Ambilight with RPi4, hdmi grabber and Denon AV-reciever

Xitee1 Very nice find! Please keep us up to date with what hardware you're going to choose and how it works!

Sadly my setup still behaves absolutely weird.

TL;DR

That EDID setting in the AVR setting does kind of work and I'm able to play back (so far) most HDR content. Some content works with a little luck, some content is almost impossible get it to play without issues. These issues are related to the EDID setting in the AVR and not the capture card. Also, I'm still limited to 1080p, probably and hopefully because my capture card can't handle it.

To explain my setup a bit, here's what works without ambilight and without any capture card attached with the default HDMI settings on my AVR:

- Xiaomi TV (Android TV) Box: Can do 4K 60FPS with Dolby Vision support, apparently can't do HDR. Colorspace: YCbCr 4:4:4 8bits

- Raspberry Pi 4 with LibreElec and HyperHDR: Can do 4K 60FPS with (HLG) HDR. Colorspace: Dynamic / RGB 8 bits in UI from what I remember, but for some reason currently my AVR Info menu is bugged and no longer works depending on what content is currently on screen (but in Kodi only). Edit after writing the next few points: Seems to work now again, no idea what happened.

With my capture card and default HDMI settings on my AVR:

- Xiaomi TV Box: Can do 4K 60FPS without DV and capturing works all the time. Colorspace: YCbCr 4:2:0 8bits

- LibreElec: Can do 4K 30 FPS (no 60 FPS option with 4K) or 1080p 60FPS. No (HLG) HDR. Capturing works all the time. Colorspace: Dynamic / RGB 8bits in UI

With my capture card and HDMI EDID copy settings on AVR:

- Xiaomi TV Box: Can do 4K 30FPS or 1080p 60FPS with DV and capturing works all the time. When setting it to 4K 60FPS I still have an image on TV but ambilight turns off. Colorspace: YCbCr 4:4:4 8bits

- LibreElec: Can do 4K 30FPS or 1080p 60FPS. When setting it to 4K 60FPS I still have an image on TV but ambilight turns off. Colorspace: Dynamic / RGB 8bits in UI. As expected, it reports that (HLG) HDR is supported and I managed to correctly calibrate my ambilight with HyperHDR and its test videos. Full HDR support and everything is working apart from 60FPS which probably is a limit of my capture card, so I thought. But here's where it goes absolutely crazy, I will get into that below.

Detection of HDMI capabilities (was mostly relevant before finding that secret HDMI EDID setting):

- Xiaomi TV Box: Directly on EDID change, no tricks allowed here. It limits capabilities as soon as capture card is attached, even when AVR is on Mon 1 only mode.

- LibreElec: On reboot, which allows some tricks like rebooting without a capture card attached, then attach it and HDR seems to still work. It only limits capabilities if set to dual out mode, it does not limit capabilities when on Mon 1 out unlike the Xiaomi box. When trying to switch to 4K 60 FPS I get a black screen and ambilight no longer works (which is different than having the HDMI EDID copy settings active, see above).

So here comes the part where things start to behave absolutely weird:

As said above, the HyperHDR HDR calibration worked without problems, I was able to play back the videos (https://github.com/awawa-dev/a…o/tree/master/calibration) and the ambilight worked just fine. The HDR logo from my TV was also shown which confirmed that HDR was working.

But when playing back the Jellyfin HDR test videos (https://repo.jellyfin.org/test-videos/), it was completely glitched out and it looked like this:

What it should look like is this:

It is all pretty random and I even got it to work once with ambilight. I first thought the capture card is still affecting it, but I noticed after completely disconnecting it that this is more due to the EDID copy option on my AVR. Disabling this while also disconnecting the capture card made HDR working flawlessly all the time.

I tested this with a movie that works most of the time but it is in 4K @ 24FPS which my capture card also doesn't support (I have dynamic refresh rate in Kodi enabled, but that also isn't the cause of this weird issue, disabling it had no positive effect) so still no ambilight.

Sometimes when I exit out of the movie that plays normally and let it play in the background, it glitches out again, but after just testing this again, it no longer happened. It's really random.

And that's not all, this weird pixel thing just happened too (but so far only once):

What is even weirder is that it depends on the video. So far the HyperHDR test videos have worked all the time without any issues.

I've tested 5 other HDR 1080p movies and they all played without issue.

To conclude, my capture card itself seems to be working with HDR and the only limitation is 4K with framerates like 60 or 24 FPS (sometimes it works with 60 FPS, my assumption is that it maybe could be caused by the used colorspace? But before it also worked with 24 FPS when I attached it after booting LibreElec and without EDID settings).

The video glitches start happening as soon as I enable the EDID copy option on my AVR, not related to the capture card being connected or not. But this setting is required to make HDR work without that reboot trick with my capture card.

My question is if such weird issues also happen with an EDID emulator or if this is specific to the AVR EDID settings?

I was planning to buy this capture card:

.. and if the image glitch issue is related to the avr settings and do not happen with an emulator I'll need to get one too.

Is it not possible to edit posts? Writing a new one then.

So I did some more testing and this weird image glitch definitively has something to do with the AVR EDID setting but also with the selected resolution and refresh rate.

For testing I have connected another TV instead of the capture card to the second output which supports 4K 60FPS, HDR and DV.

I was then able to set the resolution at 4K with 60FPS (after a reboot of LibreElec, before I just got a black screen but now it works).

I played back the Jellyfin test video and it did work without any a problem. With or without the other TV connected.

It actually seems to be completely irrelevant what device is connected to the second HDMI output.

When I change the resolution from 4K 60FPS to 1080p 60FPS, these weird colored glitches appear (the Jellyfin test video is in 1080p). When I change the resolution to 4K 30FPS, the Jellyfin test videos play fine but I get this blocky video in the movie.

If I set the resolution to 4K 60FPS (which my current capture card sadly can't handle), it appears to work flawlessly, be it 4K or 1080p or whatever framerate being played. It is only relevant what is set in the Kodi display settings.

These issues only appear if I set the AVR to copy mon 1 though. If I leave it default and then reboot, it works in 1080p too.

If I change to copy mon 1 without rebooting LibreElec, it still works. It probably is a LibreElec/Kodi issue which is affected by the EDID setting.

This likely is how I've got HDR capture of the Jellyfin HDR test video working previously.

I'm really wondering if this happens with an external EDID emulator too or if the Denon does something weird there.

Because there're cheap I will probably end up buying an EDID emulator together with the capture card to be safe and do some more testing. But according to my current testings, it should just work with a capture card that can handle 4K with 60FPS.

Update:

Denon EDID:
Did some more testing with the Denon secret EDID settings and the're just buggy and mostly useless because:

When the device on Mon 1 (which we copy from) turns off, it re-initializes the picture and no longer has the EDID, which causes Kodi to turn on the TV again all the time (makes it impossible to turn it off for longer than 5 seconds). Doesn't happen though with my Xiaomi Android TV Box.

Fixing the Capture card problem (not working in Kodi with 4K @ 60FPS):

In the meantime I've got my new capture card (do NOT buy!) in hopes to get 4K 60FPS working. But the new one is just the same, they just lie in the description and it can't properly do 4K @ 60FPS. Actually, it's worse than my original capture card because it has this debug screen thing when there's no screen, instead of just outputting a black image.

Because I no longer wanted to search for capture cards that may or may not work, I just bought the https://www.amazon.de/dp/B083JVPXDY?tag=hyperioforum-21&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title , not because of the splitting capability (since my AVR does that) but for the downscaling function. Now I can properly use my capture card with Kodi and 4K @ 60FPS because the splitter downscales it to 1080p.

I hoped I could use the EDID emulation of that splitter too, which I can, although it's not perfect. The two presets do not include HLG HDR for example. I tried using the copy function and then plugging my TV back to the AVR which worked, but only until the HDMI splitter looses power. I could probably just use the splitter for actually splitting the signal, but for now I just prefer avoiding that extra cabling to my TV.

My next idea is to just use an EDID emulator between the second AVR output and the HDMI splitter with EDID from my TV, but in the reviews for most emulators, I've read that they are not persistent either across power loss, so I for now just leave it as is. I can still use the trick to switch to Mon 1 before rebooting Kodi.

The surprise with my new Kodi box:

After that (would've been unrelated, but actually made things so much easier) I bought the Ugoos AM6B+ to replace my Raspberry Pi so that I have Dolby Vision.

It really surprised me that on there, Hyperion actually has an internal screen capture, and what surprised me even more, is that it even works with Dolby Vision! And yes, my TV is the sink device, I confirmed that by switching to my HDMI capture card, which shows the purple image only. And what surprised me even more is that I no longer have LED delay but instead, the picture on TV is slower than my LEDs (need to find a way to set a delay in hyperion now lol)!

Don't know if this works with all CoreELEC devices, but I can really recommend the Ugoos AM6B+, even if you don't bother with DV FEL, it's just such a great device because it literally just works, even the things I didn't expect. But note that it's only good if you have local media and do not use streaming providers.

To summarize this enormous post, this is the setup I ended up with:

For my Android box:

- AVR (Mon 1) -> TV

- AVR (Mon 2) -> Ezcoo Splitter (downscale 4K to 1080p) -> Capture Card

For Kodi (Ugoos AM6B+):

- AVR (Mon 1) -> TV

- CoreELEC hyperion screen capture

When using the Ugoos, I switch to Mon 1 output only and use internal capture.

When using the Xiaomi box, I switch to dual output using the capture card.

I'll automate that using Home Assistant, but for now I need to switch the source in Hyperion remote control after switching.

When rebooting the Ugoos, I must make sure the AVR is set to Mon out 1 only because of the EDID.

Cheers,

i´m new here in the forum but i build my first ambilight years ago.

Now i updated my TV and AVR so unfortunally i have to update the Ambilight.

Xitee1:

Im very glad and thankfull for all the testing you have done so far and hope you could help me out about my thoughts updating the ambilight.

Thinking about using my new Denon AVR X2700H and the second HDMI Out with a EDID HDR Emulator with Passthrough. In the Emulator I want to plug in the HDMI Video Grabber to the Raspberry Pi4. So that the AVR doesnt scale down the 4K signal from hdmi 1 to the tv.

My Setup so far with Hyperbain/ HyperionNG on my Raspberry Pi4 with the Feintech SP120 at HDMI 1 Out on my AVR. The used grabber works fine but the SK6812 Leds wont show the matching colours to the video... and they are turned in a 90 degrees angle and i cant find a solution to that....tried everything on the colours so far, nothing worked.

So i want to start everything over and reduce the costs by throwing out the Feintech and try it with a emulator stick.

Have you tried the combination I mentioned above with the emulator with passthrough and a video grabber?

Excuse my english, there is a chance, that there might be some mistakes.

Schlorzinator No I haven't tested a EDID Emulator, I didn't buy one because no matter what product I looked at, everywhere where the reviews that say it does not permanently store the EDID and just forgets it. That's why I use the ezcoo splitter (but not for splitting, I only have connected one device, the capture card to output one, because I'm using the two outputs of my AVR) that has a EDID preset. It doesn't advertise all the features that my TV would have to the AVR (e.g. HLG HDR) but HDR and Dolby Vision at 4K 60FPS do work.

So basically that splitter is my EDID emulator because I didn't find an emulator that properly stores the data or has presets.

Xitee1

Thx for the respond. True, all reviews are complaining about no real 4k or just not working properly.

I read your last setup and thought, i could test that too.

So i connected my Feintech Splitter to the AVRs HDMI Out 2 and connected the Grabber. Put the Feintech in 4k 60Hz mode, because without there was no video signal to find in the hyperbain. Now i got the Ambilight running, but all leds are just blue with no motion to the video.... new setup, new problems At least i can still watch films from my fire tv 4k max stick in 4k. Thats good progress.

Got a second grabber here, that i´m going to test right now.

Edit: second Grabber, same result... only blue leds... if i turn the resolution of the grabber to hull Hd.. the leds blink all 4 seconds with different colours...

Schlorzinator you could check if just the LEDs are misbehaving or the capture card using the live video preview in the hyperion webinterface.

I'm not sure how your LEDs are connected but if using e.g. WLED you could also check if there are any other devices sending signals to it. I had a similar problem where my LEDs flickered pretty fast. I had accidentally running 2 Hyperion instances sending different data at the same time to the same LED controller.