Hi-fidelity Kodi
Integrate the world’s most popular streaming site into Kodi and see how the Pi fares at high resolutions.
S ince the Pi 4 has more graphical horsepower than its predecessors, it’s capable of playing ‘movie’ 4K resolution (4,096x2,160 as opposed to ‘TV’ 4K which is 3,840x2,160) and 10-bit (HEVC) content. It might not yet be capable of driving two 4K displays at 60Hz, but it can certainly drive one. You need to enable that feature by hand, as it will make the SoC run a little warmer than usual. You’ll need to enable SSH access and log in to your
Kodi
box to do this, remembering that
Kodi
has only one account, namely root. So the incantation will look like ssh root@192.168.x.x . Remember you can always find Kodi’s IP address from the status panel.
Once you’re in you’d usually run raspi-config to enable this, but LibreELEC doesn’t include this program. Instead you’ll have to remount the /flash partition in read-write mode and edit config.txt manually: $ mount -o remount,rw /flash $ nano config.txt
Now add the line hdmi_enable_4kp60=1 , exit Nano, and restart.
If you don’t get any joy make sure you’re using the HDMI0 port – the one nearest the USB-C port used for power. HDMI1 can only manage 4Kp30 tops. If you have a gaming monitor, or other display that supports high refresh rates, then you should check out the official documentation at www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/computers/config_txt.html. That will tell you how to set HDMI timings through the /boot/ config.txt file. For 4K HEVC content you’ll need to adjust the graphics/system memory split. Anecdotal evidence suggests the GPU will need at least 340MB here, which again requires manual config.txt intervention.