HDMI for Channels

sheepy · November 20, 2023, 8:28pm

I rec'd a LinkPi V3 over the weekend. In my early h264 testing, it does seem to have quite good processing. Text crawls on the bottom of the screen have been nearly perfect. And, in all seriousness much, much better than any of the previous encoders I've played with. Including the URay 4K encoder. Which started off great, but it has developed a regular stutter, no matter what settings I try. Every 3-4 seconds there is a hard stutter, which makes things unwatchable. I guess that one will get returned.

One item to note on the LInkPI, my early testing was with an ONN box, plugged into the encoder with a separate HDMI cable, went well. When I tried my Chromecast (which has a built in HDMI cable) the encoder bounced between seeing a signal and no signal. So, will have to troubleshoot more, but odd that it doesn't like the Chromecast HDMI connector???

mnwxman132 · November 20, 2023, 8:28pm

Im getting the unit this week. Ill let ya know

spammedeeper · November 20, 2023, 8:43pm

Just to clarify, did you get the stutter on your URay or the LinkPi? The only time I saw a stutter on my LinkPi is while I did a reboot during a stream. Took a minute to buffer. Overall, the performance of my LinkPi has been really nice.

I have not tried my Chromecast on the LinkPi yet. I ordered a second ENC1V3 to play due to that Black Friday sale. Hoping to get some deep dive testing done over the Thanksgiving Holiday.

mnwxman132 · November 20, 2023, 10:09pm

Wow glad i snagged one this morning lol

krazijoe · November 20, 2023, 10:14pm

0 reviews, not even an add to cart, just a blank page...Good luck!!!

spammedeeper · November 20, 2023, 10:29pm

The V3 was only released in August, just recently hit Amazon.. No reviews yet. WayPonDev just resells the device made by a company called YouYeeToo. I have one of the YouYeeToo devices and it works well enough. The inventory for WayPonDev was depleted when they went on sale this morning for $103.99.

sheepy · November 21, 2023, 1:09am

The stutter is on the URay 4K. The LinkPi has been great. Tonight I tried the Chromecast into the LinkPi again, and it's been solid. Not sure what was going on previously, when it would not see a signal?

spammedeeper · November 21, 2023, 5:46am

Been reading about the LinkPi. Found it supports UVC for Webcam connection. Made me wonder, what if I was to plug in a cheap $20 USB to HDMI capture device? Would I get a second stream on the same box?

Yup.

Very early in tests. Limit of USB 2.0 and whatever form of drivers LinkPi added for UVC. Would be happy with 720@60 as YUV instead of MJPEG. But my test worked, and I had two streams, without a major impact to encoder performance (RAM/CPU about 35%).

I will have more time to test this weekend.

hancox · November 21, 2023, 1:10pm

Excellent find!!!

Mind posting the USB-HDMI example, for those searching for rigs?

I'm loving my choice of the LinkPi so far.

spammedeeper · November 21, 2023, 7:29pm

Here is the device I'm testing with:

https://www.amazon.com/Newhope-Capture-Streaming-Teaching-Conference/dp/B0C2CJPV8D/

I'm so early in testing, I'm not recommending the above device other than to say it does work. The primary reason for selecting the device above was "okay, I'll try that one" as I wanted to prove concept. If you pay attention, there are many clones to the one linked above. They all look the same and are priced as low as $16.

I plan to order and test a few more USB capture devices. My goals are:

Device that is under $40. Any more and I would save for another LinkPi.
Device is compatible with UVC driver in LinkPi, trial and error.
Best quality around limit of the USB 2.0 ports: Can output YUYV/YUY2 instead of MJPEG, if possible, on res of 720@60.
Is reliable for 24/7 operation.
Is not impacted by HDCP challenges.

I will let you all know what I find.

chasut · November 21, 2023, 11:18pm

After watching this thread for a while now, I finally decided to jump in on the fun with the LinkPi V3. I am going way off the beaten path though as I have a box full of old ATV4Ks and subscribe to Spectrum. CC4C is working great for me, but the file format is kind of goofy, so thought I would try this out.

I have the LinkPi up and running pushing the ATV output to CDVR. Video looks very good, although I haven't done much in terms of testing to determine optimal settings. I did find that the "main" profile is superior to the default "high" profile, and increased the bitrate for both audio and video.

I am using Home Assistant to control the ATV. It supports deep links to the Spectrum app as well as the ability to emulate the remote when necessary. Tunes very fast.

Next step is to customize the androidhdmi-for-channels scripts to use the rest calls to HA for tuning. It works great from the command line, so I feel like this should go relatively quickly for the first test versus.

Nice thing is that the HA services provide feedback and status on the ATV, so I think I should be able to add some additional control and error handling. Although go makes my head hurt. In the long run, the underlying ATV control is in Python so I might be able to take HA out of the loop.

Any inputs on best settings for the LinkPi?

Really wish it could just pass through the audio!

themediaguy · November 22, 2023, 1:25am

This is sick! What is the deep link for the Spectrum app? I have HA and working just was curious about this setup never thought of this.

chasut · November 22, 2023, 1:50am

Here is the link for USA: spectrumTV://watch.spectrum.net/livetv/58452?linkorigin=sirilivetunein&idtype=tms

mnwxman132 · November 22, 2023, 5:54am

Wow. Too bad i cant get homekit to control a spare iphone i have lying around. May have to pick up a used apple tv now. This looks very iteresting for my use case.

tmm1 · November 22, 2023, 6:03am

@turtletank do you think this is in scope for ADBTuner or do we need to fork off an ATVTuner

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/apple_tv/#media-player

https://pyatv.dev/development/apps/#app-deep-links

Jim_FL · November 22, 2023, 2:11pm

Quick update on LinkPi. Blacks are a little gray compared to JTech. However the JTech will only reach 1080 at 50FPS. At 720 60FPS is perfect. LinkPi drops a frame every few minutes but is nearly perfect. JTech never drops frames. Running GOP at 2 seconds on LinkPi. Will send an email to LinkPi support today.

chasut · November 22, 2023, 11:22pm

Woohoo, I am up and running. Works great. My modified version of HDMI-for-channels running on my M1 Mac mini that hosts CDVR. ~2-3 second tune time right now, I think I can do better but that is more than acceptable. Now just need to go map all of the other channels.

The picture I am getting is very good. It is far better than the CC4C method. Tested on sports, shows, and movies. I did not have issues with blacks, but the deep ones do get crushed a bit. Probably not a great way to watch the Dark Night. But they are certainly at least on par with anything I have seen through TVE. I have not experienced any dropped frames, but then again not really detailed testing yet.

My current settings on the LinkPi below for reference. Note the GOP dropped to 1 from the default of 2. doing A/B testing is hard, but I think it did help with sports. No issue on CPU load.

spammedeeper · November 22, 2023, 11:46pm

Awesome! If you are on local LAN, I would try upping the bit rate on your encode. I started at 20mbit for testing and it worked great. I then dropped down to 8mbit, and where the picture was fine, but I liked the look of higher rate.

EDIT: The original inventory of LinkPi ENC1-V3 went quick for $103.99. They have been out of stock since Monday, but are now showing (for me) ability to back order at Black Friday sale price.

https://www.amazon.com/WayPonDEV-ENC1-V3-NDI-HDMI-Encoder/dp/B0CDLHX36Z

Jim_FL · November 23, 2023, 2:58pm

LinkPi ENC1-V3 update. Turning on NTSC compatible seems to have resolved the muddy blacks. Running 1080P 60FPS 12000KBPS (12M) GOP 1 Sec-- CBR. Got a note back from their support advising this. One of my encoders was failing at about 3 or minutes into a stream. Bad box. Have a new one coming next week. FYI, 720P 60FPS looks as good as TVE. With the exception of the failing box, all is good. Running ADBTuner.

mnwxman132 · November 23, 2023, 3:23pm

Im curious about your config. I just purchased the Link Pi.
I dont have a silicon mac mini, but have considered taking the plunge.

Im curious if you have tried running any of the “walled garden” cable provider apps for ios or ipados on the m1 mac mini , and then piping the hdmi output from the mac mini into the link Pi, and then of course piping the network stream back into channels - as opposed to using a web browser on the mini to tune the individual channels.

Or are you using ADBtuner with a separate android device and tuning that way