I m thinking about buying a Vero 4K+. I would use use it only to watch MKVs, and I only need a network file browser for that.
Here are my questions:
I’m pretty sure it has network SMB and/or NFS browser?
Can you set up favorites?
Can you adjust subtitles sync with audio if necessary?
Can you upconvert HD SDR material to UHD/HDR/REC2020 one?
Can you set up the interface to HDR/REC2020/23.997/4K to avoid syncing every time I start an MKV (most are 23.997). Ideally I should be able to set it up to 10bit/4.4.4 it’s my screen default.
Can you set it up so that you are in browser mode when you boot it?
Does it decode full audio multi channel, or only 2.0 PCM like ALL the new players?
SMB browsing is disabled for security reasons, but you can enter the path to the root of the share and create a source, and then the Kodi file browser will work fine. This is how I watch my TV shows, but I use the full Kodi metadata scraping system for movies.
Yes to both.
No, the Vero outputs SDR as SDR, and up-convert in Kodi is not very good, so it’s always best to output at the file resolution, and let the TV do any up-scaling.
It’s best to run the GUI at 1080p, as most skins are set up for that. You can do what you want, but it’s not really necessary, as the player switches to the appropriate mode.
You can with a little bit of python programming (Kodi has an autoexec.py), but if the home menu only has one selection (a file browser source), then it’s only one key press after boot to get into the file browser.
It will decode all audio formats other than 3D audio (Atmos, DTS-X) and output up to 7.1 channels over HDMI. Toslink is limited to 5.1, and requires a decode/re-encode, but that’s a limit of all Toslink, not just the Vero.
The lask of SDR/HDR upconversion is a no no for me unfortunately. I have a Dune Pro, which has several annoying problems that previous ones did not, but its conversion is not something I want to give up. It makes HD looks much better than native. Not as good as UHD of course, but the dynamic it ads to the image looks very natural, and I would not go back on that feature.
If the 4+ someday implements it, if if you remember, please post an update.
SDR -> HDR is actually possible; but we’re not sure what to do with it in the sense that there is no consensus on how to do this. We don’t know what your Dune is doing.
Your TV will almost certainly have a better upscaler than the Dune. We’d recommend outputting video in the native format.
If there is no HDR metadata, the Dune is obviously just artificially changing the picture in some way. I don’t suspect many Vero users would want that, even as an option. I’m sure every display will have such a picture-altering feature in the next year or two.
I’m not speaking about upscaling 2K to 4K, but adding dynamic range from black to white.
If you watch an UHD/HDR program with full whites subs (0xFFFFFF) they look blinding. It’s an error many providers do.
On my setting, the average light is set up to a reasonable 16FL, but full white is 120FL which I only get with HDR highlights. That concerns maybe only 1% of the image (it would be unbearable otherwise), but gives it a remarkable “pop”.
I make custom grey subs for all my MKS (0xff919191 for native UHD and 0xffAEAEAE for SDR upconverted which has less dynamic range).
That should give you an idea about what the Dunes does, using a gamma curve that make white witers when the TV is in HDR mode, and mapping REC.709 into BT.2020 (without changing the colors saturation, that would be wrong of course)