Beyonwiz Australia

Can I instal Kodi v18.4 to replace the v17.6 currently on my V2?
If so, how is it done please?

A port to the Enigma2 platform is not yet available AFAIK.

Thanks MrQuade for a quick response.
I am not sure what the Enigma2 is . I am also not too literate on these matters.
Can you explain where the Enigma 2 fits into the equation please?
Does this mean that we cannot receive Netflix, iview etc?
Regards

Bigal wrote: ↑

Tue Sep 17, 2019 16:46

Thanks MrQuade for a quick response.
I am not sure what the Enigma2 is . I am also not too literate on these matters.
Can you explain where the Enigma 2 fits into the equation please?
Does this mean that we cannot receive Netflix, iview etc?
Regards

Enigma2 is the name of the software application platform that the Beyonwiz PVRs run for all their basic functions. Lots of PVRs all over the world run different flavours of the Enigma2 software with their own customisation.

You can install iView and SBS Now and even kayo as-per the other Kodi plugins thread, but the other commercial streaming plugins are not compatible.

Many thanks, I'll give that a shot.

I'm considering getting the V2 as a second PVR but only if Kodi is updateable. Given this post is from July, is there any news on that?

NoDeity wrote: ↑

Tue Nov 12, 2019 16:09

I'm considering getting the V2 as a second PVR but only if Kodi is updateable. Given this post is from July, is there any news on that?

Nope.

The Kodi that runs on the V2 is not a standard build that is maintained by Kodi themselves (or anyone related to Kodi as far as I understand).

You have to rely on the versions that are provided as part of the plugin online update feed. The development of the plugin is not controlled in any way by Beyonwiz. I have no idea who or how this is maintained (could probably find out, I'm just slack), or what barriers are in place that are holding up timely updates. If I was to guess, it might be something to do with needing to customise code to work with the PVR's hardware drivers, remote control, or perhaps something to do with support for DRM.

My advice would be to just buy an Nvidia Shield if you want a slick media consumption device. Plenty of sales coming up, and I am sure lots of places will be wanting to offload old stock.

The current Nvidia Shield is old tech, the new one is either out now or out soon and the price on that will no doubt be horrendous given it will sport the same internals with a few upgrades. Don't get me wrong I like the Shield, I had one a few years back that I imported from the US, but it had a US power supply and it didn't like having an AU adapter connected to the mains and burned out after a week, so I sent it back, (got my money back though). I was hoping this PVR, (is it a PVR if you have to use an external HDD?) being an Aussie unit would be up to speck, but Kodi having a sketchy update path is a deal breaker for now. Hopefully it'll be a problem solved in the future, or maybe the new Shield will surprise me and be on par with the price! Not likely though. Thanks for the info though, I think you just saved me a bit of cash.

The me shield has identical guts to the old shield so they're is no great disaster to holding onto an old one.

Scott the icky thing the shield lacks of note is the ability to play vp9 profile 2 media. It is otherwise still the best media player you can get, though the Apple tv is supposed to be great if you're into that ecosystem.

When I opened Kodi today a pop up message appeared that I was using V17 stable and V18 stable was available.

Does that mean we can upgrade?

And if so how?

panda wrote: ↑

Sun Feb 02, 2020 09:22

Does that mean we can upgrade?

And if so how?

No. That message is just a generic message generated by the Kodi program. The message is not necessarily "aware" of what platform it is running on, and doesn't know that the Enigma2 version of Kodi isn't an "officially" maintained release.

Watch this space

That's a bit exciting!
The only news I could see floating on the public forums recently was pretty stale, and it was a case of "Yay, we have Ver18 working.......except it doesn't display any video yet."

Hi MrQuade,

I haven't been following Kodi that closely but there is significant effort in OpenATV and OpenViX to get the Kodi version 18 running well on a number of machines. The SF8008 (upon which the Beyonwiz V2 is based) is one of the main test platforms. The last comments I was reading are that there are final tweaks and tests being run to allow the new release to go out to OpenViX users ASAP.

Regards,
Ian.

IanSav wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 04, 2020 17:28

The last comments I was reading are that there are final tweaks and tests being run to allow the new release to go out to OpenViX users ASAP.

Excellent news .

I'll need to tidy up the V2 streaming thread in the near future!!

Hi MrQuade,

Looking at the latest commit notes I think you will be getting Kodi 18.6 and not 18.4.

Regards,
Ian.

Makes sense. That's what I have on the Shield at the moment too.

Hopefully it is a good sign that it will be fairly well maintained going forward. I imagine most of the pain came about getting the backend compatibility right with the PVR hardware. Hopefully that bit is relatively stable and subsequent releases from Kodi can be merged more easily.
(Until v19 of course )

Hi MrQuade,

Looking at the commits and discussions going on I think this is anything but stable. That said, there appears to be a lot of effort going into making this work.

My development efforts are in different areas of Enigma2 so I can't give you much more on what is going on. At this point the experimental and developmental builds of OpenViX are using are still using 17.6, OpenATV is using 17.6 and my OpenPLi feed is unavailable at the moment.

Regards,
Ian.

Kodi 18.6 with Widevinne Support now on feed for beyonwiz V2

many drm addons now working

captain wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 23, 2020 02:06

Kodi 18.6 with Widevinne Support now on feed for beyonwiz V2

many drm addons now working

Fantastic.
I'll see if I can give some of them a shot this week.

captain wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 23, 2020 02:06

Kodi 18.6 with Widevinne Support now on feed for beyonwiz V2
many drm addons now working

How do we access it from the current V2 add-ons? I can't see Kodi on there right now, but I'm assuming I'd have to uninstall the current version to see it appear again. Would it show up as the latest version if I did uninstall the current version? If not, then how do we access the current version, sideload maybe?

NoDeity wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 26, 2020 13:43

If not, then how do we access the current version, sideload maybe?

Not sure if that is possible, but captain is referring to the OpenATV distribution of firmware, not the Beyonwiz version.

I am not sure how much work would be involved to get it into the Beyonwiz version as the DRM could be deeply embedded.

Same goes for the Netflix plugin I guess.

MrQuade wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 26, 2020 14:14

Not sure if that is possible, but captain is referring to the OpenATV distribution of firmware, not the Beyonwiz version.

So, I'm assuming here looking at the OpenATV site which has firmware for the Wiz V2, that I can install that FW to replace the beyonwiz FW? If so, does that void the Wiz warranty or something equally disastrous? Also, is the OpenATV FW better, other than the fact that it has a more up to date version of Kodi? Can I go back to Wiz FW if I don't like it? I know, too many Q's, but still...

NoDeity wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 26, 2020 15:56

So, I'm assuming here looking at the OpenATV site which has firmware for the Wiz V2, that I can install that FW to replace the beyonwiz FW? If so, does that void the Wiz warranty or something equally disastrous? Also, is the OpenATV FW better, other than the fact that it has a more up to date version of Kodi? Can I go back to Wiz FW if I don't like it? I know, too many Q's, but still...

Yep, it will completely replace the Beyonwiz firmware. The user interface looks fairly different, and many settings are found in different places.
You should be able to load IanSav's OverlayHD onto it (it will be one of the available skins), and that will give you a look and feel that you may be more familiar with.

It generally has more cutting edge features and gets quite a lot of development input from around the world.
It is developed mainly for Europe, and there will be some language and terminology anomolies.

The Beyonwiz firmware is more or less created from a branch of this firmware, but the Beyonwiz version is developed in parallel and tends to deviate from the source over time. (it takes a bit of effort to drag it back into line occasionally).

You won't lose any warranty at all, it is perfectly safe. Though you may get limited support, since only a few people on this forum run it, or are familiar with it.

You can go back at any time, but your settings will not be compatible between the Beyonwiz firmware and the OpenATV firmware

Hi,

The Beyonwiz firmware was more closely aligned with the OpenViX firmware. OpenATV is also derived from OpenViX. Both of these were derived from OpenPLi. OpenPLi came out of the original Dream product.

Regards,
Ian.

IanSav wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 26, 2020 16:38

Hi,

The Beyonwiz firmware was more closely aligned with the OpenViX firmware. OpenATV is also derived from OpenViX. Both of these were derived from OpenPLi. OpenPLi came out of the original Dream product.

Regards,
Ian.

Interesting.! Which one would you recommend, I say that having had a look at the three brands and only OpenATV actually says Beyonwiz V2 in their downloads. If Vix or Pli have better features as well as Kodi, I may go with one of them, but I don't see Wiz support on their sites.

IanSav wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 26, 2020 16:38

The Beyonwiz firmware was more closely aligned with the OpenViX firmware. OpenATV is also derived from OpenViX. Both of these were derived from OpenPLi. OpenPLi came out of the original Dream product.

Interesting. I thought PeterU switched to building 19.3 off OpenATV roots to accommodate the V2's switch to the Wiz firmware. To be honest, I wasn't paying that much attention .

Either way, we did all the initial testing for the V2 on OpenATV, and captain was instrumental in a lot of the early improvements and regionalisation

MrQuade wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 26, 2020 16:31

NoDeity wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 26, 2020 15:56

So, I'm assuming here looking at the OpenATV site which has firmware for the Wiz V2, that I can install that FW to replace the beyonwiz FW? If so, does that void the Wiz warranty or something equally disastrous? Also, is the OpenATV FW better, other than the fact that it has a more up to date version of Kodi? Can I go back to Wiz FW if I don't like it? I know, too many Q's, but still...

Yep, it will completely replace the Beyonwiz firmware. The user interface looks fairly different, and many settings are found in different places.
You should be able to load IanSav's OverlayHD onto it (it will be one of the available skins), and that will give you a look and feel that you may be more familiar with.

I currently have my test V2 set up to multiboot Beyonwiz/OpenATV/OpenViX firmware.The multiboot is a bit messy to set up, but if you just want to run ATV, then that's relatively easy to do.

NB: ATV only supports skip on LEFT/RIGHT and the number keys.

new image tomorrow add HW Playback Support with Hiplayer for KODI 18.6 and local Media !!

prl wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 26, 2020 17:33

NB: ATV only supports skip on LEFT/RIGHT and the number keys.

That's fine, it's the way I like it set up anyways. Thanks.

captain wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 27, 2020 06:41

new image tomorrow add HW Playback Support with Hiplayer for KODI 18.6 and local Media !!

Thanks for that, much appreciated.
While I'm here, what's the purpose of the recovery file, I've always just used the Wiz FW file as the recovery file but OpenATV has a FW installation file and a recovery file?

I've moved NoDiety's general questions about OpenATV to the OpenATV questions in the OpenATV area, as suggested by MrQuade, where I'll answer some of the questions

prl wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 27, 2020 15:14

I've moved NoDiety's general questions about OpenATV to the OpenATV questions in the OpenATV area, as suggested by MrQuade, where I'll answer some of the questions

Thank you for that

Hi NoDeity,

NoDeity wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 26, 2020 16:49

Interesting.! Which one would you recommend, I say that having had a look at the three brands and only OpenATV actually says Beyonwiz V2 in their downloads. If Vix or Pli have better features as well as Kodi, I may go with one of them, but I don't see Wiz support on their sites.

I only had my hands on a Beyonwiz V2 for a few days before it was taken back. In that time I tried installing a stock standard OpenViX Octagon SF8008 firmware and it appeared to work perfectly. The firmare seemed to cope perfectly well with the change of tuners and WiFi in the modified Beyonwiz V2. On the basis of that very limited experience I would suggest that *any* firmware that supports the Octagon SF8008 is probably likely to support the Beyonwiz V2.

I never had enough time to try out cross booting between various images. All the current firmware with which I work use the SF8008 microSD slot purely for boot slot images. That is, the microSD card is *not* used as a local storage device.

Please be aware that the Beyonwiz firmware is very customised. The UI of original firmware from other images can be very jarring.

Regards,
Ian.

At some point after the very first beta images were released, the drivers have been hardware locked to the specific manufacturer's boxes.

I can't speak for the latest Vix Octagon SF8008 images, but the OpenATV and Beyonwiz V2 images are now vendor locked.
Even my pre-release V2 is now incompatible with the Beyonwiz firmware, as it doesn't have the proper Beyonwiz hardware ID.

Hi MrQuade,

I haven't checked with Prl recently but I believe that he is still able to run OpenViX firmware without issue. As I said earlier, the Beyonwiz V2 was taken away from me before I could do much testing.

Regards,
Ian.

IanSav wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 27, 2020 16:16

I haven't checked with Prl recently but I believe that he is still able to run OpenViX firmware without issue.

It was working as recently as yesterday afternoon... but, it's a production V2, not a pre-prod model. My pre-production test V2 is in a box on the top of a bookcase.

Ok. It could just be just that a valid ID is lacking on the pre-production model then. Dunno......all deep DRM secrets there

Hi,

It is not in the manufacturer's interests to restrict use of their hardware. Restrictions of use could equate to restrictions in sales.

Regards,
Ian.

IanSav wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 27, 2020 16:36

It is not in the manufacturer's interests to restrict use of their hardware. Restrictions of use could equate to restrictions in sales.

I agree. I am of the understanding that it is the driver providers that are driving this anti-consumer move.

MrQuade wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 27, 2020 16:10

Even my pre-release V2 is now incompatible with the Beyonwiz firmware, as it doesn't have the proper Beyonwiz hardware ID.

check the Image : http://images.mynonpublic.com/openatv/n ... ustym4kpro

with your Beta Box

IanSav wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 27, 2020 16:36

Hi,

It is not in the manufacturer's interests to restrict use of their hardware. Restrictions of use could equate to restrictions in sales.

Regards,
Ian.

this comes from fight in Germany Gigablue vs Octagon , and have request this lock

captain wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 27, 2020 23:27

check the Image : http://images.mynonpublic.com/openatv/n ... ustym4kpro

Thanks. That's saves some mucking about

captain wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 27, 2020 23:27

MrQuade wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 27, 2020 16:10

Even my pre-release V2 is now incompatible with the Beyonwiz firmware, as it doesn't have the proper Beyonwiz hardware ID.

check the Image : http://images.mynonpublic.com/openatv/n ... ustym4kpro

with your Beta Box

Sorry, only just got around to trying this now.
I had run an online update and the beta V2 failed to boot up (had the "Software mismatched" error).

I tried the firmware that you linked, and I am still getting the same "Software mismatched" error.