surfshack66 Posted February 12, 2018 Share Posted February 12, 2018 How does AV over IP fit into this equation, specifically products like Crestron and Just Add Power? It seems like many people are buying a shield ~ $200 for each TV. Is it possible to truly use Unraid as the one/main PC and display to every TV/monitor in the house without the need for buying a separate device for each TV? Quote Link to comment
wayner Posted February 14, 2018 Share Posted February 14, 2018 On 2/12/2018 at 2:44 PM, surfshack66 said: How does AV over IP fit into this equation, specifically products like Crestron and Just Add Power? It seems like many people are buying a shield ~ $200 for each TV. Is it possible to truly use Unraid as the one/main PC and display to every TV/monitor in the house without the need for buying a separate device for each TV? Products like Just Add Power and other video Matrix switches form the heart of centralized video distribution. The folks that have these swear by these but they can be pretty expensive if you have a lot of TVs - think $5-10k or more. Just Add Power is on the cheaper end but if you want 4K it gets more expensive. And pretty much all of these systems need a dedicated Ethernet run from your central rack to each room where you are distributing power. Then you may want a HA system like Crestron or Control4 to control it all. And then you may also want to think about centralized Audio distribution with ceiling speakers, matrix amp, etc. If you still want centralized video an alternative to consider is Video Storm Net Play. It uses AndroidTV devices like FireTVs or ShieldTVs at each TV as a receiving device. But you can put almost anything into it using their Encoders. This also works well for stuff like Video Tiling/PIP or Video Walls. Depending on what you want to do you could probably get away with spending $2--3k. But then the logical question is: If I am putting a device like an Nvidia Shield at every TV then why can't I use that as my source for everything? The thing that may be hardest to replace right now is cable TV and a centralized system like this can help you reduce the number of cable STBs that you rent. For your last question - that is possible but then you may need lots of HDMI cabling through your house. You may also need a way to get IR or USB connections over the wiring. You may also need to run several VMs and have multiple video cards. There are threads here on people who have done systems like this. Quote Link to comment
jang430 Posted March 9, 2018 Share Posted March 9, 2018 So you mean this sucker http://khadas.com/? - never heard of it - looks pretty awesome - where did you learn about it? I also have a FLIRC on my HTPC and use it with my harmony - is that necessary on this new device without flirc? Is there any reason to think that this produces better quality audio than say - a top of the line roku? I would be totally fine with a box that boots into PLEX - i'm guessing that's an option here? It also seems like it doesn't support 7.1 :-( While you are considering Khadas, just want to point out to everyone that it supports HDMI CEC. This means using your TV remote, you can control kodi even without Infrared. Don't know if Plex supports it though.I have used Plex plugin inside Kodi, and it still works.Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment
DZMM Posted March 9, 2018 Share Posted March 9, 2018 (edited) On 10/13/2017 at 6:26 PM, wayner said: The Shield is a great option but the Xiaomi MiBox3, which one person mentioned in this thread, is also a very good option. It is an Android TV box, just like the Shield, but it doesn't have quite as much horsepower. But it only costs $69. A word of warning on the mibox3 - one of the reasons it is so cheap is because it only has 8GB of storage, which works out to around 5GB of usable space...this has become the bane of my life as I've switched to a richer kodi skin (Estuary Mod V2) and the thumbnail database is too big for the mibox. I have 2 profiles on my kodi (adults, kids) - for the adults profile I have to store about 50% of the thumbs on a network share as there's no space and 100% of the kids thumbs - and that's with only having bombsquad installed on the internal drive and everything else on the SD. This leads to a noticeable slowdown in the UI. I've tried storing on a USB drive, but this is hard to crack on the mibox and even if I were successful, the mibox is only USB2.0 - again why the cost is so low. I'm looking at an nvidia or khadas as my upgrade. I agree the nvidia does look pricey, but support for google assistant and chromecast both of which I need helps justify the extra cost over the Khadas, which might come with a bigger 'support' overhead in terms of getting it all working properly. Edited March 9, 2018 by DZMM 1 Quote Link to comment
surfshack66 Posted March 9, 2018 Share Posted March 9, 2018 I just received the Khadas Vim2 earlier this week. I boot the VIM2 into Libreelec from an external SD. From reading the Libreelec support forums, I settled on the VIM2 because of known issues with Intel NUCs and shields. Also, for the price point its hard to beat. I run Plex on unraid and use plexkodiconnect on kodi to sync everything. So far its working great. Also, I use HDMI cec so my TV remote works. I bought Flirc thinking I would need it but its nice that VIM2 supports CEC. Quote Link to comment
DZMM Posted March 9, 2018 Share Posted March 9, 2018 2 hours ago, surfshack66 said: I just received the Khadas Vim2 earlier this week. I boot the VIM2 into Libreelec from an external SD. I'm curioius - what are the advantages of Librelec over just installing kodi? I'm not that familiar with Libreelec Quote Link to comment
surfshack66 Posted March 9, 2018 Share Posted March 9, 2018 (edited) 8 minutes ago, DZMM said: I'm curioius - what are the advantages of Librelec over just installing kodi? I'm not that familiar with Libreelec Many advantages from what I've researched. https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=252916 Essentially, once I determined I would use Kodi for media playback on LAN (instead of Plex) I started researching the best hardware for Kodi - which led me to the link posted above. Quote Known issues across various platforms: No Auto 1080p/4K resolution switching on 99% of Android OS platforms, except the FireTV2 and the NVIDIA Shield(SPMC 17.6 only). Important for high quality, hands off 1080p > 4K picture upscaling. Manual Android settings fiddling required for optimal picture outputs. However after auto 1080p / 4K resolution switching, there are colorspace issues with the Shield. Numerous complaints about poor quality 1080p > 4K upscaling picture outputs from the NVIDIA Shield vs what 4K TV's can do. Major deinterlacing issues with Android Kodi Krypton and some PVR's - reported on ALL Android devices. The NVIDIA Shield's Troublesome - overly touch sensitive mini remote. . Multichannel FLAC - users beware: Virtually all devices using an Android OS (except the Zidoo X9S) have 16bit Multichannel 48/96kHz PCM Audio output limitations (click) The No Bullshit NVIDIA Shield FLAC Audio post !! Read NVIDIA Shield - Multichannel Hi-Res audio limitations for extra information. Intel Apollo Lake & Kaby Lake NUC's: No HD Audio Passthrough when using Intel Apollo / Kaby Lake - LibreELEC Kodi Krypton 8.x(click) You will lose Atmos and DTS:X for certain. However you can use Kodi's 5.1. / 7.1 HD to PCM Lossless Audio decoding instead for no loss in Audio output quality. Mostly Fixed ! No 24bit/192kHz Audio for Sky / Apollo / Kaby Lake No working HDMI CEC control - out of the box on any Intel Platforms. HDR problems along with various other issues using Intel Kaby Lake Hardware . Amazon FireTV hardware needs Kodi to be installed via sideloading using various means. Kodi does not Autoupdate. There is no Google Playstore with Amazon's FireOS. Amazon have a blocklist / blacklist of Kodi installer apps in their Firmware to make life difficult. To access all the 1080p 3D, HDR, and HD Audio features on the Zidoo X9S and Himedia Q5/10 Pro devices, a wrapper must be used with Kodi that then utilises external media player software. There have been some issues with Subtitles and video playback resume points using this method. Non tech users may find themselves confused when using this device setup. Detailed self research needs to be done. This next quote is what prompted me to use Libreelec Quote Newer AMLogic Android Nougat 7.1.1 Boxes have some important bug fixes in Android Firmware.AML S905/S905X/S912 boxes however, do make excellent 4K LibreELEC Kodi Krypton devices. Edited March 9, 2018 by surfshack66 Quote Link to comment
CHBMB Posted March 9, 2018 Share Posted March 9, 2018 LibreELEC is essentially a distro for running Kodi, so no bloat or anything else. Makes it feel like an appliance rather than a computer.Sent from my LG-H815 using Tapatalk 1 1 Quote Link to comment
Ron Posted March 9, 2018 Share Posted March 9, 2018 I was using Kodi, but I am back to using Plex again. Quote Link to comment
wayner Posted March 9, 2018 Share Posted March 9, 2018 6 hours ago, DZMM said: A word of warning on the mibox3 - one of the reasons it is so cheap is because it only has 8GB of storage, which works out to around 5GB of usable space...this has become the bane of my life as I've switched to a richer kodi skin (Estuary Mod V2) and the thumbnail database is too big for the mibox. I have 2 profiles on my kodi (adults, kids) - for the adults profile I have to store about 50% of the thumbs on a network share as there's no space and 100% of the kids thumbs - and that's with only having bombsquad installed on the internal drive and everything else on the SD. This leads to a noticeable slowdown in the UI. I believe that this is due to the fact that Kodi/XBMC was not originally intended as a client-server architecture. Plex, SageTV and others were designed with a client-server implementation with very light demands placed on the client. IMHO this is a shortcoming of Kodi. Quote Link to comment
EArroyo Posted April 25, 2020 Share Posted April 25, 2020 On 9/27/2017 at 9:50 PM, BobPhoenix said: I use my HD300 SageTV extenders for my playback. Won't do 4K but handles everything else well. Since I have no 4K media not a problem for me. Will not do netflix/amazon prime but I have PlayOn to record from either to MP4 which will play on HD300. Got a question... Are you using a VM for PlayON and if you are, how did you manage to get PlayOn to record without stuttering? I isolated and assigned 4 out of my 8 cores to the VM I am using but I am still having stuttering issues (not experienced when used on a non-virtualized machine.) I even tried saving on a network share, on the local drive which resides on the cache drive (ssd) and still it's having stuttering issues, seems to be while storing, because they play just fine. Is there any way to change the default browser PlayOn uses to use Chrome instead of IE? I asked them this question and they haven't answered me yet. Quote Link to comment
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