LibreELEC 10.0 | Hacker News Reader

LibreELEC 10.0

libreelec.tv

112 pointsLeoPanthera59 comments

This link is not great for people unfamiliar with the project. I went to the Wiki link in the menu to figure out what this is.

LibreELEC is just enough (Linux-based) OS to run Kodi. Kodi is entertainment center software.

Maybe they don't want tire-kickers, but the whole website feels like "If you have to ask, you don't belong here, move along!".

The blog post doesn't mention what it is, the home page doesn't mention what it is, the about page hints at what it does, but only says it's for something called "Kodi" but doesn't say what THAT is.

Good way to create a sense of mystery though!

TBH, I think they're just ~nerds~ technical people who focus a lot on their product and don't have the resources and skills to build an attractive, inviting website. The product itself is great, though!

A single sentence would certainly help to give a broad idea about what 'kodi' is.

I think the three comments in this thread leading to my reply have it wrong.

I see the top comment as being clear. I see the next three comments complaining about the website. What exactly is wrong with it? It's very clear to me. Perhaps you three should learn more about how to use the internet instead of expecting websites to spoon-feed you everything that you don't know. Websites can't, and shouldn't be expected, to know what you don't know.

I opened the posted link [0]. It's clearly a blog. What's it about? It's about LibreELEC. There's a LibreELEC logo in the top left.

Click that and it [1] clearly says "Just enough OS for KODI". What is KODI, I wonder? Double-click the word, right-click, search with your favorite search engine. The first result is the homepage for KODI [2] which clearly says it's open source home theatre software.

There's no frills. There's no javashit. This website clearly and plainly works. I like it.

[0]: http://libreelec.tv/2021/08/26/libreelec-matrix-10-0/

[1]: http://libreelec.tv/

[2]: https://kodi.tv/

I’m a long-ish time user of LibreELEC and holy crap! That blog post is like “there be dragons here, there and everywhere”.

I’ve recently moved on from LE on RPi to OSMC on some British media centre hardware that I forget the name now. The main reason was because some (all?) of the x265 stuff I downl^H^H^H^H^Hacquired wouldn’t play properly.

blame rpi, not LE.

i mean, what did you expect when you bought literally the least capable hardware possible for a set top box, really?

That Broadcom CPU was literally designed as a Set Top Box CPU, at least for Pi 1 and 2. That's why the GPU is in control of the CPU.

I've had no trouble with x265 on a Pi4 via LibreELEC, either things I've encoded myself or obtained elsewhere.

The Pi3 could playback 720p x265 fine, and sometimes 1080p OK but far from always (and it would get fairly warm trying, hitting the thermal throttle after a while in summer months).

It comes down to what hardware acceleration is supported and/or how beefy the CPU is otherwise, either your media centre supports 265 in hardware like the Pi4 or it is just has a chunkier set of CPU cores so can cope decoding such content in software (in the latter case, it will be drawing a chunk more power and generating more heat to do so).

I've not tried anything over 1080p on the 4, but IIRC it should be able to do 4K x265. For the size of my TV and how far I usually sit from it, I don't have eyes better than 1080!

The RPi4 can do 4K x265, it’s the reason I have one, and the only thing I use it for (with LibreELEC too, as it happens)

Same here. Don't use a client server method for LibreElec or you'll find audio and video stutters a lot, completely unseabke. Instead have the RPI4 running LibreElec access the shares directly instead and you're off to the races. Exclent performance in 4K.

> Maybe they don't want tire-kickers

Could well be at this time. My LibreELEC running Pi4 recently updated itself to 9.2.8, and isn't showing 10 as an update yet. Perhaps this is considered a gamma testing period.

As the linked page explains there will never be an automatic update from 9 to 10, they are too different. You have to do it manually.

If you don't know about Kodi, there will be a steep learning curve to learn either it or LibreELEC in every case.

reminds me of the old apache project sites where they would tell you the latest version, changelog and how to download from a mirror site but somehow not tell you what the project even is.

It was a tribute things like this as by programmers for programmers. And that programmers have little empathy for normal people - I’m a programmer.

It's Linux distribution, not Linux-based.

Even their main page is confusingly unspecific.

Why would you click "Wiki" when there is a perfectly descriptive "About" link a few pixels over?

I really like Kodi in terms of what options are currently available, but I find it to be quite bloated and the configuration to be a nightmare if you want to manage it independently of the app. I'd love to see some new competitors in this arena that focus on static config management so that I can manage my config using YAML/TOML manually rather than having to configure everything through the app. Also, setting up multiple users or syncing Kodi configs is still 2nd class.

> so that I can manage my config using YAML/TOML manually

How is that any better than XML? https://kodi.wiki/view/Advancedsettings.xml#guisettings.xml_...

TOML/YAML is significantly better than XML, hence why almost every modern app uses YAML for configs. Kodi's settings are scattered across multiple XML files and you have to manage each one independently rather than just pointing it to the server, it is just annoying to setup.

It shouldn't be too difficult to implement a YAML based config as an alternative. I will look into this.

> TOML/YAML is significantly better than XML, hence why almost every modern app uses YAML for configs.

Personally I find YAML to have a false sense of cleanliness. Sure it looks a lot "more readable" than XML until you mess up the syntax/indentation and end up with dictionary keys a level up/down from where you intended. The list-of-dicts syntax is particularly gross to me, e.g.

  models:
   - model: "a"
     type: "x"
   - model: "b"
     type: "y"

I've never liked Kodi's performance and stability, don't like the UI (skins don't help, it works the same regardless and most of the unofficial skins are half-broken anyway) and I hate how it's configured—those last two are intertwined, because I don't like how config is scattered all over and mixed in with using the thing, on a TV interface (another matter on a web or desktop interface—that would be fine). Haven't gotten used to or comfortable with it in years and years of using it.

Finally switched to Jellyfin with its accompanying Roku app (and the web interface, in a pinch). Much happier with that. Jellyfin in docker on my fileserver, map the drives there, start it up with auto-restart (which will also start it on boot) and forget about it. Configure and watch some on the web, but mostly just watch from the couch on a Roku. Much better UI, despite being far from perfect. Snappier and less fragile, even in its web interface. Media source management's less crazy-making.

I don't really use live TV, streaming (the plugins I usually wanted to use on Kodi were usually broken or too janky to use, anyway), or radio, on Kodi, though. Or the games features—I use Lakka instead, which I like much better UI-wise. I don't think Jellyfin can replace those features, if you use them.

Kodi's Achilles heel is their choice to implement in Python. I've gotten used to the interface though it gets slower with every release.

Really? Kodi doesn't really do a lot, so it seems like it shouldn't be really be impacted by language choice like that.

Not really. Kodi is written in C++, it includes a python interpreter so add ons can be written in Python.

Kodi core is actually C++. Its plugins are written in Python.

I believe its slow because theres a lot of legacy code in there since the Xbmc days which, had they had the resources, would probably have been rewritten.

I once investigated if it was possible to host .NET (Core) in Kodi, however, at the time it was not really well documented (or maybe even possible) to write native add-ons. That meant you would need to interface with a native library that would be the .NET host from Python, and that would be pain.

I haven’t used standalone Kodi, but with LibreELEC, I don’t share this experience. It runs really nicely on my Raspi 3, and I can control it via my TV‘s remote. It pretty much feels like it’s running on the TV itself instead of the (not so) smart built-in features. The UI is a bit slow at times, but definitely not annoyingly so. The default configuration is quite good and usable, and I didn’t feel the need to change much.

Same and I'm running on a Pi2. It's been running flawlessly for 5-6 years at this point. I always cringe whenever I see just how unbelievably and unbearably slow some built in TV "smart" stuff is. It's especially unbelievable because my setup cost around £30 to "upgrade" my dumb TV (in fact, the Pi was just lying around surplus to requirement so basically free).

I have tried Plex and currently have Jellyfin set up. Plex I removed immediately due to "cloud" login (yes I know you can disable it, I did by removing it). Jellyfin is useful but I still find myself using Kodi directly as it just works.

I set up Kodi on a Pi about 9 years ago and more recently switched to a Le Potato (same SoC as the Kindle Fire). With a powered USB hub, a USB DVB-T receiver and a DVD reader, it's basically the same functionality as a smart TV and a DVD player (including streaming services since there's WideVine support). Before it was using OSMC, now LibreELEC.

It's super cheap, it's secure because it doesn't have any useless cloud services, and it can also play retro games on emulators (not using Kodi's gaming support though, it's very immature). Maintenance is zero except when I decide to do an upgrade, which is once every 3 years or so.

I don't even mind the cloud login. What killed Plex for me was the fact that it needs to re-encode the video on the fly if I turn on subtitles, and my poor computer couldn't keep up.

I switched to Kodi and it's been working great so far.

PlexKodiConnect is excellent if you want to share a library with other Kodi clients, and not mess around with a shared database. I'm glad I switch over to it.

Weird plex doesn't do that for me. I run plex on a rpi3b and everything plays (without encoding of course) at 4k with no issues. I use firestick as client.

I ended up writing some scripts that automate the set up of kodi. Periodically my Android TV gives out so I have to reset it (it's an old TV). Having automated the set up of kodi has allowed me to get back up and running in minutes.

Do you mind sharing that?

I've just stripped it down a bit and created a gist[0]. There is still some manual steps, such as logging in to services (e.g. I use Trakt to manage watched movies/shows), but usually that's the only thing I have to do.

[0] https://gist.github.com/dandidums/a9c92f77f6ef940ec727395b45...

I used to like Kodi, back when Exodus was in its heyday and before everyone had a streaming platform so I was just pirating left and right. Now I find that my Kodi box spends 99% of its time launching Chrome.

I started using Kodi on a modded Xbox when it was XBMC.

Recently got an odroid N2+ and put CoreElec with Kodi on it and I'm very impressed. On the hardware, it runs very smooth. Configuration is a mess, but overall it's come a long way and I'm very happy with it. Once configured, I leave it alone.

I used to run OpenELEC on a 1th gen Apple TV back in the day. Good times.

EDIT: And my jailbroken iPod Touch was the remote!

Sucks the Pi3 is not supported. "current development is focused on RPi 4"... Yeah, the Pi3 is only like the most widely used embedded system on the planet and Pi4's are still incredibly hard to find. I would have focused on the 3 first. :/

It is supported, it's just not finished yet. Dev builds are available, or you can just keep running 9.2, which still works fine.

I don't think Pi3 had HEVC decoding, which makes it kinda suck vs. a Pi4, as a video-playing device. May as well use a 2, at that point. They'll both struggle with anything over SD-resolution in h.265.

I play 1080p and 720p H.265 all the time without issue on my 3 B+. It's just barely fast enough.

Huh, I stand corrected. The 2 was so bad at it that I didn't figure the spec bump on 3 would be enough to manage more than maybe tolerable 720p.

I play FullHD on my Pi 2B v. 1.2 (not 1.1) and it works very well, only with H.264, not 265 (but I don't really need it at the moment and don’t see it as something you really need, if don’t need 4K).

Pi2 has hardware h.264 decoding. I know about the h.265 thing because of my own effort at using one as a Kodi box, which hit a wall when several videos were unwatchable (turned out, because they were h.265).

> but I don't really need it at the moment and don’t see it as something you really need, if don’t need 4K

h.265 provides identical quality at smaller file size—much, much smaller file size, for some content (animation) but it's still a fair improvement for most other cases.

I've played HD content on a RPi 3 for a few years without any issues. In fact I think it was running an earlier version of OpenELEC (not sure when they changed their name to LibreELEC -- or maybe that's a new project with the same goals?)

I'm pretty sure I've used a RPi 2 for HD content too but that did suck. The UI was a little laggy and I had to manually set NFS mounts because even SMB caused too much overhead. Once the stream started it played most content ok but god help you if you needed to fast forward or rewind.

> In fact I think it was running an earlier version of OpenELEC (not sure when they changed their name to LibreELEC -- or maybe that's a new project with the same goals?)

My exact question too. Anybody care to help us out?

They did not change names; LibreELEC was forked from OpenELEC over internal disputes in 2016 or so. Both projects live on independently.

OpenELEC’s last release was in 2017, it was a hard fork :).

A succesful one, i'd say.

LibreELEC is a fork IIRC.

My RPi 3B+ turned out to be fast enough to decode most any 1080p H.265 content in unaccelerated software on LE 9.2 without problems. Sure, at high bitrates you'll see more than 300% CPU consumed - but that's when having four cores in that tiny thing actually pays off for real :)

I found that too but being able to decode it 95% of the time was not useful because you have to redownload in another format if it turns out your RPI3 can't play a specific file.

I just avoided HEVC but I ultimately stopped using an RP3 as a TV because of audio timing issues that became apparent with Dolby Atmos. I now use a Odroid N2+, which I recommend.

pi4 doesn't have vc-1 (or mpeg-2, but mpeg-2 is doable on the cpu). the Pi4 struggles with vc-1 bluray images. In practice, it should have enough cpu to handle vc-1, except for the fact that ffmpeg doesn't have a threaded decoder for vc-1 (long standing missing feature in ffmpeg, but no one with enough experience

Does it support HDR on Linux?

For certain boards, they are doing device specific tricks to make this work at the moment. E.g. Pi 4 is supported.

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