LibreELEC 12 Adds Raspberry Pi 5 Support, HDR Support for AMD and Intel GPUs

LibreELEC, the JeOS (Just Enough Operating System) for embedded devices forked from OpenELEC and based on the Kodi home theatre software, has been updated today to version 12, a major update that adds support for new devices and new features.

Powered by the long-term supported Linux 6.6 LTS kernel series and based on the latest Kodi 21 “Omega” media center software, LibreELEC 12 is here more than a year after LibreELEC 11 and introduces support for the Raspberry Pi 5 single-board computer.

LibreELEC 12 also ports many of the supported devices to the 64-bit architecture, including Raspberry Pi 4 and Raspberry Pi 5. Talking about Raspberry Pi boards, the new LibreELEC release requires the force_turbo=1 or core_freq_min=500 option in config.txt for 50/60fps H.264 HW decoding to avoid AV-sync-issues/skipping.

While the LibreELEC Generic image runs the same GBM/V4L2 graphics stack, it now supports HDR with recent AMD and Intel GPUs. Moreover, there’s now a Generic-legacy image that runs the older X11 graphics stack to allow users to update between the GBM and X11 images while avoiding issues.

However, the devs inform users that the Generic-legacy image should only be used if you need support for NVIDIA GPUs, the Chrome Browser add-on, or you see graphical glitches on older hardware, e.g. NUC 6th Gen.

“In the last year, NVIDIA has made progress in their support for modern graphics standards. Drivers are now mesa/GBM compatible but still have dependencies on Wayland which we do not use, and Kodi has no plan to support proprietary NVDEC decoding (but VDPAU remains). We still recommend users avoid investing in NVIDIA GPUs,” reads the release announcement page.

Lastly, LibreELEC 12 improves support for Amlogic S905, S905X/D, and S912 devices with new features like H.264 playback and seeking, HEVC playback and seeking, HDR support with HEVC/VP9 media on S905X/D and S912 devices, as well as multi-channel PCM and pass-through audio support on HDMI up to 7.1 channels.

LibreELEC 12 is available for download right now from the official website for a wide range of devices including Raspberry Pi, Allwinner, Rockchip, Amlogic, and NXP boards, as well as for generic computers using AMD or Intel graphics cards.

Existing LibreELEC 11 installations will not be automatically updated to the new release. Therefore, users will have to do a manual update following these instructions. In addition, those running LibreELEC 10 or earlier versions must do a clean install due to the Python 3 changes since Kodi 19.

Furthermore, LibreELEC 11 users using Widevine DRM on a 64-bit device will need to reinstall it due to the changed architecture. We remind users that Widevine DRM is required for various copy-protected video streaming add-ons like Prime Video, Netflix, etc.

Image credits: LibreELEC (edited by Marius Nestor)

Last updated 2 weeks ago