[illuvattarr]

After my Vero 4K+ unfortunately gave up after a couple years, I'm looking for a new mediabox. What I want at least is Kodi with snappy navigation, able to play high bitrate 4K HDR with lossless audio (DTS-HD and TrueHD) through my soundsystem.
I definitely liked the Vero even though it seemingly broke down on its own, so the new Vero V is an option, though it would be nice to have full Dolby Vision support and AndroidTV with other apps to use. So I'm doubting for the Shield TV Pro as well, but that one is on pretty old hardware at the moment. What would be recommended?

[calev]

I did find a few minutes to get my new Raspberry Pi 5 built, LibreElec loaded and had Kodi sync with my Mezzmo database (~22k items).  Total build time was about an hour or so.  My initial testing with it has been surprisingly good and I've updated my endpoint performance Wiki page.  Right now the Raspberry Pi 5 is the fastest device I have tested rendering a 150 item playlist at 106 items/sec.  This is over 5Ghz wireless and is faster than my PC,  Intel i7 NUC and others which are 1Gig Ethernet connected.  This aligns to the optimizations mentioned for the Raspberry Pi 5. 

The database sync time was almost as fast as my desktop PC running Kodi with an SSD and came in at around 9 minutes .  The Raspberry Pi is running off of an SD card.  I have an NVME hat coming and will try moving the Kodi database to it to see if there is a performance boost.  My Raspberry Pi 4 testing for the same database sync was 19 minutes.

I tested full bitrate h264 1080P and full bitrate h265 UHD 4K, including the John Wick 2 car chase scene which hits over 100mbps.   The highest CPU utilization I have seen is around 15% when playing 1080P Blu-Ray h264 rips, which the Raspberry Pi 5 renders in software.  Full bitrate h265 CPU utilization was about 5% and I confirmed HW decoding is being used. I also tested 1080i MPEG2 12mbps OTA streams and CPU utilization was low and playback smooth.  There were no issues with FF/RW, jumps or skips with any playback and again this was all over 5Ghz WiFi from my Mezzmo server.

I haven't done anything with audio pass-through testing yet, since this was all done in a few minutes using a computer monitor with speakers.  I'll try to find some time to do additional audio testing. 

Overall I am pleasantly surprised at the performance of the Raspberry Pi 5.

Samsung 970 EVO Plus NVME SSD to my Raspberry Pi 5 using a Geekworm X1001 hat

I bought a cheepo ssd off amazon and it wouldn't work with the geekworm hat I bought. I just want it for the cool factor. It does bring it into the intel price range.

[jbinkley60]

I bought a cheepo ssd off amazon and it wouldn't work with the geekworm hat I bought. I just want it for the cool factor. It does bring it into the intel price range.

Mine didn't initially work either.  The first thing is to make sure the blue light is on the hat, which indicates it sees the SSD.  I had to reseat the ribbon cable between the hat and the Raspberry Pi 4 three times before the light came on.

Thanks,

Jeff

[calev]

Would you mind, if you don't need to take it apart to post a pic of the ribbon cable? So I know which direction is correct?

[jbinkley60]

Would you mind, if you don't need to take it apart to post a pic of the ribbon cable? So I know which direction is correct?

The ribbon cable contacts go towards the center of the Raspberry Pi 5 (i.e. face inwards). 





Jeff

[hdmkv]

@illuvattarr, based on all your needs/wants (with DV & Android TV), my recommendation would be in this order. Obviously just my opinion:

1. Fire Cube 3: Does everything & it's powerful. Negatives are Kodi needing to be sideloaded, ad-filled interface & only 100M LAN (so need to use USB ethernet adapter, or HTTP over Wi-Fi6E)
   
2. nVidia Shield TV Pro: Still a solid player, just no HDR10+ & HLG if those matter to you
   
3. Homatics Box R 4K Plus: Solid player, does everything, but not as snappy as either of the above. Ability to run CoreELEC & Android TV
   

Or, separate players for local media (Dune, Zidoo) vs. premium apps/online streaming (above plus Fire sticks, Google TV dongles, Roku, etc.).

[calev]

I see Argon now has some new PI5 cases with pcie nvme support. https://argon40.com/products/argon-one-v3-m-2-nvme-case I think I'll wait for this one to be in stock.

ETA Prime has a review out today https://youtu.be/DQG21yJ-upk?si=-BxB1yrQdtluWwyY And it looks pretty nice.

[Roby77]

@illuvattarr, based on all your needs/wants (with DV & Android TV), my recommendation would be in this order. Obviously just my opinion:

1. Homatics Box R 4K Plus: Solid player, does everything, but not as snappy as either of the above. Ability to run CoreELEC & Android TV
   

Did you already update to Atv12
Can you confirm that AFR works ?

[MatteN]

I see Argon now has some new PI5 cases with pcie nvme support. https://argon40.com/products/argon-one-v3-m-2-nvme-case I think I'll wait for this one to be in stock.

ETA Prime has a review out today https://youtu.be/DQG21yJ-upk?si=-BxB1yrQdtluWwyY And it looks pretty nice.

Too bad they dont fix and update their software.

[noggin]

I see Argon now has some new PI5 cases with pcie nvme support. https://argon40.com/products/argon-one-v3-m-2-nvme-case I think I'll wait for this one to be in stock.

ETA Prime has a review out today https://youtu.be/DQG21yJ-upk?si=-BxB1yrQdtluWwyY And it looks pretty nice.

Those style of Argon cases with HDMI extenders are notorious for causing major HDMI issues if you run >1080p.  I took all my Pi 4B Argon cases with those Micro HDMI and HDMI extenders out of Media Player service and switched to FLIRC cases once I realised the Argon extenders were so flaky.

Avoid.

[hdmkv]

Did you already update to Atv12
Can you confirm that AFR works ?

Still waiting for firmware to be pushed to my unit. Requested Feb 11, but with Chinese New Year's, expected delay.

[calev]

I see Argon now has some new PI5 cases with pcie nvme support. https://argon40.com/products/argon-one-v3-m-2-nvme-case I think I'll wait for this one to be in stock.

ETA Prime has a review out today https://youtu.be/DQG21yJ-upk?si=-BxB1yrQdtluWwyY And it looks pretty nice.

Those style of Argon cases with HDMI extenders are notorious for causing major HDMI issues if you run >1080p.  I took all my Pi 4B Argon cases with those Micro HDMI and HDMI extenders out of Media Player service and switched to FLIRC cases once I realised the Argon extenders were so flaky.

Avoid.

Valid concerns. I do have the pi4 version and it mostly worked fine for me. I do remember it being a little finicky. I went back to the flirc case on that pi because the fan didn't seem to make a huge difference with a pi4. My second pi4 is still in a argon neo case. It's fine. Like the flirc case but you can access the gpio and camera pins.  I think the pi 5 does get a much bigger boost from having a fan. I don't think the flirc case will accommodate a fan or a ssd. Argon also makes a cheaper one without the hdmi extenders that looks reasonable and can accommodate a fan and a nvme ssd.

https://argon40.com/products/argon-neo-5...berry-pi-5

[MatteN]

I use other cheap cases that i modified slightly to use 5V fans on 3,3V GPIO, none of those Pi's get over 40C,
Noctua have good 5V fans that are 40 mm, at 3,3V they are dead quiet.

[noggin]

I see Argon now has some new PI5 cases with pcie nvme support. https://argon40.com/products/argon-one-v3-m-2-nvme-case I think I'll wait for this one to be in stock.

ETA Prime has a review out today https://youtu.be/DQG21yJ-upk?si=-BxB1yrQdtluWwyY And it looks pretty nice.

Those style of Argon cases with HDMI extenders are notorious for causing major HDMI issues if you run >1080p.  I took all my Pi 4B Argon cases with those Micro HDMI and HDMI extenders out of Media Player service and switched to FLIRC cases once I realised the Argon extenders were so flaky.

Avoid.

Valid concerns. I do have the pi4 version and it mostly worked fine for me. I do remember it being a little finicky. I went back to the flirc case on that pi because the fan didn't seem to make a huge difference with a pi4. My second pi4 is still in a argon neo case. It's fine. Like the flirc case but you can access the gpio and camera pins.  I think the pi 5 does get a much bigger boost from having a fan. I don't think the flirc case will accommodate a fan or a ssd. Argon also makes a cheaper one without the hdmi extenders that looks reasonable and can accommodate a fan and a nvme ssd.

https://argon40.com/products/argon-neo-5...berry-pi-5

Yes - if I was buying a case from Argon - that would be the style I'd go for.

Agree about the fan being potentially more useful with a Pi 5 - I'm currently running my LibreElec Pi 5 in a Pi Foundation Case+Fan with the supplied heatsink.

[hdmkv]

Finally got the Homatics private Android 12 beta firmware pushed to my box, and here are my results:

• DTS-HD MA/X now passthrough with Kodi, but only using Android IEC packer. With Kodi IEC packer (the Kodi recommended option), there's no audio with any formats
  
• There are a few audio bugs; for example there was no sound playing the Sony Camp demo, which has AAC audio in it
  
• Automatic framerate (AFR) switching & 23.976 support works fine with Kodi
  
• AFR doesn't work with Prime Video; everything is 60Hz for me (same default resolution as my projector). A user at AVSForum posted AFR works with Netflix (which I don't subscribe to)
  
• Overall, performance feels snappier with Android 12 over 11
  

Testing photos here.