamed Stretch. This will provide better performance; and a larger and more up to date number of software packages to choose from.


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://osmc.tv/2017/11/competition-winners-black-friday-and-debian-stretch/

I am going to move soon, bigger house, new tv. I will move my Raspberry Pi3 with OSMC to the bedroom and considered buying either the Nvidia ShieldTV or the Vero 4K. I can’t make up my mind, mostly because I am not sure about OSMC’s app support.

Benefit of the ShieldTV:

  • It has very good Kodi support --> Vero 4K has that too.
  • lot’s of games you can play together from the couch with the Shield game controller. --> Vero 4K might be used for Retrogaming but it is still experimental and Kodi’s Retroplayer might be too limited compared to the many Android games.
  • sharing or casting photo’s & stuff from other devices to it. —> The Yatse app on my phone allows me to do similar stuff with Kodi/OSMC.
  • Support for services like Spotify (although I only need Spotify Connect) --> Vero 4K can’t match this.

Downsides of the ShieldTV compared to Vero 4K:

  • Cannot install stuff you usually install on a NAS (which is also how I use my RPi3 now).
  • locked into Android ecosystem (compared to Debian).

The Vero 4K is mostly holding me in doubt because stuff like Spotify Connect won’t work. There are tons of developers for the RPi3 and 1 created the Raspberry wrapper for LibreSpot that works on every raspberry pi (or LibreElec). I feel like it can take much, much longer to get support like that for Vero 4K hardware. Additions in the App Store have been promised for a while but there has been no progress, which makes sense since the limited number of devs can only do so much. Similar for home automation/domotica. I want my new device to become the hub. The Vero might need extra development to get support for automation/domotica tools…

Can someone takeaway these doubts?

Because the Vero 4K (and OSMC) are Debian based, you are more likely to be able to set up the device as a hub than you will on the Vero 4K.

The main reason for delays in App Store improvements is because we are waiting on My OSMC 2.0. Once this is done, adding new apps and maintaining them will be much less labour intensive. Then we’ll be able to add a good 100 popular apps or so to the Store; as well as allow other people to submit their own third party applications. Getting this infrastructure developed is important; as it will really allow us to grow the App Store.

The NVIDIA Shield gets a lot of bad reports about problems with refresh rate switching and Live TV playback. if you need Spotify Connect tomorrow, then maybe the Shield is a better option. If you are familiar with OSMC and want the power of Debian, then get the Vero 4K. We will get Spotify up and running (I’ll take a look this evening at the two solutions on the forum and see if there’s something that can be done in the interim and update accordingly). It’s not a matter of if, but a matter of when. By the looks of it, one user’s problem with installing Raspotify was due to the fact that they didn’t add the repository properly.

You can also use Bluetooth audio streaming in the interim

Vero 4K offers binary compatibility for ARMv6l and ARMv7 binaries (i.e. Raspbian), i.e. sudo curl -L install.domoticz.com | sudo bash.

Cheers

Sam

Alright, I’m convinced!

1 Like

Hi Sam,
I have a question concerning to the migration of OSMC to the Debian Stretch.
What does it really mean for existing system?
Does it mean that we will have to make a new clean installation all over again?
I’m not so familiar with the migration so I’d like to be prepared for this.
Thanks

Migration to stretch will be done automatically via the normal upgrade procedure. It should be without any need for user interaction and should be working fine unless User has packages or repositories that might conflict and would require manually interaction.

Hi fzinken,
Thanks a lot for very fasr and very calming anwer for me…everythnig’s clear…
Regards from Croatia…