Ok I know, I am entering dreamland here… but are there any plans to add a new product to OSMC Vero lineup? The Amlogic S922X seems to run fine with Coreelec, who are close to OSMC, to me it seems the S922X will be the successor of the S905X. The SoC seems to be a real powerhouse and already seems to run smoothly, though it needs some good cooling pads.
And I actually prefer well build and supported solution like a Vero over a DIY Odroid, especially since Odroid had let me down in the past and the support from OSMC and the direct link to Sam and his team is worth more than anything to me. I think alot of people would be interested in a Vero 8k or whatever name it would have. A possible Vero 8k would be „just shut up and take my money“ product to me
And I wouldn‘t mind a steeper price because I know the hardware costs would significantly higher than on the Vero 4k+.
I agree that 8k is just a gimmic, I just chose the name because that is what I would call a S922X Vero unit. But the powerful SoC would provide other useful benefits, such as improved GUI performance, better rendering performance with subtitles etc… I would see it as the PS4 Pro to the PS4. You don‘t have to have it, the PS4 is just fine and continues to be fine, but fir the enthusiasts there is a pricier and more powerful option.
I agree with you here. Eventually Vero will need to upgrade.
I’m just curious, if there’s more horsepower on the s922x. What do you expect for it to accomplish that the Vero 4k+ isn’t doing for you right now? Besides 8k playback. What task would need that much power?
Overall a snappier feeling in the GUI. You know, browsing huge libraries and stuff. While the Vero 4k+ is doing ok in that regard, I think a stronger SoC would improve that experience. The Shield TV - while being crap with all its limitations on passthrough and resolution switching - was quite a bit faster while browsing my library. I heard the S922X SoC should be equally potent in that regard.
Playback wise, I can barely see the difference between 4k and 1080p on my 55“ TV with me watching from a 2.5 meter distance… so I don‘t need 8k, especially since I don‘t plan to buy a 8k TV anytime soon. But more and more people will and anything based on a S922X SoC will receive more and more attention in the dev community up to a point, where only those newer SoCs will get further updates. It is inevitable, regardless if people actually need to extra horsepower or not.
Is the 922X actually capable of 8K? The (minimal) googling I did suggests it maxes out at 4K/75Hz.
Playback of 10-bit h.264 for anime fans.
Playback of 1080p material in Netflix, which requires software decoding. (Even the 922X likely wouldn’t be powerful enough to decode 4K HEVC in software, though).
Ability to decode 1080i material in software so you can take advantage of the superior deinterlacing.
Enough CPU power to enabling higher-quality upscaling in software mode (e.g. Lanczos3).
Enough power to run more demanding skins.
The 922X uses USB 3.0, which would allow a future Vero to manage its own local storage at respectable speeds.
The specs list “Dolby Vision” - don’t know if there is actually anything you could do with that on an open source OS, but it would be cool if you could.
Maybe something like room-correction on the audio output.
Gaming.
Maybe real-time transcoding, so it could act as a Plex server.
Having said all of that, the S922X isn’t actually all that powerful. It’s a big step up from the likes of the S905D, but you’re starting from pretty low! The 4-year-old Nvidia Shield TV’s professor is still more powerful than the S922X, and the CPU in the Apple TV 4K is another big step up from there.
I think the SoC already has a new revision or so… because the Beelink King with the S922X can play 8k without any dropped frames while the Odroid N2 can‘t.
But you mention good points for the use of the S922X. The SoC is strong enough to software decode those 10bit h264 stuff that is used by anime.
And you are also right that is still does not match the CPU power of Tegra SoC in the shield TV and that is a 4 year old chip. But we can‘t run anything other than Android on it and we can‘t run anything other than TVOS on the the even mightier Apple SoCs. So we can only compare the different Amlogic SoCs and the S922X seems to be quite a big update.
The only thing that bothers me right now is that it seems Amlogic wants a premium price for that SoC. All boards and boxes with it are priced significantly higher than previous generations, even when you consider that everything is priced higher when new. Maybe other factors play a role here as well, like faster and more expensive emmc. Anyway, I am prepared to pay more for a possible Vero 8k than I did pay for the 4k.
We are always working on new products, but don’t discuss the development of them in advance. We have a hardware roadmap, but it’s worth noting that the Vero 4K + hasn’t been on the market for a year yet, so there’s not going to be an update for a long time.
Dolby Vision is listed as a specification of a number of AML chips since S912. The story behind this is a little more involving; but for Dolby Vision to be implemented HDCP2.2 must be implemented and there must be a Trusted Execution Environment implementation. The -J variant of the chip must be used, ie. S912J or S905X2J. This chip is only available after licensing with Dolby Labs and is otherwise not available for AMLogic customers without their consent.
So saying that Dolby Vision is ‘supported’ by these SoCs is slightly incorrect. For Dolby Vision compatibility, SBC manufacturers would have needed to reach an agreement with Dolby in advance of manufacture.
The S922X is not an appropriate SoC for a future iteration of hardware.
I was super happy with my first Raspberry Pi 1 model B. I was equally thrilled when I later upgraded through the B+, Pi 2, and Pi 3 model B. When the Pi 3 model B+ came out I ordered one right away and wound up rather disappointed. It is a great piece of kit, but in my particular use case the money left my pocket and I got a Kodi experience that was exactly the same as what I already had. Now that the Pi 4 is out I am in no hurry to upgrade in the near future. Sometimes new, for the sake of new, is not necessarily better. I’ve never owned a Vero but from what i’ve read on this forum it does not sound like the current model is much of a slouch.
I would like to see future model have faster SoC. So far Vero 4K isn’t fast enough decode 1080p Hi10P smoothly (480p and 576p are doable with peak 75% CPU load).
Having tested it on Odroid N2 with CoreELEC, I can say S922X is fast enough for 1080p Hi10P decoding.
As far as HDR goes, focusing on HDR10+ and HLG should be the way to go.
I think one important feature a couple of years from now will be hardware acceleration of AV1 content. It kind of depends on how things turn out, maybe it’ll still be too early for that to be a must-have, but it’s clearly on the roadmap.
Not this year that’s for sure. Maybe 2020 if we are lucky.
So far only Realtek has confirmed AV1 for RTD1311. Rockchip did mention AV1 in one of their slides when talked about Gen 1 video decoder but unknown if upcoming RK3588 will use it or not.
