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+--- Thread: Raspberry Pi 5 Q&A Thread (/showthread.php?tid=374561)
Raspberry Pi 5 Q&A Thread - chewitt - 2023-09-28
I've been lucky enough to be part of the pre-release testing and have been using an RPi5 board with a LibreELEC development image (Kodi Omega) for a while. There's a release announcement on the LibreELEC website with some info and opinions here: https://libreelec.tv/2023/09/28/rpi5-support/ but if you have questions: put them below and I will attempt answers
RE: Raspberry Pi 5 Q&A Thread - Shazb0t - 2023-09-29
Are you implying a stable Libreelec release may be made available pretty quickly for the new pi 5?
RE: Raspberry Pi 5 Q&A Thread - chewitt - 2023-09-29
The LE support blog-post references it took 58 minutes from DHL delivering the sample board to first-boot. That was me. That 58 mins includes 35 mins eating lunch while the distro image clean-compiles. And that first-boot image was then used by the family in daily use for two weeks before I got around to doing another kernel, rpi-eeprom and Kodi bump. As the LE 12 codebase is currently that level of boring (despite the current "Alpha" tag) we are probably not going to backport changes onto LE 11 to make a "stable" release; we'd rather push forwards. I'm hopefull that K21 wil move to Beta before boards start shipping next month to reduce user fear of release labels
NB: https://github.com/LibreELEC/LibreELEC.tv/pull/8175 only waiting for rpi-eeprom changes to be merged upstream and then nightlies start.
RE: Raspberry Pi 5 Q&A Thread - psp2111-ADSLGATE - 2023-09-29
Question: is it true RPi5 hardware decoder only support 4Kp60 HEVC ?
that's it no other Codecs are supported!
RE: Raspberry Pi 5 Q&A Thread - Sidewinder_2011 - 2023-09-29
(2023-09-29, 20:27)psp2111-ADSLGATE Wrote: Question: is it true RPi5 hardware decoder only support 4Kp60 HEVC ?
that's it no other Codecs are supported!
That's what I read, but it be able to handle all x264 stream via software
RE: Raspberry Pi 5 Q&A Thread - chewitt - 2023-09-30
(2023-09-29, 20:27)psp2111-ADSLGATE Wrote: Question: is it true RPi5 hardware decoder only support 4Kp60 HEVC ?Yes, that's correct. It continues a trend of moving to software decode when the main ARM chip has enough CPU grunt to handle things without a dedicated IP block (to reduce costs). RPi3 dropped support for some of the HW decoders that on original Pi boards required separate licenses for. RPi4 retained the same H264 IP block as RPi3; but that means it's capped at 8-bit 1080p content. RPi5 drops that old H264 IP block which removes it's restrictions, so RPi5 now plays all the 4K H264 media that I have; which is admittedly not much since it's not a broadcast standard that's used much, but the test media that I have all plays. Similarly.. there is lots of whinging about "no support for VP9 and AV1" but the CPU handles VP9/AV1 at 1080p with ease, and I'm also finding a surprising amount of 4K VP9 streams from YouTube also work (4K30, not 4K60 which is still beyond CPU capabilities). Also don't forget that most of the 'name' streaming services like Netflix are capped at 1080p as only certified devices with Widevine L1 certs can access 4K content. So in the real world dropping hardware H264 and not having other hardware decoders blocks isn't such a big deal (IMHO).
RE: Raspberry Pi 5 Q&A Thread - hdmkv - 2023-09-30
I skipped Pi4, but recall Pi3 supported 3D MVC well. Any idea if Pi5 does?
RE: Raspberry Pi 5 Q&A Thread - psp2111-ADSLGATE - 2023-09-30
@chewitt
That's really a big disappointment for me and make RPi5 not a future proof at all as media device with such a weak hardware decoder in 2023.
and make me wonder what about other stuff like Audio codecs or can CPU really handle high bit/rate h264 media like bluray rips or h264 10bit or vp9/av1 in HDR and from what you said RPi5 make playing 4K content painful except for HEVC and some low bit/rate vp9
to be honest with you I have been waiting for libreELEC developers to support Rockchip RK3588/RK3588s SBC like Orange Pi5 and Rock5 for while now.
It has way more powerful CPU/GPU that make RPi5 look like last gen SBC، and the hardware decoder support almost everything up to 8K 30/60fps if this spreadsheet is accurate "image" and make RPi5 look like a joke for me as media device.
RE: Raspberry Pi 5 Q&A Thread - chewitt - 2023-09-30
(2023-09-30, 15:38)psp2111-ADSLGATE Wrote: I have been waiting for libreELEC developers to support Rockchip RK3588/RK3588s SBC like Orange Pi5 and Rock5 for while now. It has way more powerful CPU/GPU that make RPi5 look like last gen SBC، and the hardware decoder support almost everything up to 8K 30/60fps if this spreadsheet is accurate "image" and make RPi5 look like a joke for me as media device.It's been a year since RK3588 appeared and there's still no upstream support for the GPU and HDMI, and the single hardware decoder that's been upstreamed (AV1) is only merged because Mediatek paid Collabora to upstream support for it; because a Mediatek SoC needed V4L2_request AV1 support and to get code for a new V4L2 codec merged quickly it really helps to prove the implementation on more than one SoC (and at the time RK3588 was the least-worst other SoC to use). For the last year my standard response to "is RK3588 supported?" questions in the LE forums is to point people at the Collabora upstreaming tracking page an say "ask me again in six months" .. because these days we refuse to waste project energies on downstream vendor kernels with poor quality code and standards abuse. The sole exception is the downstream RPi kernel, because it does follow standards, has good quality code, and if we raise a bug repot with the Pi devs they engage immediately and the average fix time is 24-48 hours. And while the Pi kernel does carry a load of patches they do also send an ever-increasing volume of them upstream to keep on-top of technical debt. RPi5 might not be the "decode everything" wonder board that some users look for, but it's a solid board, and right now (one month before public shipments start) its software is already functionally complete. Great specs on paper are worthless if you can't use them.
RE: Raspberry Pi 5 Q&A Thread - chewitt - 2023-09-30
(2023-09-30, 14:51)hdmkv Wrote: I skipped Pi4, but recall Pi3 supported 3D MVC well. Any idea if Pi5 does?RPi4 and RPi5 support 3D things in hardware but the software support needed to use them has never made it high enough on the Pi developers to-do list to get implemented. Keeping a spare RPi3B+ with LE 9.2.8 around to handle occasional 3D duties remains our recommendation for 3D support.
RE: Raspberry Pi 5 Q&A Thread - psp2111-ADSLGATE - 2023-10-02
(2023-09-30, 21:55)chewitt Wrote: Great specs on paper are worthless if you can't use them.
Yeah I agree that really super weird, it is a great SoC as a hardware and specs on paper, but I am really surprised it software/driver lake support for essential thing like HDMI after all this time, I get that a GPU driver and Hardware acceleration could take sometime to be tuned or supported correctly.
I am not a Programmer/Developer and my knowledge about Linux is quiet limited but I have curious question:
Who should be responsible to provide software and driver support for SoC like RK3855 or essential part of it like a GPU?
is it Rockchip or ARM/MALI or SBC maker like Orange Pi?
or do they rely on community support?
RE: Raspberry Pi 5 Q&A Thread - chewitt - 2023-10-02
(2023-10-02, 05:49)psp2111-ADSLGATE Wrote: Who should be responsible to provide software and driver support for SoC like RK3855 or essential part of it like a GPU?Normally vendors like Allwinner/Amlogic/Rockchip ship a board support package (BSP) to board manufacturers with ARM Mali GPU drivers (with closed source blobs) and all the main peripherals like HDMI, PCIe, Ethernet "working" .. but the code quality varies from "reasonable" when there's large inheritance from earlier/similar chipsets where most of the major bugs have been worked out; to "horrendous" when there's been a generation bump and there's a bunch of all-new silicon things to support. RK3588(S) shipped with a 50/50 mix and even things like HDMI missing in the BSP. The SoC vendors typically stop at the BSP code; if board manufacturers want upstream kernel support it's their responsibility to clean-up/re-write the BSP code and send it with little/limited support from the SoC vendor. The board vendors generally accomplish this by shipping $free samples to a bunch of known-name developers in their brand ecosystem and/or wider Linux community and hoping goodwill and a regular supply of $free stuff results in $free upstream support. It's a perfect example of the "You can have it fast or cheap, choose one" saying; the SoC/board vendors always choose cheap. Hence we're a year after the launch of RK3588 and from an upstream perspective it's still missing a whole heap 'o stuff.
is it Rockchip or ARM/MALI or SBC maker like Orange Pi?
or do they rely on community support?
Rockchip are not unique. In the Amlogic world support for A311D2 is only at the earliest of early stages and everyone is stuck using the BSP codebase due to lack of silicon vendor support for the upstream process. The challenge is; BSP code generally works for a specific set of developed-for/tested-for use-cases. The moment you deviate the house of cards falls and "fixing" something often breaks something else and you quickly descend down a bottomless rabbit-hole of fixing. There are other vendors like NXP/Freescale who achieved a level of critical mass in the size of their industrial focussed ecosystem where the community development model results in fairly quick and robust support, but all their stuff is encumbered by NDAs. There are vendors like Mediatek who have recently embraced upstream and now have their Engineering staff actively engaged in pushing good code for their latest designs.
Raspberry Pi are both bad and brilliant. Their codebase still has closed source blobs for board firmware, and while they are upstreaming an ever-greater amount of code their primary codebase (RPiOS) is technically a downstream vendor fork. Hence lots of FOSS purists point fingers and call them names. The distinction is; the Raspberry Pi downstream stuff is hosted on public GitHub (no NDA needed, no private pay-to-play repos) and is actively and attentively maintained by staff who are accessible and engage with everyone from hobbyist developers to kernel maintainers. In other SoC vendors any closed-source blobs mean zero/difficult support and Engineers are hidden away and only allowed to engage with customers (who buy chips and pay for support) not end users. With Raspberry Pi the normal friction points are not real-world issues; and that's why Pi has such an immense ecosystem and why RPi5 will outsell better-spec RK3588 boards by a mile.
Eek, that turned into a long one
RE: Raspberry Pi 5 Q&A Thread - psp2111-ADSLGATE - 2023-10-02
@chewitt
Yeah for sure RPi5 will sell like hot cake no doubt about it, but I wished if it had a better decoder especially it going to lasts quite a while now.
Thank you so much for your time and sharing your knowledge.
it clear up a lot of things for me, and sorry for getting off topic.
have a nice day 😌
RE: Raspberry Pi 5 Q&A Thread - calev - 2023-10-02
What excites me most about the rpi5 is it should be powerful enough to run a browser and play videos. PI4 struggled with browser playback. I think i'll prefer to run kodi along side a desktop on the pi5 so I have access to other apps.
RE: Raspberry Pi 5 Q&A Thread - Jwc84 - 2023-10-06
Hello, if a LibreELEC video file with HDR and Dolby Atmos is installed on Raspberry Pi 5, will Raspberry Pi 5 support HDR and Dolby Atmos? Can I use a remote control with voice search on Kodi on Raspberry Pi 5? If so, can I ask for several models?