Hello all,
I would like to share my journey to OSMC Vero 4k+. I hope it will help everyone who is trying to chose proper device for his home cinema.
The setup: old Samsung Full HD TV, onkyo receiver txsr508 and Hauppauge winTV dualHD, Logitech universal remote, + planning some 65" 4k HDR tv
First device I had was Intel Nuc 5th Gen. It was playing full HD content well, but there were several issues. For what I needed it for it was too much: power consumption, Fat OS (win 10), keyboard/mouse as remote, I never managed to setup dvbt2 in Kodi (was crashing), 4k videos not playing. … Therefore I decided to search for another device.
Since I was already using Kodi with Raspberry, the thing was to find some device with official support. The ones I found on LE site were Lepotato and odroid c2. After comparing both, I ordered odroid (since it comes with gbit ethernet).
So here comes my journey with Odroid C2. After receiving device and installing LE on emmc I was impressed how snappy it is. The device played everything I did throw at it. After plugging my Hauppauge tuner I found it does not work. Meh. At this moment I found Coreelec project and with this one, my tuner worked flawlessly (both tuners in one device). After some time I also found, that all 4k hdr videos are grey-is. After some research about amlogic chips I found, that 10bit does not work on odroid devices. An this blue flashing led, gosh… Ok, whatever, my journey to find better device started again.
I went thru all possible forums discussing shield, Chinese boxes, khadas devices… Until I found OSMC Vero 4k+. I was so impressed, that I ordered it few hours later. This device has everything! And the community support! - I heard about @sam_nazarko in multiple different forums. After running thru some topics here it was no Brainer - order placed! I also ordered osmt wifi dongle as I was hoping for the supported driver (same old Linux kernel…)
My Vero 4k journey:
When the device came, I was like “what?” box full of this junk (I mean the pieces of foam). But inside was this so nice looking device, with so nice remote (it is so nice to use and easy to navigate). OK, plugged in, started, installed my favorite add-in and bang, plays all, no more greyish videos! And that remote, so nice device, thank you! First I did not like osmc skin, so I replaced it with confluence. After some time I found, that osmc skin can be nicely customized (custom links in start menu), awesome! So now I replaced it, and reinstalled LE to OSMC on my PI devices.
Some minor issues i face. As newbie to Linux, I found that Amlogic devices run on 3.14 Linux = problems with drivers. So my Hauppauge does not work correctly (just one tuner, and it does not work), and also that osmc wifi dongle does not work on CE ( Sam, maybe could you ping CE guys?)
Both issues are about to be solved (I hope). Here are links if anyone is interested. https://discourse.coreelec.org/t/0e8d-7610-mediatek-inc-driver/2226/ Hauppauge wintv dualhd on Vero 4k+ - just one tuner
From now the only os I install to RPi media centers is OSMC and the only device I’m recommending is Vero.
Thank you guys for creating it!
