Super Curious about this player, How is it compared to a nvidia shield pro i know it supports dolby vision but i find it very tempremental and can be sluggish.
The NVIDIA Shield is based on Android I believe.
OSMC is a Linux based operating system.
Our focus is primarily on playback, rather than being an all-round Android device.
I experienced the Vero 4K as a pretty snappy device when it came to navigating menus, fast forwarding maybe a bit less so. There is currently no Dolby Vision support tho, so if that’s a priority for you then you should look elsewhere.
Is Blog - OSMC still the place to watch for Release Notes? And is there also a differing location for changelogs for the various patches?
Yes.
You can get changelog information from Git as well.
I would trust the linux based vero way more than an android device. I know of one android device that can do mkvs with dolby vision but it’s stuck on like androind 10 or something (mabye older)…
As mentioned before if a new device is needed to support dolby vision would be happy to purchase it, Between my family and myself I have 3 osmc vero’s running ;). Also happy if you needed us to pay some sort of extra licence cost for support too. (as they say you get you what you pay for).
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@sam_nazarko - one thing I’m not entirely clear about…if you have a TV that supports Dolby Vision (e.g. LG OLED C2), will Vero passthrough that stream down the HDMI and will the LG be able to read it and then render the Dolby Vision content correctly?
No. Vero would need to
- recognise the display as supporting DV
- read the DV metadata from the stream
- make the metadata suitable for passing through HDMI
None of this is trivial although gradually some details of the DV secret sauce are emerging. In addition, if you had a dual-layer stream (eg from Blu-Ray), Vero would (ideally) have to combine the layers to produce the magic Dolby reference picture. Vero doesn’t have the hardware or licence to do that.
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The tech being talked about in this thread is a bit beyond my level but does this mean that dolby vision support on a (new) Vero has become more likely?
Probably not. From the post:
“Dolby Vision requires a special license to be included in a device’s SoC.”
The OSMC folks have been pretty consistent about saying that the requirement to get a license and a SoC that has it would require OSMC to become much more closed source.
Of course tomorrow (or whenever the new device is announced) I could be proved wrong, but I don’t think Dolby Vision is in the future for the Vero series.
Well, isn’t CoreELEC opens source?
It seems pretty clear to me that it is. GitHub - CoreELEC/CoreELEC: A lightweight OS for KODI
As such, I think that what Snorefingers is suggesting might have legs.
Has anyone here bought a Homatics box to see what it can actually do with CE?
I tried reading some more. If I understand things correctly, CoreELEC installs on top of Android, replacing it but saving some “key” files that are then used for Dolby Vision.
This, I think, is probably beyond what a product like Vero could achieve, since it’s an integrated solution. Only Sam can shed some light on the subject, I suppose.
If that’s the case, I wonder what’s the advantage of running CE rather than running Kodi on Android. 
… assuming Kodi Omega on Android will support DV.
And also it only does profile 8 so has the convert profile 7, dropping the FEL if it exists.
I assume a leaner underlying OS. Android TV is getting quite bloated, as years go by.
They report on different converstion methods from 7 to 8. I don’t know if any of them retain all the picture info. I’m not familiar enough with DoVi technology. Maybe somebody else here is.
// Modes:
/// Lossless: Don't modify the RPU
/// Minimal EL: Converts the RPU to be MEL compatible
/// Profile 8.1: Converts the RPU to be profile 8.1 compatible.
/// Both luma and chroma mapping curves are set to no-op.
/// This mode handles source profiles 5, 7 and 8.
/// Profile 8.4: Converts to static profile 8.4
/// Profile 8.1 MP: Converts to profile 8.1 preserving luma and chroma mapping.
/// Old mode 2 behaviour.
They also add that it used to be compatible with 7 too but a bug was introduced in a recent kernel. So it’s not unreasonable to expect this to be fixed.
Having said all this, I really hope that Sam can pull it off with the new Vero, as the reasons that prompted me to go the Vero way still stand, when compared to Core/LibreELEC.
Homatics is working with coreelec so there are probably some elements that aren’t open source on their side.
The Homatics box uses a proprietary (closed source) dovi.ko kernel module. I’ve explained in significant detail why we don’t want to take that route: Dolby Vision - #19 by sam_nazarko as well as what our plan is.
I just ordered one out of morbid curiosity… I have zero expectations but am certainly interested to check it out.
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