Thanks for the honest answer!
Will there be security updates for the old version?
Not via the official update channel.
OK, thanks.
What about the power consumption of the pi4 and vero? Ok pi4 is new. Does it increase during playback due to the change?
If I get a current Vero, how long will it be supported?
ā5 years of software updatesā as of Vero - OSMC
Software decoding most likely will be more power demanding that Hardware Decoding but overall I think that should not be the biggest issue as HW decoding would come at one time (in future)
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Are you planning on running it off a battery? If you ran either device without hardware decoding the power use will go up but your talking something like (best guess, have not measured it) 7-9 watts fully maxed out on the CPU. That is not a lot, and idle power consumption will be unaffected.
Iām thinking less about my personal electricity bill.
Itās just a question of how it looks across a whole range of devices, which adds up to a lot ā¦
Overall, itās not so good for the environment.
We programmers can already make a difference
Iām sorry but it annoys me to no end when people claim consuming electricity is bad for the environment when itās really not. Electricity now is by far the cleanest energy source, Produced in ways that are cleaner then ever.
What ruins our planet is the waste we produce, the chemicals we use, the insane amounts of containers and plastic our goods are delivered in and most of all emissions and deforestation caused by cheap food production.
So the best thing you can do to save the planet is be vegan or at least vegetarian, donāt travel by plane unless your life depends on it and avoid plastic containers as much as you possibly can. Oh and donāt have kids there is way way too many of us already ( world population went up almost 4x in the last 90 years )
But saying that you care about a PI or vero power consumption because itās bad for the environment is just funny specially if you consider that the device in a year uses less power than a blender in a week
Iām sorry rant over
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Sorry offtopic:
I agree with you in part.
But being able to continue using old devices is also environmental protection.
Especially if they are as economical as a pi!
Unfortunately, a lot of electricity is still produced from coal at the moment!
I agree with the overall sentiment, but I think perspective is important here. Your probably looking at around 4 watts extra use while actively playing video in software vs hardware decode on these devices. As stated, idle consumption doesnāt change. A Dish Network 4K Hopper draws 40 watts at idle 24 hrs a day. Changing a single light bulb can drop 60 watts down to 9 with the same light output. In the grand scheme of things there are small things that can be really add up, but there has to be some limit to what is worth fussing over and when your just negatively impacting your life in a vain attempt to chase every last bit of efficiency.
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Then the pi3 will soon join a pi 2 in my drawer and hope for a second life.
I have already built a weather station with a pi1. Maybe a pi-hole with the pi2/3?
Is it still possible to use an obsolete vero for something? Otherwise, the question is pi4 or vero.
You could just leave the pi3 on Kodi 18.9 and then nothing would change. The Vero uses about the same power as a RPi 3 does currently and that isnāt going to change with Kodi 19. If an extra 4 watts during playback bothers you then you must live an extremely minimalist lifestyle that is well outside of the norm.
Just a general comment on the RPi 4. People have a tendency to think it is an upgraded RPi 3; it is not. The earlier RPiās were all similar hardware and upgrades didnāt come with downsides. The new RPi hardware has work that still needs to be done to realize its potential so it is going to take time before everything works as well as one hopes it should. This will likely be some time coming regardless of what OS is being used. If anyone doesnāt have a tolerance for some growing pain they should avoid the RPi 4 for media playback use for the time being IMO.
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OK, thank you! I try my best and eat mostly organic vegetarian food, but Iām not perfect.
My electricity consumption is below average. But I also have a car with a diesel engine. My hobby of model flying is not necessarily good for the environment either. But I didnāt want to open that can of worms here. To bring it to a close, I will probably buy a vero in the medium term.
Anyway, thanks for the good work.
Greetings, Michael
As a Vero 4k + user is their any issues and pitfalls I should be aware of?
I use the Vero only for plex and it plays everything perfectly even high bit rate 4k hdr atmos through plex.
Any concerns on the update? Since my system works perfectly now Iām almost tempted to not update but I do not want to be stuck with out dated software that eventually breaks either.
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I just gave the official Plex add-on a try on my PC using Kodi 19 and everything seemed to work as well as it did under Kodi 18. Iāll try to remember to post an update when Iāve moved my Vero over to a test build and am able to check there.
Thanks will be good to know your findings.
I just spent about 15 minutes trying to find something I read on the Kodi forums, but came up empty. I recall reading that artwork, specifically movie set artwork, is being handled differently in Matrix. I think it said that there was going to need to be a new storage folder for it and that this would be something we need to do manually.
Anyone know what the heck Iām talking about and can you shed some light? Feel free to just drop a link to the info on the Kodi forums. Thanks!
I Googled ākodi movie set artworkā and the info showed up in the first linkā¦
https://kodi.wiki/view/Movie_sets_artwork
Basically movie set art was online scraping only previous to Kodi 19 so any custom art had to be set one by one. The new feature is to allow a custom folder to be set for it to be picked up as an alternative. As I understand it, basically the same thing that happened with the music artist information folder, got added for movie sets.
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LOLā¦ yeah, why would I expect Kodiās own forum search function turn it up?! 
Thanks, @darwindesign.
Their wiki and their forum are not the same so I wouldnāt expect it to. This other wiki that the first links to is quite detailed so make sure you donāt miss this extended infoā¦
I think a lot of users are expecting our Pi 4 release to do 4K, HDR, 10-bit output, HD audio. It wonāt. We have tried our best to manage userās expectations in this regard. These features will take time to addā¦ The hardware is capable, but the software is really not there yet.
So if you want any of those features today, youāll need a Vero. If youāre willing to wait (no time frame); then you have more options.
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