I have to wonder whether an OSMC device is really a logical choice for someone who hates Kodi.
The short answer to that is “not yet”.
It is possible to play 3D material on the Vero, but only if you install a test version of the software. This isn’t difficult - instructions can be found in this thread, or you can just ask for more advice if you’re struggling - but the test version is likely to be a little less stable than the standard software in some other ways, and may get in the way of future updates in the short term; and while 3D playback in the test version works well most of the time, there are a few titles where it isn’t quite perfect.
Sam has said that the eventual aim is to introduce 3D playback to the standard software, but he is being careful not to make any definite commitments about when. Perhaps mid to late September, but perhaps not.
This is very much speculation on my part, but it is possible that the maybe-in-september-if-we’re-lucky version will still have some slight playback issues on a few 3D titles. We’ll see.
EDIT: I don’t know if using a Plex server as a file source would cause any problems in 3D. I’m general, probably not, but I know Plex does some weird things with subtitles - I wouldn’t want to promise that 3D subtitles will work correctly from a Plex source. I mean, they might well work, but I’d advise checking.
It isn’t a “do it all” box because it can’t handle commercial streaming services like NetFlix, Prime etc, but it CAN (eventually) do 3D-MVC, which the Shield cannot.
Of course the Pi3B OSMC and LibreELEC builds can do 3D-MVC already and those are free so…I guess I want a new gadget…
Sadly, that is the only non-proprietary option I’m aware of for 3D-MVC…
On the plus side, my disdain for Kodi is in the interface and “player only” paradigm. It works well. The setup garbage is the part I don’t like. Stuff like setting up SAMBA shares…connecting to Windows servers…creating libraries…yuk! I like the client/server paradigm of Plex. It just isn’t and never will be capable of playing 3D-MVC. So the plus side is that with OSMC, I don’t have to really see Kodi and since I’m using the Plex for Kodi add-on I don’t have to see it at all if I don’t want to!
3D ISO’s + 3D MVC MKV’s + full HD audio bitstreaming + full 4K HDR w/Max CLL/FALL info passthrough
There isn’t anything I can do about it now. It’s ordered and I’m curious to compare the performance of such a box to say a Pi4 LibreELEC build.
I don’t know about with the Vero 4K or with subtitles. I can tell you that OSMC and Plex for Kodi add-on, on my test Pi3 last night worked great with minimal settings tinkering. I didn’t try subtitles because I don’t often use them, but I’ll try it and get back with you. The 3D-MVC playback was nice though! I couldn’t see a setting adjustment for 3D depth within OSMC, but I didn’t dig into the non-obvious options very far. I was very happy when I just hit play and my projector switched to the proper 3D mode and just worked! I tried ti with MVC and TAB formats and it worked both times! Love it!
In the short term, I imagine the Vero will be better. As far as I’m aware, the software still hasn’t quite caught up with the hardware on the Pi 4. Longer-term, I don’t know.
The last time I tried Plex was a long time ago, so this may have changed since then. But back then, using Plex client and server, the only way the server could deliver subtitles was by transcoding the video and burning them in, in real time. If it still has to do that, there’s a chance it won’t work with 3D subs, which are rather more complicated than 2D. And even if it does work, it puts a lot more load on the server, and marginally impairs picture quality. You might also lose the subtitle depth information, which is annoying.
If you mean a way of adjusting the depth of the actual movie image, there is no setting for that. You can tweak subtitle depth a bit, and the strength of the 3D effect that is applied to Kodi’s menu UI in 3D mode, but that’s about it.
Yeah, the Pi works well in 3D. In my personal, highly subjective opinion, the 3D image quality on the Vero is marginally better than on the Pi. But the main advantage is that it can also handle 4K HDR video, and pass through DTS-X and Dolby Atmos audio. The Pi 3 can’t do either of those; it won’t need to for 3D films, but if you want a single library and a single playback device, the Vero may well be the better choice.
It does if you remux the videos to include those tracks! For example, I have the 4K/3D set of “Alita”. I combined the Atmos from the 4K version with the rest of the audio from the 3D version. I’ve actually done that with all my MCU movies too when possible.
So is this saying that if I get my new Vero (hopefully soon!) i can run this commend line and it will “downgrade” the device to a build of OSMC that supports HD audio AND 3D as I’m looking for?
The primary advantage is that Sam and the dev team get important information from users who have some competence in testing software and providing meaningful and actionable information so that outstanding usability issues may be found and resolved. Such is the path toward ultimately making the testing builds the stable, widely disseminated version. The current testing builds simply do not have the 3d function cooked in at the moment. Things have to be prioritized.
Secondarily, if you wish to continue discussing in this direction, please create a new thread so the focus here can remain on point.
Hi @sam_nazarko sorry to resurrect this, but I’ve reinstalled OSMC on Vero4K with 3.14 kernel for debugging. Now it is possible to communicate over USB serial.
When I plug in a Wemos D1Mini board, dmesg says:
[ 390.513073] usb 1-1.2: new full-speed USB device number 6 using xhci-hcd
[ 390.613802] usb 1-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=1a86, idProduct=7523
[ 390.613814] usb 1-1.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
[ 390.613819] usb 1-1.2: Product: USB2.0-Serial
[ 390.691708] usbcore: registered new interface driver ch341
[ 390.691753] usbserial: USB Serial support registered for ch341-uart
[ 390.691786] ch341 1-1.2:1.0: ch341-uart converter detected
[ 390.692822] usb 1-1.2: ch341-uart converter now attached to ttyUSB0
on 4.9 it was:
osmc kernel: usb 1-1: USB disconnect, device number 27
osmc kernel: usb 1-1: new full-speed USB device number 28 using xhci-hcd
osmc kernel: usb 1-1: New USB device found, idVendor=1a86, idProduct=7523
osmc kernel: usb 1-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
osmc kernel: usb 1-1: Product: USB2.0-Serial
osmc kernel: usb 1-1: Unsupported device
How is is possible to find the CONFIG_ options for the kernel?
I’ve just updated with the apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade command.
What I’ve right away noticed with a HDR content that it’s darker like it was before the update.
It’s easy to compare as I was in the middle of the movie when I had the idea to update.
Is this normal ? Anyone noticed the same ? TV is LGC7
Can confirm. It was still worth to upgrade if the Metadata passthrough is working properly now after all these years. It’s a bit sad though that this happend just now as nowadays most of the time I watch almost only DV content.
I guess if you have DV material, it will be played as HDR10 in the absence of DV support on Vero. As such, proper handling of metadata should still be worthwhile for you.
I was just puzzled why you were asking after HDR10+ when you can’t display it.
Sorry mate I think you missunderstood me. What would be to point to watch DV content on a player that would display it as HDR ? While I would love to play DV content too on my Vero I need to use something else that excels in this one specific area.
Folks - just a quick one. To progress from this test build to the “next” full mainstream update, we just remove “http://apt.osmc.tv videoimprovevero main” from the sources.list file, or is there more to it.
