I’m considering turning my old desktop into a HTPC using EOS with XFCE + Kodi + Brave for Netflix/YouTube, possibly some low-mid level gaming too, but wanted to float the idea here for input before I potentially waste time/money on The Thing That Could Not Be™.
Old desktop parts: Asus Prime H270-Plus Motherboard + i5 gen 6 quad core CPU with stock HSF, 2x 8GB DDR4, Gigabyte 1050 GPU, a spare 256GB PCIe Gen3 NVMe, & some SATA 3 6GB/s HDD laying around. The mobo has onboard HD Audio supplied by Realtek ALC887 8-channel chip with 10-1 pin AAFP & 4-1 pin SPDIF_OUT headers. There’s also 3x 2ch 3.5mm audio connectors in the rear IO but I’d rather avoid having that many extra cables to buy, connect, & manage.
My sources: CD/DVD/Blu-Ray discs, local media files (*264, *265, MP3), Netflix (via Brave .desktop), YouTube (via Brave .desktop), possibly also Heroic Games Launcher for games that can run on this hardware (I’ve previously run FO3, Batman: Arkham Knight, Borderlands 2, & other titles on the existing hardware under EOS when it was my main desktop).
My chief concerns so far are whether the EOS out-of-box ALSA + Wireplumber + PipeWire setup & included DD/DTS codes be able to:
Passthrough 5.1 AC-3/DTS via the SPDIF_OUT header & TOSLINK optical out? (precompressed streams, eg: DVD/B-R/Netflix, etc)
Compress & output audio as 2.0/5.1 AC-3/DTS via the SPDIF_OUT header & TOSLINK optical out? (realtime compression of 2.0/5.1 PCM sources, eg: game audio, etc)
Are DTS connect, DTS Interactive, DD Live possible? (realtime 2.0>5.1 upmixing & compression, eg: 2.0>5.1 game audio, CD, etc)
Detect multichannel audio hardware & handle the above codec/passthrough/SPDIF_OUT scenarios?
Will I need to buy a dedicated soundcard to make this work? (ie: Creative Sound Blaster Audigy Rx 7.1 PCIe)
Will DVD & Blu-Ray decoding for playback be possible?
Will XFCE DE limit any choices/support vs KDE Plasma (which I assume would be slower to load & uses more resources to run)?
As you can see I’ve very little experience with audio & DVD/B-R decode concepts in EOS, been doing a lot of reading (inc this post here) but I’m getting a bit lost in it all
Thanks for any input, it could save me from wasting a lot of money & time. Hopefully the topic doesn’t get closed too soon, I imagine it may take a while to be seen & comments to be added given the specificity.
Flexibility & greater use of hardware. I’ve used LibreELEC (& OSMC) before, I don’t know if LE has native support for DD/DDL/DTS/DTSC & iirc it’s is fairly locked down & doesn’t allow installing additional OS packages (no apt or similar), so I wouldn’t be able to install them or anything else. I’m also interested in running Brave to access Netflix/YouTube, web browsers are difficult/limited in Kodi & it’s variants from what I’ve been reading, & I would like to play some games through Heroic Games Launcher, again something I don’t think is possible in the LE distro.
EOS has out-of-box support for DD/DTS, so that’s a start, & I can do the other things I mentioned, just need some experienced advice regarding codecs, realtime transcoding, & ALSA/WirePlumber/PipeWire config to setup the audio pipeline for S/PDIF 5.1 surround out, if possible.
I run EOS on my htpc, looked into the alternatives and came to the conclusion - they do not do anything EnOS cannot do
I serve media via Emby to my (allegedly) Samsung Smart TV and have a 10tb external HD attached and access that via SSHFS.
It is just a cheap mini pc from Amazon, Ryzen 7/AMD graphics, it does struggle with the 42 inch TV a bit, so gaming is out of the question, but fine for everything else.
I access it via:
Wireless Logitech keyboard (when displayed on TV) or
Rust desk (from my laptop, can be a little bit laggy).
rkvm (from my laptop, when displayed on TV)
Oh, and, using tailscale I can access my media via the Android Emby app any where and can access it via ssh/sftp/mosh etc.
I’m guessing the Logi keyboard is RF & not Bluetooth so that it can wake the system from sleep? (I still haven’t found a way to get a Bt peripheral to wake Linux…)
If you use KDE Plasma DE another remote control possibility is KDE Connect, remote input uses your phones touchscreen as a trackpad & you can start/stop/skip media playback, execute commands on the remote system from your phone, etc. Definitely not a complete solution, but has some utility.
Darn, off to The Leftorium with ye then!
I have a Logi K800 that I love but the 9 & 0 keys have finally failed, at least it has a numpad but I can’t type parenthesis . Bought for ~60 about 14-16 years ago, current asking price: US$350
Yeah I love SSHFS, I use it to mount storage located by DDNS updated FQDN & secured with a password protected certificate, can do it from anywhere.
I would be careful with the Creative Sound Blaster cards as they aren’t cheap and some do not work on linux. Better do your research to see which ones work as some don’t.
Edit: I’m referring to the AE series mostly that I’m aware of having issues.
Thanks @ricklinux, I did do some 'nux hardware support research on the Creative SB Audigy Rx (and some more) but not sure if I’ve found definitive confirmation yet, although hardware mixing (link 2) is a tempting promise for realtime 5.1 S/PDIF output when playing games etc
What do you think my chances are with the onboard Realtek ALC887 chip & 5.1 output over the SPDIF_OUT header to TOSLINK? I’m not exactly confident that it could do mixing/upmixing/transcoding.
Honestly i really don’t know. I guess you could try it first and if it doesn’t do the job then spend the money on a different audio card after. If it does work you’ll have saved.
True, it’s what I was considering, I’d still need to buy the CoAx + TOSLINK backplate to attach to the mobo SPDIF_OUT header & that’s approx 1/3 the cost of the SB Audigy Rx which is why I was trying to determine if the ALC887 chip can do hardware mixing/upmixing/transcoding/etc because if not then the money could go towards the Audigy instead (backplate is approx 1/4 price of the Audigy).
If I were to do an EOS install on the hardware as it is now, would the ALC887 & SPDIF_OUT capabilities be detected & offered as a 5.1 audio output option even without the TOSLINK backplate adapter in place?
If so that would help me determine whether it was worth getting the backplate or taking my chances with the SB Audigy Rx.
After many days of reading I think I may have to give up on my dream of realtime hardware accelerated multichannel audio Dolby Digital & DTS encoding for output over S/PDIF optical in Linux & just settle for a rats nest of 3x 3m stereo 3.5mm → rca cables.
Mainly because patents, licensing, closed source, etc.
Update Quick ghetto test booting EOS 2024.06.25 on a Ventoy UEFI USB with some cheap 1.5m 3.5mm → rca cables from the local dollar store.
No analog 5.1 output profiles were available in sound/playback, probably because 2 of 3 3.5mm jacks might be automatically & correctly identified as “line in” & “mic”, thus limiting analog output choices to “stereo duplex” & “stereo output”, the former utilising the mic in & the latter not:
yay alsa-tools provides alsa tools including hdajackretask which facilitates (as the name states) reassigning Intel HDA jacks, it also confirmed the default assignment of the 2 jacks as “line out” & “mic” which was quickly fixed but assigning both them to “line out” as part of “channel group 1”:
Back in sound/playback there is now access to various analog surround output profiles (!), however I experienced incorrect FL,FR,RL,RR,FC,LFE channel assignment order when using the “Analog Surround 5.1 Output” profile, this was corrected by choosing “Analog Surround 5.1 Output + Analog Stereo Input”:
speaker-test -c 6 -t wav provides a quick & dirty 6 channel discrete output test, thanks to the -t wav argument each output has its name spoken which is very helpful:
After yay brave we try Netflix, alas we get only stereo audio streams + 720p res but this is quickly addressed by the New Netflix 1080p extension & after a quick F5 LO! we can has choice & control:
I ordered a S/PDIF TOSLINK backpanel bracket & a TOSLINK cable, will post an update on the outcome of attempting realtime Digital Surround 5.1 IEC958/AC3 output, but it will take almost 2 weeks for the parts to arrive.
@SemLraug do you have any experience with hardware accelerated audio processing under 'nix, like realtime DTS/AC3 compression using a Sound Blaster or similar? (yeah, I know a bit about the history of Creative Labs shenanigans). The SB Z SE is one of the cheapest I can find new that supports Dolby Digital Live / DTS Connect realtime encoder processing.
I do know that the community over at osmc is very knowledgeable. They can help with osmc on raspberrypi’s and their own Vero-hardware. OSMC is a Linux distribution.
Thanks, I did (briefly) run an OSMC install on a RPi years ago, it was cool but very locked down. You’re right, they may have some good nuggets in their fora if I dig around a little
. Bought for ~60 about 14-16 years ago, current asking price: 
