Need help to free up as much as memory as I can in my Minix Neo U9 H for 4k UHD movies

Hi,

I have a 20 bits connection with unlimited bandwidth

I will like to watch some 4k uhd movies with my Minix Neo U9 H box

I'm breaking my head to free up as much RAM as I can, but with only 2 Gig of RAM is a Real challenge!

Right now, I run Kodi Leia 18.2 with Xenon 19.2 build, I have deleted some unwanted add-on, repo, user data in order to gain space

If I go back to Kryption 17.6 would it help, can I uninstall unwanted upgraded apps in the Minix, for now my free RAM in Kodi is about 350 meg, it is not enough to get a good buffer, for now it works partially and sometimes is ok, it is depending of the sources

Can I prevent some unnecessary system or apps to load up in the Minix so I can gain some RAM ?

thanks

Regis
 
Hi @Regismaltais,

Don't get too worried about your free ram space. The U9-H does quite well managing the free ram, and 4k videos play quite well on fast internet connections, better on Ethernet of course. Kodi 18.2 is quite good for the purpose, but 'builds' are something that you would probably wish to avoid for a perfect playback since they sometimes carry undefined stuff into ram.

Things to try, should you feel you need to free ram: if you are using Minix Metro select "All tasks killer" then get into Settings, Applications, and close one by one those you are sure not to need, since some apps are known to perform actions during your playback. If you are unsure you can restart the box after the procedure and the ones required by the system will also restart.

Test 4k content playback with some testing videos (for instance - https://4ksamples.com/) to make sure you got Kodi setup right, should problems occur, come back for advice, as someone here will certainly be able to tell the optimal setup for sure.

Keep in mind that internet streaming sometimes has far more to do with the servers that hold the content than with your internet connection, and some of those servers are working on heavy load at certain hours and days of the week, so you should also check several options before deciding the issue is on your side. Discussed this many times with people who know better than I do, to the conclusion that nothing beats keeping the content in your own domain/hardware.

EDIT (30 minutes later) But your 20 bit connection... What do you mean? When I get 40Mbps I start to worry, and that is 40 000 000 bits, I must be missing something here. If you mean 20Mbps that is too low for 4k internet streaming with Kodi, definitely, that is probably the minimum requirement for TV Apps connected through Ethernet, not Kodi in Android. With 20Mbit you may wish to try CoreElec as being a dedicated system you might reach some results.
 
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2GB of RAM is enough for kodi.
Keep it simple and uninstall everything you dont need.
To watch 4k Video is better (as well as other weaker resolutions ) using a good ethernet connection (gigabit if possible) and streaming from local network (NAS for example) and not for a addon.
 
I used a addon before to watch movies/tv shows.
If you use addons Over time the device is getting slower and internal storage fuller because of all the data saved to the device from the internet.
My advice is streaming from local network or if you cant at least external HDD.
 
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Hi,

I have a 20 bits connection with unlimited bandwidth

I will like to watch some 4k uhd movies with my Minix Neo U9 H box

I'm breaking my head to free up as much RAM as I can, but with only 2 Gig of RAM is a Real challenge!

Right now, I run Kodi Leia 18.2 with Xenon 19.2 build, I have deleted some unwanted add-on, repo, user data in order to gain space

If I go back to Kryption 17.6 would it help, can I uninstall unwanted upgraded apps in the Minix, for now my free RAM in Kodi is about 350 meg, it is not enough to get a good buffer, for now it works partially and sometimes is ok, it is depending of the sources

Can I prevent some unnecessary system or apps to load up in the Minix so I can gain some RAM ?

thanks

Regis

Indeed, you need to clarify your available internet bandwidth for a start.

Have you installed a lot of resource intensive apps that are also known to be persistent in the background? These will hog resources. (For example, my average system RAM usage is around 1200MB on the stock U9-H with Kodi running a 4K movie, leaving approx 600MB spare too.)

As far as Kodi goes, bin the Xenon build as well!!! Chances are that may take up a good chunk of available RAM by itself. Otherwise, Kodi builds & illegal add-ons aren't to be openly discussed on these forums ;).

Much better off just installing the add-ons you actually want or need individually in Kodi. Once done, use the Kodi backup tool to take a full backup image should you need to restore it later on :).
 
K cool thanks for your suggestions

I run 4K with ram left to spare on the minix 9. As a lot of previous posts suggest, you should first try your connection speed (install an app such as Ookla's from the store). 20 is my typing speed...

You need at least 5Mbps for HD and 25Mbps for 4K. This is minimum constant speed. There is no such thing as constant speed. So... Double the numbers and add sales tax for real life: 12Mbps to stream HD and 50 for 4K at decent bitrates.

On a slow stream (servers are overloaded) you will get a better visual experience forcing a 4K stream down to HD.
 
I run true 4k remux movies (40 to 83 gigs) over 5ghz Wi-Fi ac no issue on kodi 18.2(stock minix firmware).

Sent from my PH-1 using Tapatalk
 
Interesting. Due to there being a Frame-buffer memory requirement, this one of the more interesting questions!
I found a site that addresses this on a PC-level and the data is very interesting and you may very well be on to a serious point of discussion.

As I am not as familiar with how the memory is aoolcated inside an Android system, much of this is up for specualtion, however there has to be some similarities and conclusions we can draw

We can all safely assume that the SYSTEM RAM of the device is used as part of the frame-buffer (the part that stores the raw decoded frames, before digitizing them down the HDMI cable) needs to have a certain amount of free space to work with to consistently deliver data to the TV.

Data from PC tests:

4K uses 221 Million pixels at 4k30fps:
3840 x 2160 = 8 294 400‬ pixels per frame
@ 60 fps = 497 664 000 Pixels per second.
Assuming 24 Bit depth = 11 943 936 000... 1,423 Gbytes/sec ... a bit of a big requirement for a Minix, or even a PC!

here: https://pro.harman.com/insights/enterprise/education/how-to-distribute-4k-networked-av-over-1-gbps/

HDR uses 10-bit quantization = 0.5 Gibytes/sec WITHOUT HDMI compression

That's just RAW Data, per second!
 
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