Some questions about kodi 19, beelink and upscalers

General
#1

Hi,

I just received my new HDR capable television (Hisense U7QF) and soundbar (SAMSUNG HW-Q60T).

I have some “noob” questions:

  1. I have the soundbar connected with HDMI/ARC to the television, should I use PCM or Passthrough for audio?
  2. Should I connect my media player to the soundbar or to the television?
  3. Is the new beelink gt king pro working perfectly with CoreELEC? Any known limitations?
  4. Should I use the Kodi 19 RC release? Any major improvements for my setup?
  5. The television maybe has better upscaler than lanczos3, is there a way to always use the TV upscaler? Maybe default? I have a lot of 720P and 1080P contents, so this is very important.
  6. Should I keep the Android partition in the gt king pro to update the firmware?

Thanks!

#2
  1. Passthrough
  2. Depends on your preference. But considering that this soundbar doesn’t support any HD formats nor multichannel PCM, you can hook up the TV box to your TV, it should be able to passthrough DTS and DD out to it via ARC.
  3. Yes. No. But do you really need it? I’m sure there are better deals to be had.
  4. That’s your choice, you can always set it up on a separate SD card and go back to 9.2.5 if you really need to. But as far as I see, it’s pretty solid.
  5. Do you need Android? If yes, then keep it.
1 Like
#3

Thank you very much.

So I have to always use passthrough for audio, right? Even in the television settings?
Should I change “number of audio channels” in the kodi settings?

Which device do you advice me for perfect CoreELEC experience?
I would like to buy an odroid n2+ but it’s out of stock. Is it better than the gt king pro ?
I currently have a minix neo u1, but it doesn’t support HDR and doesn’t get amlogic-ng support.

You didn’t answer me about upscaling.
Do I need to change anything in CoreELEC to benefit from TV upscaling?
Or the lanczos3 upscaling method is better?

I don’t need Android at all but what about firmware updates? Do I have to use Android to apply them?

Thanks again for your time.

#4

I have the regular GT King (not the pro), currently running the latest stable release (9.2.5).
In all videos that I have checked, the box will do the upscaling to the configured resolution (UHD), and as far as I can tell it does a pretty good job. You can disable the upscaling by whitelisting the resolutions supported by your TV. If the video matches any of those resolutions, then it will be sent in the native resolution. (You do not need to do this for framerate, that is adjusted automatically by default).

I am not so sure if the upscaler is always software, or if it uses hardware in the Amlogic SoC.
Either way, I am pretty satisfied with the result.

The only caveat you should have in mind is that the “Noise reduction” option is enabled by default, and that may cause some juddering/ghosting during fast moving scenes in UHD (it’s not just the motion options of the TV). Disable that and the motion issues will be gone.

#5

Thanks for answering me Kodi is doing the upscaling process by default.
Now could someone tell me if what Kodi does by default is better or worse than what modern televisions do with their “AI” upscaling and image enhancements?
Do you mean I should disable the “Adjust display refresh rate” option in Kodi with CoreELEC?
The noise reduction issues are still there with new chipsets?
I had that kind of issues with S905, can you confirm me it’s still there with S905X3, S905X4 and S922X and newest kernel?

#6

Sorry for not being clear about the refresh rate. By default, CoreELEC will select the same refresh rate as in the video file, provided the TV supports that refresh rate. If not, it will select the nearest and do the usual frame interpolation techniques.

As for the upscalling, I have a pretty decent TV with a fairly “evolved” upscaler (Samsung Q80T), however I never felt the need to disable the upscale in CoreELEC (in fact, I’ve had people praise the quality believing it is the TV doing the upscaling).

I have not tried the upcoming release with Kodi Matrix. However, in the latest stable, the noise reduction is still an issue – but only with UHD files and in very specific cases with lots of motion. It is not something that you will see all the time, but few times it happens it is quite noticeable.

#7

The option that exists in 9.2.5 stable is: “Disable noise reduction” . Are you saying that this option should not be enabled ?

#8

It’s a double negative, because the option is to disable. “Disabling the disablement” translates to enabling noise reduction, the default position of the toggle is disabled therefore it actually enables noise reduction (dunno why they did it like that, but it is what it is).

Nevertheless, I am not advocating for anything. All I am saying is that if you experience motion judder/ghosting on heavy movement in UHD content, it is very likely that option is the culprit (toggling it solved my issues with the GT King).
Otherwise, unless you notice lost detail while playing back, I would leave it as it is – the default is to do noise reduction.

#9

I don’t think that you are right. The option is as stated “Disable noise reduction” and when you put the slider to “ON” (to the right) position, noise reduction is disabled. No double negative there. If you put the slider to “OFF” (to the left) position it is NOT disabled, and all your videos will have, more or less, a “Soap Opera” look. If you like that, just keep it disabled…

I personally never (NEVER) use any picture or audio enhancements since I take great care when choosing the quality of equipment I buy and then want to see and hear any content as it’s makers meant it to look/sound.

#10

Hello,

I can’t find in-stock odroid n2+, but I can get the odroid n2/4gb in my country.

  1. Are there any drawbacks compared to the n2+?
  2. Do you advice me to wait for n2+ restock?
  3. Is installing CoreELEC on eMMC makes kodi booting or GUI navigation faster than with micro-sd?
#11

Finally I bought the Beelink GT-King Pro S922X-H 4GB DDR4 64GB.
Which RAM/VARIANT should I choose?
Maybe I have to choose the Generic S922X version?

1080×1920

Thanks.

#12

That’s what I meant. ON means Disabled, OFF means enabled. I have it disable (slider is ON).
While I do agree with you that having quality equipment is key for good PQ, I’ve found quite a few instances where the source material was too compressed and with noticeable posterization – I am quite keen to using enhancements in those cases.

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