Some quirks and suggestions (and Linux filesystem support)

[lordtoran]

Hi,

I ordered the T8 Mini lately after quite a lot of research. Especially important for me was Ext4 filesystem support, as my home has been Linux-only for over 10 years. While the „bigger“ T8 boxes got an update that makes mounted Ext4 partitions visible, this turned out to not be the case with the T8 Mini All mounter apps except StickMount error out on trying to mount my 5 TB desktop harddisk (it contains all my media content). StickMount basically says everything ok and gives a mount point (/sdcard/usbStorage/sda1/) but no matter what, no contents are displayed.

My idea had been to use the box as an always-on NAS or media server, thus this otherwise fine piece of hardware it is currently of limited use for me.

OpenELEC on the other hand can see the disk but has glitches with starting playback (more on that later). At any rate, I don’t want to reboot just to watch an anime episode.

Could the FS support be addressed in a future OTA update?

Pinging @SilentlyScreaming as was recommended to me by support.

Talking about updates, I’d like to share some other things I noticed I even factory resetted the box once to verify. When „fresh“, the box sometimes soft reboots and then hangs forever at the „starting apps“ message; after switching off and on, it has to optimize all apps again. This can be fixed by a few manual reboots. Admittedly I use a third-party homescreen as a beta tester, but it also happened with the default launcher in lag/low memory situations.

As for OpenELEC, there is just a dark blue screen (although I can hear the GUI sounds when pressing keys) if I switch on the TV before the box, or if I leave the TV on while rebooting into OpenELEC from Android. Workaround: Switching the TV off and on again, or only switching it on after „boot“ is not displayed anymore on the LCD.

Then there’s that strange glitch where playback frequently starts ca. 8-9 or ca. 17 seconds into the video with some image corruption. I suppose Kodi skips the very first or the first two keyframes for whatever reason. This is not reproducible in a deterministic way but seems to happen more often with certain video files, and then most of the time. Also, playing from the USB HD (whether directly attached to the OTG port or to a powered USB hub) or the (Android formatted) SD card makes no difference at all

This currently limits my use case quite a bit.

As for general usability, I have a suggestion. The status/notification bar is disabled on the T8 Mini, so I had to install an app for heads-up notifications, a notification history and for defining a key combo to view said history. How about some kind of preinstalled notification manager? Heads-up notifications could be disabled by default, as this is a media box after all.

I have profound Linux knowledge (nothing Android specific though) so I can help out with logs, command output etc. if required. Just need to setup an SSH server

 

[ChrisM]

@hushamdroidbox is hoping to test with an EXT4 partition in the office, tagging here so obvious where to post back results.

Regarding the notification bar/action buttons at the bottom, we're hoping they'll return as an option once the chipset manufacturer releases an update. Interesting idea on the notification side of things.
Before I forget, in terms of the Recent Apps type of action button found on many Android devices, if you're using a controller with a QWERTY keyboard, and have both an ALT and TAB button, you can access it that way.

I've not come across the need to time power cycling the TV around the Mini switching OS, sounds like this may be tied into the 4K recognition issues found with some televisions. If you have the time would you mind see if it behaves this way with another TV or monitor (any, as long as different model, preferably a different make if possible)?

Re Kodi skipping the start of a video, does the same occur within DBMC (DroidBOX Media Centre)? Within Kodi, has a Wizard been used? If so, could be worth clearing Kodi's data and testing if the same occurs if you just install one video add-ons temporarily (some of the Wizards include XML files that tweak settings a bit too much).

 

[lordtoran]

I use a wireless QWERTZ (German layout) Rii i8+ keyboard very similar to the one that can be bought in a bundle with the T8 Mini. I also know about the Alt-Tab combo, fortunately. There aren’t any 3rd party task switchers on the Play Store at the moment though that work with Lollipop Would have liked to install one and bind it to a custom key combination.

As for key combos, I use External Keyboard Helper in conjunction with Notification History. I launch it with Alt-Backspace. For realtime notification I use Heads-up Notifications.

Looked into the playback glitch and found it to only appear in OpenELEC, even on default settings and with video addons (like Youtube). Some Youtube videos frequently start 3, 5 or 17 seconds in while others are not affected. So, quite the same as with local videos. With slow-buffering videos I observed that the playback position is into the video in the first place and when buffering is complete the video sometimes rewinds to 00:00 and starts playing normally, but most frequently just starts playing into the video with visual ghosting glitches. I copied some video files onto the SD card (as I can’t access the big disk yet) and found that Kodi as well as DBMC on Android don’t exhibit the glitch. Really strange issue, that.

Regarding the SD card, Android doesn’t always recognize it BTW. It’s a SanDisk Ultra Class 10 128 GB card.

Will look into the HDMI issue tomorrow. My TV is an older Full HD Telefunken that I got as a 60% off deal on amazon.de It has a lot of settings for connections though to play with. As I only have two laptops I can’t test with another external screen.

 

[lordtoran]

The TV needing powercycling when booting into OpenELEC seems indeed related to the TV (or at least not to the HDMI cable, as I tried several), but I can live with that minor inconvenience as I rarely switch OSes on the box. If Ext4 support and maybe those semi-random skip glitches in OpenELEC could be sorted out that would be great. Until then I still have an Ubuntu laptop (that the box was bound to replace) connected to the TV as a backup.

BTW, IIRC the OpenELEC skip glitch did not occur before I factory resetted the box shortly before my first post here. Maybe I should just reset it another time?

 

[ChrisM]

@hushamdroidbox How did it go with the EXT4 testing?

 

[lordtoran]

Tinkered a bit more and did another factory reset. One issue I already noticed earlier is that OpenELEC is not completely reset. For example it keeps the language setting (German in my case) and parts of the regional settings after the reset. The first-run wizard is in German too. Videos still glitch and I think it is somehow related to some internal configuration that may not have been wiped.

Resetted and powered down again. Will peek into OpenELEC’s/Kodi’s profile directories via the built-in file manager or over SSH login (if the box supports it) as soon as I have time.

Ext4 mounting support in Android would of course solve all that for me Not that tinkering wouldn’t be fun …

 

[ChrisM]

@lordtoran Factory reset from the Recovery menu may not touch the same places as a wipe intiated from the OpenELEC Config program add-on, I've not tested previously, thanks for noticing.

@hushamdroidbox update on the testing please - EXT4, see above.