2057 replies to this topic

[littlesat]

I agree....

[littlesat]

But I just also confirmed that going from 'blend' to 'on' has also strange effects.... So this is not a real solution.

[DimitarCC]

What effects except crappy rendering of the images?

[littlesat]

Look e.g. at the HBBTV icon... on a hisi box.

Edited by littlesat, 28 November 2023 - 14:43.

[DimitarCC]

Yes that is what @Huevos told you. When you change alphatest to "on" images that have alpha transparency with antialiasing will have this halo around them and you will see under them....

Thats why i am not agreeing to have that changed in the skin. Simply because that will be the effect on all boxes.

[WanWizard]

I can't really imagine a HiSilicon chip having such an issue with this, after all, it has an ARM Mali GPU, like many millions of other ARM based systems.

 

Neither Kodi nor Android exhibit the same issues when run on HiSilicon hardware, so perhaps the problem is more with the way E2 addresses the hardware (broadcom derived code instead Mali specific code)?

 

If you look in the GDI cpp code, it is BCM everywhere, and in several places there just isn't any code if not run on BCM, So instead of using hardware specific code, it is just generic painting. No wonder it is slow as shit...

[DimitarCC]

I think it work great on Vu+ because libgles is used for the blending. Seems HiSi boxes doesnt work well with that or dont work at all with it.

[DimitarCC]

 

If you look in the GDI cpp code, it is BCM everywhere, and in several places there just isn't any code if not run on BCM, So instead of using hardware specific code, it is just generic painting. No wonder it is slow as shit...

 

Event some BCM based boxes have issue with alphablending....

[littlesat]

Yes it all depends on 'drivers' and when you support so many boxes you get limitations.... brrrrr....

[DimitarCC]

Some HiSi doesnt suffer from that issues or at least not so visible. Like qviart dual 4K as reported

[DimitarCC]

So for info. I have pushed to the skin repo the latest changes. Screen paths are added in menu and all appropriate screens. As well as other screen changes

[littlesat]

Where can I find them so I can sync?

[DimitarCC]

Repo is here

 

https://github.com/D.../E2-DarkOS-skin

[WanWizard]

Event some BCM based boxes have issue with alphablending....

 

Yes, but "issues with" is different from "not supported at all".

 

The problem here, with it taking over a second to paint a simple unitform grey square png image, has imho nothing to do with alphablending issues, but with missing code to use the Mali GPU.

 

Even the FORCE_NO_BLENDING_ACCELERATION flag @Huevos mentioned earlier is a workaround used in BCM specific accelleration code, leading me to believe nobody bothered to add Mali support when the first HiSilicon SoC's were introduced, but rather hacked their way around issues with the existing BCM specific code.

[WanWizard]

Some HiSi doesnt suffer from that issues or at least not so visible. Like qviart dual 4K as reported

 

What is "that issue"? As the movie I posted was exactly from a Qviart Dual 4K.

[DimitarCC]

Interesting....I am speaking for the same issue with rendering of infobar....But it was tried on OBH with same box and it was not reported to have such a visible effect...

Maybe because of that sync/delaying code that you said there is on OE-A based images...

[DimitarCC]

 

Event some BCM based boxes have issue with alphablending....

 

Yes, but "issues with" is different from "not supported at all".

 

The problem here, with it taking over a second to paint a simple unitform grey square png image, has imho nothing to do with alphablending issues, but with missing code to use the Mali GPU.

 

Even the FORCE_NO_BLENDING_ACCELERATION flag @Huevos mentioned earlier is a workaround used in BCM specific accelleration code, leading me to believe nobody bothered to add Mali support when the first HiSilicon SoC's were introduced, but rather hacked their way around issues with the existing BCM specific code.

 

 

Possible. HiSilicon is used in E2 STB from not long time i guess....

[WanWizard]

That what I wrote, indeed.

 

OE-A has hacked some workaround in so you don't see the buildup on screen, but instead nothing happens for over a second when you press the OK button before the infobar is shown.

 

Which imho is even worse, as it happens everywhere in their UI, and it makes the image feel very sluggish even though the actual response time is the same.

 

It is the same as seeing a website load versus displaying a spinner before showing the complete page. Human perception is that the first load quicker, even though a stopwatch would disagree.

[DimitarCC]

So i've been told that for svgs is forced alphablending even if it is not enabled....so thats why it could be sluggish on problematic boxes if you have many svgs

 

But even removing them will not fix anything on HiSilicon boxes...

 

Infobar doesnt have svgs at all but still doesnt render well.

Edited by DimitarCC, 28 November 2023 - 15:33.

[WanWizard]

Possible. HiSilicon is used in E2 STB from not long time i guess....

 

Vendors switched to HiSilicon after Broadcom made a deal with content producers and refused to make chipsets for the OEM market anymore. As a manufacturer you can only get Broadcom SoCs now if you make closed source provider boxes.

 

And now the problem is that although HiSilicon designs the chipsets, they are manufacutered by TMSC in Taiwan. Which is no longer allowed to do so due to US sanctions against China ( Huawei, the parent company of HiSilicon ).

 

I know some are trying to develop new boxes using AMLogic chipsets, but these are so bad that until now not much luck.