Android Surface Rendering

[garenic 0]

From the Kodi site regarding verision 16 Jarvis

Some newer devices that can do UHD or 4K playback lack the power to also create the Kodi interface at a 4K resolution, and this creates a problem. We have been forced either to downscale the video to a lower resolution to make sure the interface was snappy, or show full size video but the device might not be able handle the high resolution interface. We’ve now altered the way we display Kodi on Android. The video is always displayed on one Android surface while the UI is displayed on a second Android surface. This allows Kodi to display its skin at its native resolution (typically 720p), while simultaneously displaying 4K video on the same screen.

It is important to mention is that this doesn’t apply to AMLogic devices with proper permissions as these will still use amcodec. Any other Android device that is not able to do “android surface rendering” has not implemented the standard Android MediaCodec API in the proper way and will need to be upgraded on the Android-side to support the new feature.

Is this going to be addressed for our units?

[Justin 206]

From the Kodi site regarding verision 16 Jarvis

Some newer devices that can do UHD or 4K playback lack the power to also create the Kodi interface at a 4K resolution, and this creates a problem. We have been forced either to downscale the video to a lower resolution to make sure the interface was snappy, or show full size video but the device might not be able handle the high resolution interface. We’ve now altered the way we display Kodi on Android. The video is always displayed on one Android surface while the UI is displayed on a second Android surface. This allows Kodi to display its skin at its native resolution (typically 720p), while simultaneously displaying 4K video on the same screen.

It is important to mention is that this doesn’t apply to AMLogic devices with proper permissions as these will still use amcodec. Any other Android device that is not able to do “android surface rendering” has not implemented the standard Android MediaCodec API in the proper way and will need to be upgraded on the Android-side to support the new feature.

Is this going to be addressed for our units?

We plan to try and get the proper support for this on our own.

Since AMlogic has been unresponsive on this topic when we asked them, and same goes from other vendors of Amlogic.