On 05/07/2019 10:43, James Harris wrote:
> On 05/07/2019 10:20, A. Dumas wrote:
>> James Harris  wrote:
>>> On 03/07/2019 17:27, Pancho wrote:
>>>> Hi I've just tried using a Pi 4 4GB under Raspbian. The answer is that
>>>> whilst it is undoubtedly very impressive it isn't good enough for a
>>>> general purpose desktop.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> The good:
>>>>
>>>> * Chromium browsing not featuring video was good. Perhaps a bit slow
>>>> but
>>>> not annoyingly so.
>>>> * vlc could play x264 video perfectly at 1080p, at about 5% cpu.
>>>> * Generally apps/windows opened at an OK speed.
>>>>
>>>> The bad:
>>>>
>>>> * vlc was poor at playing x265 at 1080p, jerky, 50% cpu and about 30%
>>>> dropped frames.
>>>> * Youtube video was awful, slow, jerky. As were other, popular, free
>>>> video Streaming sites.
>>>> * Amazon Video wouldn't play at all due to chromium not being a
>>>> supported browser.
>>>> * LibreOffice Calc gave painfully slow scrolling, on a sheet with 365
>>>> rows and 26 columns.
>
> ...
>
>>> Thanks for the above info. I wanted to move to a 4k desktop when I saw
>>> the RPi4 announcement. For various reasons I will look into the idea of
>>> mini-itx that Martin mentioned but will maybe come back to the RPi4 for
>>> an HTPC front end to a MythTV system - at least at up to 1080p.
>>
>> For lack of vp9 hardware decoding, I fear the Pi4 will never be good for
>> Youtube 4k videos. And it's a real shame they couldn't squeeze h.264
>> hardware decoding in, so no higher than 1080p for that either. And while
>> the cpu is capable enough to decode that, it will require active
>> cooling, I
>> guess.
>>
>
> When you mentioned that YouTube and other videos were jerky was that
> just the 4k ones, such that lower resolutions were OK?
>

All Youtube videos were jerky, even 720p.

For clarity the Pi 4 is supposed to have hardware support for:

HEVC decode to 4K@60 (with HDR) (HEVC=x265)
H.264 decode to 1080p@60.

VLC is clearly already using H.264 hardware decode at 1080. I guess HEVC
hardware decode will come with time. I haven't seen any mention of vp9
and of course av1 is a potential in the near future.

The main problem is that Chromium isn't using gpu support.

I could show the output of typing chrome://gpu into chromium, if anyone
is interested.

Generally, I'm very sceptical of the need for 4k video.

I can understand someone wanting a 4k monitor. I've used a 30 inch
2560x1600 monitor for years and it is better than 1900*1080. I guess
sitting 50cm from a 40 inch monitor at 4k would make a difference but I
can't see that it would make a difference at TV distances. Anyway, if I
was going to do that I would use something better than a Pi 4.

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