More Examples of LinkPi ENC1 with Chromecast which pointed me toward Color Format being the likely cause of washed out color and black levels. The difference is quite noticeable when you view the picture on the forum and arrow advanced between screen shots.
RGB
YCbCr 4:4:4
YCbCr up to 12 bit on a Firestick was great! Amazing difference. Watched football just as a test....couldn't tell any visual differneces between OTA and ADBTuner.
That is great to hear. Looking back, my time with LinkPi has been with the DirecTV boxes. Their default setting for SDR must be LinkPi friendly.
Could someone explain to me what the benefits of a LinkPi over any other HDMI encoder?
I see some people are quiet excited about them and don’t wanna miss out if there is some benefit I’m missing 
My setup is using tmm1’s code (not the community altered) and changing via IR terminal commands - incase that effect use any use case.
I realize I may be cluttering the HDMI for Channels post, so I'm going to create a new one to share LinkPi Encoder talks.
Framing all the details into an original post dedicated to LinkPi is taking some time, so I will give you some quick answers.
I stumbled upon LinkPi systems after spending (too much) time reading about HDMI encoders. Of the options on the market, almost all share similar hardware and firmware. They are based around a Hikvision framework which started in 2016/2017 as a solution for security camera DVRs. The LinkPi devices have a custom interface, regular updates and root access to Linux, but were based around the same Hikvision platform as the other encoders. Performance was about the same.
In late Summer 2023, LinkPi added major platform revision. The spec bump made it interesting enough for me to try one. I ordered the updated ENC1 V3 in early November. I liked it so much I ordered a five port ENC5 V2 and have been using both for a few weeks.
For the price they are fantastic. The ENC1 V3 was on sale Black Friday for $104 on Amazon. Many in this thread jumped in an ordered one and we have been comparing notes ever since. My posts today were to help resolve a color space challenge some were getting with their ENC1 devices.
The only reservation I have is one of long term reliability. I don't know. Don't get me wrong, they seem well built and I don't plan to return any of my purchases. If you are one that is comforted by warranty and established brands, LinkPi may feel risky.
At the current $125-ish price for an ENC1 V3 on Amazon, I recommend people pick one up to play with. With NAND market expected to skyrocket next year, I can only image many of these devices to get more expensive in the next few months.
Source?
Been watching trends and keeping up with the deal chats on Reddit. Some links for reference:
I’m not saying anyone should panic buy SSDs or memory, but if you are looking to buy soon, pricing right now is still near the bottom. Next year increases probably won’t hurt so much on 1TB NVMe drives, but if you want to say upgrade your PS5 with a big, quality 4TB drive, sooner is better.
I will be keeping an eye on used, high endurance enterprise flash on eBay. The recent low price on new, consumer retail drives pushed them down to excellent pricing. One of my servers, dedicated to Channels, is built around NVMe, including recordings. Overkill? Yeah, but latency is amazing.
New LinkPi firmware: 20231229
Classic version: Fixed the problem that when switching the layout of the specified input source, there is a probability that the input source switch is invalid.
Standard Edition: Fixed the page loading abnormality problem caused by the integrated communication page not being bound to the broadcasting software.
Standard Edition: Fixed the problem that after setting LPH, the setting becomes invalid after switching versions.
Standard version: Added one-click hdmi output function to the decoding setting page
Remove redundant return values from LPH setting watermark interface
Network management function optimization
Can confirm as well. Video washed and rinsed, now have deep blacks. Excellent find!
I’ve been able to use this with some success, but my Firestick keeps losing the ABD connection. Sometimes it will go a week or so, and then sometimes drop every few hours. If I reboot, everything a good. I’ve searched everywhere and can’t seem to figure out why this happens. Any suggestions?
You are probably using wireless .. and what generation is your FireStick ?
I am using wireless, and I tried wired, but was never able to get a wired connection using the Amazon dongle. It would only go to WiFi. I just purchased it about a month ago and it’s Android 11, latest 4k Firestick. Sorry if that not the info you requested., I’ve only used ATV’s before and not that familiar. Do you think wireless is the issue?
Make sure you have the FireTV stick never to sleep/disable screensaver ... Make sure Still watching is turned off.
@bnhf @KompilerDJ I've enjoyed AH4C so much I wanted to give back. I've tailored the tune scripts to use Osprey DirecTV streamers. How can I share them with you?
If you PM them to me, I can post them on the sullrich/ah4c repo in the correct spot. Once I'm back in the US (a couple of weeks yet), I'll push a new container to Docker Hub that'll include them. Alternatively, if you're familiar with the PR process on GitHub, you can submit them that way.
Pull Request made on GitHub. The only changes are my scripts added to location scripts/osprey/directv. My AH4C fork is here if anyone wants to see the scripts before commit. These scripts are intended for AT&T Osprey models C71KW-200/C71KW-400.
Thanks for the awesome work!
Thanks for the contribution! It has been merged.
OK, so for those of you using the ah4c project with DirecTV or DTVStream, an app update started rolling out several weeks ago -- though my sticks only got it yesterday. Thanks to @gfhartzell for letting me know of its existence.
I've made some preliminary changes to scripts/firetv/directv/bmitune.sh to support the new app version. I'll push a container update soon, after I've done additional testing.
However, for anyone that wants in on the fun now -- there's only one function tuneChannel() that appears to need modification, and here it is:
#Tuning is based on channel name values from $m3uName.
tuneChannel() {
channelName=$(awk -F, '/channel-id='"$channelID"'/ {print $2}' m3u/$m3uName)
channelName=$(echo $channelName | sed 's/^/"/;s/$/"/')
numberOfBackspaces=25
clearSearchBackspaces=$(for ((i=0; i<$numberOfBackspaces; i++)); do echo -n " KEYCODE_MEDIA_REWIND"; done)
directvMenu="input keyevent KEYCODE_MENU; sleep 6"
directvSearch="input keyevent KEYCODE_DPAD_LEFT; \
input keyevent KEYCODE_DPAD_UP; \
input keyevent KEYCODE_DPAD_CENTER; sleep 1; \
input keyevent KEYCODE_DPAD_CENTER; sleep 1"
directvClearSearch="input keyevent$clearSearchBackspaces"
directvTune="input keyevent KEYCODE_MEDIA_PLAY_PAUSE; sleep 1; \
input keyevent KEYCODE_DPAD_DOWN; \
input keyevent KEYCODE_DPAD_DOWN; \
input keyevent KEYCODE_DPAD_DOWN; \
input keyevent KEYCODE_DPAD_CENTER"
$adbTarget shell $directvMenu
$adbTarget shell $directvSearch
$adbTarget shell $directvClearSearch
$adbTarget shell input text "$channelName"
$adbTarget shell $directvTune
}
I'm only able to test with my DTV credentials, and we have seen some slight differences for those with DTVStream credentials in the past -- so if you try this out, be sure to give me feedback here, especially if you have DTVStream.
EDIT: Small change to the tuneChannel() function to make clearing the search field more easily configurable. Hard coded moves replaced with a loop.
Good news! The fix is in and eary manual tuning testing looks good with DirectvStream. I will do further testing with scheduled recordings tonight.
Thank you for the fix