Unlocking takes 5-10min and has been done by hundreds of people (easy & older methods).
It has Widevine L1 & Playready 3.3 DRM, DV FEL capabilities, an s922x SOC and can still be found for $40-70 new if one is lucky. Yes there many other devices that can run CoreELEC.
Why the idea of the Cube running CoreELEC offended you so much that you felt the need to shit post to this thread is a question to ask yourself. I don’t need or care to know.
External subtitles works during DoVi FEL playback?
I think you made your opinion clear in your first post, please don’t spam this thread with it. It’s an interesting approach and for the team it would be a great breakthrough if 64bit dovi.ko could be found so that there would be no need for the special arm build.
Subtitles are part of the OSD, which is currently only showing up in black during DV playback. So subtitles work but are hard to see in black. This is the last major issue that needs to fixed for DV playback. Video itself looks and plays as it should.
The AM6 & U22XJ are still better CE devices with much more support, but if you can find a new Cube for $40-70 that’s a really good deal.
If I could get new Cube for that amount, I’d certainly give this a try.
Great work, kudos to your effort to bring CE to this potent box 
EDIT: This issue has been fixed.
To give a better idea of the black OSD issue, here are two photos (sorry for the quality) and a screenshot. This problem is only present during DV playback, and not SDR, HDR HDR10+, HLG content.
Black subtitles (not nearly as easy to see in darker scenes)
Black player controls
The correctly colored OSD is present in the screenshot (kodi-send --action=“TakeScreenshot”)
It’s as though there is a black mask over the OSD.
At @Sunset1982 I tried a few of the CM2.9 & CM4.0 samples from the link @Kaan provided. I struggled to see any difference between CM2.9 and CM4.0. Or in the CM4.0 demos when different components were being removed. If the am6/u22xj doesn’t support CM4.0, then I doubt the Cube does either. If they do support CM4.0, I would need to take another look. I’m not sure how subtle the effect is, I struggled to see a difference even in the YouTube comparison I checked out.
Thanks for confirmation! I have cube, but bugged subtitles is dealbraker to not flash coreelec. Cube on fireos beside not supporting dv p7 is not perfect tho, even on lastest build nightly kodi has problem with some dv files even with dovi compatybily mode. I alredy bought chromecast, AM6 & U22XJ are difficult to access and more expensive.
If your cube is unlocked, you can try it out. Booting CE off a USB stick won’t affect FireOS.
I haven’t posted the kernel.img+raven.dtb with DV working yet, I was hoping to find a fix for the OSD issue first.
The Dolby Vision OSD problem is solved by using the generic s905x2 dovi.ko, mentioned in this post. DV playback is now the same as the AM6+ & U22X-J.
what are the steps to getting coreelec on the cube? i just unlocked a 2ng generation cube i had laying around.
Thanks in advance for your help!
You just need to flash CE-NG 20.5, then copy the kernel.img (raven dtb is inside) over to your usb drive. The instructions are written out in more detail here.
Make sure that you have HDR set to ‘Adaptive’ rather than ‘Always’ in FireOS settings, or you won’t get any video out in CoreELEC.
Thank you. I got CoreELEC to boot. Now just have to get the remote working. I’m stuck. Suck that the box only has one usb port. Will booting CoreELEC with with usb hub hooked up in the middle work?
Cec doesn’t seem the work with my lg g3s remote.
Yeah, the single microUSB port on the Cube is it’s biggest bottleneck. I can navigate CE on first boot with my TV’s remote that works via CEC. That ability is going to be TV & TV settings dependent.
I’m using a powered 4 port USB hub, connected to a micoUSB to USB-A adapter. It doesn’t need to be a powered hub, but I reasoned it would put less stress on the single port. BT LE doesn’t work in CE (Linux MT7668 driver deficiency), only BT BR/EDR (legacy BT). The Fire remote and the couple Android remotes I have are BT LE only, and won’t connect, so I bought a BT USB dongle. Mine uses a RTL8761B BT chip, cost $5 on Amazon, just plugged in and worked. Before you buy a dongle, check that CE supports the BT chip.
You can also use a USB mouse or keyboard for setup with a hub. And if you have a BT mouse or keyboard they are more likely to support BT BR/EDR and work with the Cube’s internal BT chip. My BT mouse worked when I tried it.
I’ve also considered getting a USB hub with included Ethernet (1Gbit). I’m keeping my eye out for a deal on a powered one with at least 4 ports.
You have any recommendations for a hub with a gig Ethernet?
I haven’t used any, but this one has what I’m looking for, minus one USB port. A little pricey for what it is. I’d avoid hubs with type-C connects and power injection, those are designed to power a laptop.
If you already have a USB hub, I’d start with that, even if it’s not powered. The Cube’s WiFi is fast enough that I haven’t had any major issues streaming 60-70Mbps video.
Out of pure curiosity, is the 2nd gen Cube able to hardware decode VC-1 when running CoreELEC? I noticed that it was doing software decoding in Kodi for official Fire TV firmware.
This is a VC-1 sample (DTS-HRA5.1_VC1-23.976.mkv) from the Kodi samples page, and it looks like hardware decoding in CE
Wow so then is Amazon just arbitrarily blocking support for that in their official firmware?
I’m not sure that I ever tried VC-1 videos in FireOS. I just ran the same demo in Kodi in FireOS, and I also see software decoding. In Jellyfin and Plex apps it was transcoded.
Maybe Amazon overlooked the codec, I don’t know why they would actively block it unless there is a licensing fee?
EDIT: I tried the video in Kodi on ATV11 with an s905x4 box. It shows (S) and (HW), I’m not sure what that means. The video playback is sort of jerky. Plex says it’s direct playing, but it’s not smooth there either. Makes me wonder if it’s being software decoded in ATV11 too.
Added updated kernel.img (w/ embedded cube dtb) for CE-NG 21.0 release.
There’s also a kernel.img (w/ embedded cube dtb) for CE-NG 20.5 nightly 2024-03-29 here.
Both include the more recent DV fixes like TV-led DV & CMV2.9 and CMV4.0, and various DV tweaks mentioned in this thread.
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