Should I risk the update?

Help and Support Vero 4K / Vero 4K +
1

Hello,

I’ve been using a Vero 4k+ for just over two years now. It is easily the best player I ever had, I use it daily and I’m super happy with its performance.

Now this update to Kodi v19 came along. And my question is whether I should risk it or if it would break more than it improves?

pro (do the update):

  • I want to be current - there is always room for improvement
  • There are a few tiresome bugs, e.g. frequently I have to start a video on the YouTube plugin a seond or even third time before it plays stutter-free

con (never change):

  • I’m using the Confluence skin. I heard that there now is a port for v19 again - are there any problems with that?
  • The bugs I’m experiencing now are with plugins (e.g. YouTube) instead of OSMC itself, so updating will very likely not solve anything on that front - right?
  • no way back - if there even was a way to backup the current system before the update…

What would you recommend me to do? Strictly speaking, there is no reason to upgrade, but I can’t very well stay on v18 forever - sooner or later there will be something that makes the upgrade a must. What would you do - wait it out, or bite the bullet?

Regards

2

I wouldn’t say there’s “no way back” - you can always reinstall OSMC from scratch, any version you want.

From my perspective the main reasons for upgrading are:

  • Kodi v19 which is the actively developed version.
  • MVC / frame-packed 3D.
  • Proper pass-through of HDR metadata.
  • HLG HDR (which actually isn’t completely working yet, but I live in hope).
  • Not of interest to me, but for some, there are improvements to HDR->SDR conversion.
  • Runs a little cooler.

Reasons not to (I should stress at the moment because there’s always the possibility these might get fixed in the future):

  • Deinterlacing doesn’t work as well as it used to when decoding in hardware, especially on MPEG2 and 1080i/50 VC-1. (Standard Definition stuff deinterlaces quite well in software, but this also introduces another subtler issue I won’t go into).
  • There are also some decoding errors with VC-1 that further compromise image quality.
  • While playback of 4K/60fps was never entirely smooth, I think it probably skips more frames now than it used to, especially with subtitles switched on.
  • Since upgrading I’ve been having sporadic buffering problems on YouTube that I used not to get.
3

This is an issue of the Kodi addon and has nothing to do with OSMC: https://github.com/anxdpanic/plugin.video.youtube/issues/163
It looks like it’s being worked on…

4

You could try and download the latest Alpha Build that claims to fix the buffering issues.

5

Confluence works with no problems at all

6

Hi

Is this an encrypted Blu-ray disc?
If so – did you install the AACS keys?

Sam