Pretty much to answer my own questions from another thread... but as new topic just in case there are others still on older firmware and wondering if to upgrade. For several reasons I can't use the himedia player, and rely on passthrough to work out of kodi. I would also like to have something newer than a buggy release candidate kodi 15.
And so, to answer my own questions about 1.1.7 on H8 octacore.
- 1.1.7 still has occasional audio dropouts that appeared as of 1.1.3 (over passthrough) for both himedia player and in kodi (for me at least).
- no...himedia does not build their firmware with the rkmc patches applied, so ... no, you can't get a kodi 16 with rockchip support that would also give you functional passthrough (would it really kill them to ensure they have latest from rockchip and apply rkmc patches?).
- Seems that once you install 1.1.7, you can't go back to the last no-audio-dropout version 1.1.2... trying to upgrade i get a wrong header message on the futeko 1.1.2 firmware zip; even after successfully downgrading to an official 1.1.3 first from which i used to be able to downgrade to the 1.1.2 build (no idea what they could have changed); bummer, this box just became more useless..
- 1.1.7 still has the old kodi 15RC included (too much to ask to get 16.1, eh?. Zidoo did it a llooooonngg time ago... )
- Running an official 16.x kodi gives you working passthrough, but there is consistent audio drop out every 5/6 seconds, and you loose rk acceleration.
- Running offical kodi 17 gives me no passthrough at all, and with it enabled i get no video on screen. With passthrough disabled i get video...but without any of the rockchip hardware support, the video performance is just terrible!!!
Looks like the best Kodi you can get and still get passthrough working is to use the 15.2 release, extracted from the zidoo builds. From 1.0.0.23 (i think) you can get a copy that works well video wise, but i personally had problems with plugins not updating correctly. Once i installed all dependencies manually, worked quite well for what i needed. There is also an updated kodi 15.2 in zidoo firmware 1.0.0.27 which doesn't seem to have any plugin problems, but they had done some improvements for rockchip for their box that seems to create issues on the H8 (audio but blank screen sometimes on start, sometimes after pause). After .27 they moved onto kodi 16, which was... i think in jan 2016.
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