HDMI on ODROID-N2 seems to be dead

Single Board Computers Odroid N2/N2Plus/C4/C5
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Hello. When I boot, I see this in my dmesg, among the hundreds of lines of output, and see no obvious errors:

CoreELEC dt-id: g12b_s922x_odroid_n2
Machine model: Hardkernel ODROID-N2
Memory: 3145560K/3891200K available (13182K kernel code, 2074K rwdata, 7964K rodata, 5056K init, 1428K bss, 135336K reserved, 610304K cma-reserved)

This system has worked like a charm for years, and I only use it to host my Kodi living room installation.

As of some weeks ago, the HDMI port was able to produce video output, but the sound was gone. All I could hear was some soft scratching noises. Then I went off on a trip.

Today I tried using Kodi, and all I get is a white screen (and no sound still). The ODroid box is up and running, and I can ssh into it – this is how I checked the dmesg output.

Can anybody provide any hints? Is this some well-known issue? Should I upgrade something? Is it toast?

Thanks in advance for any help. Cheers,

Gonzo

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Not very strongly protected interface. I had one die on me when the plug on the TV was put under pressure. Very likely irrecoverable. I use mine as a headless Homeassistant server now.

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Yeah…I think its time for a new device…

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Definately the weak points in these devices.

Same for the usb3 hub. I have to use the usb2 OTG on some to keep devices from interfering with each other. Other than that I think they are really nice

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Thank you everyone for the answers, unwelcome as they are :frowning:

What is a current, up to date suggestion for a new replacement box that is similar to this one? All I do is run Kodi on it, showing movies and shows from my NAS. No TV, (almost) no streaming.

Cheers everyone.

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I think getting another one of those devices wouldn’t be a bad idea. Other than that, you can get the device I have ATM the HK1 RBOX R1 (or any of their clones) 4GB RAM 64 GB HDD. Just replace the dodgy android firmware with CE on the emmc and you should be fine

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Still N2+ for me. But I don’t need any of the fel/dv stuff otherwise I would probably grab any s922 chipset with a ‘j’ in it.

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Well

Maybe look at the Odroid C5 ,latest amlogic S905X5M, it is supported.

Or for a TV Box the X96X10 PRO S928X-J ,Excellent Box

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I would be inclined to stick with a N2+. I got my last ones from a German reseller for about half price -they probably were part of a crypto farm but they have been running faultlessly for over a year at this stage.
The alternative to consider is to go for a N100 based mini-pc. Intel are now generally capable of everything you need in a media-player, are economical to run, and because they run a mainline Linux kernel they are generally more stable in use. You can run Libreelec instead of Coreelec for a roughly comparable user experience.

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Quick update, to bring closure to this topic. It was not the ODROID, it was the receiver. I managed to test everything a bit more systematically, and my Kodi box is still working like a charm!

Bad news is, now I have to fix / replace the receiver. Perhaps I will just exchange it for a soundbar. Which will be quite the conceptual jump for me, because right now I have some seven devices plugged into the receiver (most of them through HDMI), and a single HDMI cable from the receiver to the TV, but it seems this is not the way it is done with soundbars, where you are supposed to just plug everything directly into the TV, and use ARC / eARC to send the sound from the TV to the receiver? Still learning this stuff…

Thanks to everyone who chimed in.

2 Likes
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Thanks for the update.
I think you’d much rather have the HDMI port of the n2 broken :-/
Coincidentally, looking for an alternative for my audio setup myself (currently a budget soundbar using eARC).
Good luck finding a nice alternative …

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Try one of these

All my music and video are piped through one of these from my N2+ Kodi box.

1 Like
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