Vero 4K+ has been supported for almost eight years now.
I will end support after Kodi v21 so we can move forward, it is showing its age now. This gives it a fair send off and more than satisfied our support commitment of five years. We’ve also taken steps to ensure it’s supported in the upstream Linux kernel for the foreseeable future.
Your discs that you have ripped will play just fine and when support does end your device will still work, it just won’t get any more updates.
If you’re in a position to do so, I’d recommend updating while there is a discount (ie now). The price of everything keeps going up, we are doing our best to keep things down.
Not really. I got one of the first shipped 4K+ units, my order for a 4K was held back for a bit waiting for it (which was good). It was shipped June 2018. That’s almost six years for the 4K+ (which is great). I bought a second 4K+ in 2021, so that one has only technically had 3 years of support from purchase (which is okay).
FWIW, I am considering upgrading to a V… but I also want to keep using my 4K+ units in use and wonder what end of support will be like. I’m curious to understand what “end of support” for the 4K+ will look like. i.e Whether it just stops getting feature updates in Kodi/OSMC, or whether it also stops getting security and any other updates too. I’d really like to see them enter some sort of long-term maintenance with some clear statement. e.g. Kodi/OSMC won’t get any further feature updates, only critical problems or vulnerabilities will be addressed? Kernel will get critical security updates only? Kernel will move to an upstream Kernel? Upstream packages will continue to update??? or not? etc (just letting you know my thoughts on this in a similar context to @Jordbrett1)
This statement is a bit ridiculous. Support is obviously from the date of introduction of a device
You could go out and buy a Vero 4K + on eBay tomorrow. That doesn’t change how long the device has been supported for.
If you bought the Vero 4K in February 2017 when it was announced you’ve had over seven years support and it will be eight years when support for the device ends. Our original commitment was five years so we have gone above and beyond expectations.
That happened a long time ago when you bought the device, and that maintenance and update era is coming to a close.
There is already upstream kernel support but as you know, the upstream kernel has nowhere near feature parity in terms of video playback. It will be useful for users that are willing to compromise on playback or want to repurpose the device.
We have kept the device running for as long as possible but eventually users do need to have the expectation that an upgrade is needed. End of support just means that. No more updates, but older versions will still work and be hosted here indefinitely.
How? you said 4K+ support is almost 8 years. 4K+ was only released 6 years ago. That is unless you mean 4K and 4K+ and you don’t differentiate between the two.
Noted, but what does that mean… there’ll be no updates at all, including upstream packages? Will you deconfigure that so the 4K and 4K+ no longer get any updates at all without a system change? I’m just thinking if for example they do get upstream package updates, what if one of those breaks some functionality or similar. I’m not asking for all of that to happen, I get that you can’t keep supporting the devices for ever, I’m just curious about it all.
The 4K and 4K+ are in the same family of devices. Both have been supported for significantly longer than their initial five year goal.
When support and updates stop, they will simply stop (with an announcement). There won’t be any new updates or releases, I’m not sure how to make that any clearer.
I sympathize with the general reluctance of announcing concrete deadlines given how certain types of people tend to react to them, but perhaps consider sending out an email about the support of the 4k coming to a close after v21 if the team is really sure about ending support around then.
I just purchased a Vero V after stumbling across this comment, I’m sure others would too. Better performance and HDR to SDR tone-mapping was just a bonus over continued security fixes and features.
My Vero 4 had a good run, and will likely continue to while running off network at my parents.
If you have ripped those discs they will have an HDR fallback layer which will be used anyway. The tonemapping is for content that didn’t have a fallback layer ie Dolby Vision Profile 5.
UHD blu rays always use DV profile 7. As Sam says, the recent change only affects playback of files that use DV profile 5. So none of your discs will play any differently. It’ll still use the HDR10 base layer, just as it always has.
Thanks. So from a quick google search it seems most streaming is profile 5 vs UHD profile 7 with the hdr 10 fallback, is that correct? So for my use unless I was watching via a streaming platform vs discs I should continue to rip as usual and watch in hdr 10? Is that the better quality? Or is it dependent on other factors?
I guess by that you mean in the current Vero environment? There is a Kodi / device combo available that has complete DV support up to and including full P7 FEL decoding from mkv, I’ve been running it for a few weeks now.
I’m hoping someone can clear up for me what this new Vero Dolby Vision support means in practice. Is the Vero V capable of playing back any DV file now? I understand that it’s not actually of playing DV correctly but is it able to play all files in at least HDR, rather than not playing them at all or with obviously mismatched colors? I have a large library of video files that use DV and might switch to the Vero V if it can at least play them back, even if not in DV.
DV profile 5 plays with correct colours. Output is HDR10 or SDR if your TV is SDR.
DV profiles 4, 7 and 8 play the base layer (SDR, HDR10, HLG, HDR10+ if the BL includes it). Output is in the format of the base layer.
Thank you for your response. If I understand this correctly, it’s possible for a video file to come with DV profile 4, 7 or 8 and not have a base layer to fall back on, rendering it unplayable on the Vero V? Also, are DV layers 4, 5, 7 and 8 the only ones in use or are there others (like 1-3) that you did not mention?
