How to install OpenELEC (Official) in a VM


johnodon

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UPDATE:  I yanked one of my HD6450's out and replaced it with a GT720.  OE now bitsreams EVERYTHING including DTS-HD MA and TrueHD!  :D

 

Happy camper.

 

Another added bonus...

 

I am able to step forward/backward in OE v6 without experiencing any delays.  When I do this with the HD6450 cards, it was awful (only on OE v6 though...v5 was unaffected).  I may need to look into replacing my other 6450's.

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UPDATE:  I yanked one of my HD6450's out and replaced it with a GT720.  OE now bitsreams EVERYTHING including DTS-HD MA and TrueHD!  :D

 

Happy camper.

 

Another added bonus...

 

I am able to step forward/backward in OE v6 without experiencing any delays.  When I do this with the HD6450 cards, it was awful (only on OE v6 though...v5 was unaffected).  I may need to look into replacing my other 6450's.

 

Sounds very promising I can't wait to try this!

May I ask which GT720 card you are using specifically? Manufacturer  & model...

 

Thanks,

 

Bertrand

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UPDATE:  I yanked one of my HD6450's out and replaced it with a GT720.  OE now bitsreams EVERYTHING including DTS-HD MA and TrueHD!  :D

 

Happy camper.

 

Another added bonus...

 

I am able to step forward/backward in OE v6 without experiencing any delays.  When I do this with the HD6450 cards, it was awful (only on OE v6 though...v5 was unaffected).  I may need to look into replacing my other 6450's.

 

Sounds very promising I can't wait to try this!

May I ask which GT720 card you are using specifically? Manufacturer  & model...

 

Thanks,

 

Bertrand

 

This is exactly what I bought (+ a $15 rebate)...

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127851

 

John

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Did I read somewhere that unRAID currently doesn't support more than one GPU via OVMF?  Is that true?  I'm thinking of replacing the other 2 HD6450s with 2 GT720's since I can run OE v6 with those and not experience other issues I have had with the AMD cards.  But, if I can;t boot more than one OVMF VM then I won't bother.

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I think I have ovmf on two VMs. Have to check it tomorrow though to be sure.

 

Bump.  :)

My god, what an impatience  ::)  ;D

Have to get back home first, but good you reminded me as it was already lost in space  ::)

 

You did say "tomorrow".  :D

 

I do have two OVMF VM's running at the same time with no problems here. So I guess they snuck in the new version so one doesn't have one efi-loader for each VM.

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I think I have ovmf on two VMs. Have to check it tomorrow though to be sure.

 

Bump.  :)

My god, what an impatience  ::)  ;D

Have to get back home first, but good you reminded me as it was already lost in space  ::)

 

You did say "tomorrow".  :D

 

I do have two OVMF VM's running at the same time with no problems here. So I guess they snuck in the new version so one doesn't have one efi-loader for each VM.

 

Awesome.  I'm going to run to Best Buy and pick up 2 GT730s tonight.  Don't tell my wife!  :D

 

Why do I always make these decisions at the end of the week which means I wouldn't get the cards until next week if I bought them online...forcing me to buy local  :S

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Awesome.  I'm going to run to Best Buy and pick up 2 GT730s tonight.  Don't tell my wife!  :D

 

Why do I always make these decisions at the end of the week which means I wouldn't get the cards until next week if I bought them online...forcing me to buy local  :S

lol. I'll keep my mouth shut  :-X

At least you have somewhere local to get it  ;)

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Not sure it means anything,  but I was trying to troubleshoot this completely outside of OE, just in Linux,  the one conclusion I made,  while not 100% confirmed,  is that this appears to be an issue with the Radeon kernel driver.  Making it a bug that needs resolved,  independent of kodi and OE.

 

Thoughts?

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Not sure it means anything,  but I was trying to troubleshoot this completely outside of OE, just in Linux,  the one conclusion I made,  while not 100% confirmed,  is that this appears to be an issue with the Radeon kernel driver.  Making it a bug that needs resolved,  independent of kodi and OE.

 

Thoughts?

 

If you are talking about bitstreaming HD audio...absolutely true.  When I installed Ubuntu (and Mint) + Kodi, I did not even have an option for passthrough so it is not just an OE issue.

 

I replaced one of my HD6450's with a GT720 and I am able to bitstream TrueHD and DTS-HD MA in OE without issue.  It was so easy that I am going out today and buying 2 GT730's to replace my other HD6450's.

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Not sure it means anything,  but I was trying to troubleshoot this completely outside of OE, just in Linux,  the one conclusion I made,  while not 100% confirmed,  is that this appears to be an issue with the Radeon kernel driver.  Making it a bug that needs resolved,  independent of kodi and OE.

 

Thoughts?

 

If you are talking about bitstreaming HD audio...absolutely true.  When I installed Ubuntu (and Mint) + Kodi, I did not even have an option for passthrough so it is not just an OE issue.

 

I replaced one of my HD6450's with a GT720 and I am able to bitstream TrueHD and DTS-HD MA in OE without issue.  It was so easy that I am going out today and buying 2 GT730's to replace my other HD6450's.

I hate bandaids,  how do we get this fixed

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Not sure it means anything,  but I was trying to troubleshoot this completely outside of OE, just in Linux,  the one conclusion I made,  while not 100% confirmed,  is that this appears to be an issue with the Radeon kernel driver.  Making it a bug that needs resolved,  independent of kodi and OE.

 

Thoughts?

 

If you are talking about bitstreaming HD audio...absolutely true.  When I installed Ubuntu (and Mint) + Kodi, I did not even have an option for passthrough so it is not just an OE issue.

 

I replaced one of my HD6450's with a GT720 and I am able to bitstream TrueHD and DTS-HD MA in OE without issue.  It was so easy that I am going out today and buying 2 GT730's to replace my other HD6450's.

I hate bandaids,  how do we get this fixed

 

We don't.  This is a long standing issue and AMD won't address.

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So is this directly an issue with amd? I'm not familiar with writes the kernel driver,  but if we file a bug,  I. Would think someone could fix it

 

Go read about all of the issues the Kodi devs have had with AMD.  Kodi doesn't even use their driver anymore.  It uses the open source one but apparently bitstreaming HD audio was never hashed out completely.

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Success!  ;D

 

Followed the instructions, but used the OE 6.0 .IMG

Used a single core, 1024 MB RAM and 8G VM disk...

Most importantly I tried a new passive EVGA GT 720 (1GB version) GPU instead of my old ASUS GT720

I tested a few movies with pass-through DTS, DTS-MA and Dolby TrueHD. Everything was butter smooth, no glitches with perfect audio!

 

Cannot be happier!

 

The only thing I am unsure about is the lack of physical on/off button. For maximum WAF it is nice to have a easy way to reset the "box" if something does go sideways.

Time will tell how it reacts with the rest of my AV stack just leaving the VM running 24x7 -just using the receiver to switch the HDMI connection on/off.

 

Next step will be to migrate all my big (20+ GB) movies from the local HDD in the standalone OE HTPC into unRAID so the new OE VM has access to everything.

 

Cheers,

 

BR

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