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  1. Has anyone tried the new Raspberry 4? Most of my videos are 360p or 480p and I thought that it should be able to handle that. Something I was just thinking do you need anti-virus software on a Raspberry Pi of any generation? I am interested in what you think of this new Raspberry Pi. What gave you some delight and what disappointed you. Thank you in advance for this information.
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  2. I have an RPi 3B and handles up to 1080p60 AVC (Kodi). So the faster RPI 4 should have no problems with that. The RPi 3 lacks an HEVC hardware decoder so it has to fall back on software decoding. The CPU is only good for 720p HEVC. The RPi 4 should be good for 1080p24 HEVC in software at least. But it also has a hardware HEVC decoder. If you find an updated player that supports it you should be good up to 1080p60, maybe even 4K60. Upscaling by the RPi 3 isn't great (bicubic?). But it's better than the cheap android TV boxes (bilinear?).

    The RPi hardware includes an MPEG 2 decoder but to use it you must purchase an MPEG 2 licence for ~US$5. It can play MPEG 2 with its software decoder but the RPi 3 couldn't quite keep up with broadcast 1080i30 decoding+deinterlacing in software. After buying the MPEG 2 license it worked fine.

    Overall, the RPi 3 makes for a pretty good media player. RPi 4 should only be better.
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  3. jagabo: Thank you for your response. I have learned a lot from you over the years here at VideoHelp. Thank you for everything you do to educate us.
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  4. I hope the Raspberry Pi 4 is good for a bit of web browsing such as going to the CTV website and watching those classic TV Shows and Movies that one can watch for free.

    I did read that Pysol Solitaire has been put into Python 3 so hopefully someday that can work on the Raspberry Pi.
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  5. https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/search.php?keywords=Pysol&sid=42c71fe96489343dbb3c0470966544ee

    It looks like it is supported. Hopefully it is even better now since it has been upgraded to Python 3

    https://sourceforge.net/projects/pysolfc/files/

    Now if it can play Sudoku Dream and Hangaroo what more could one want for games?
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  6. My main interest with the RPi is to playback videos stored on my NAS. So I used a minimalist OpenElec install for Kodi -- without a web browser. But there are several web browser available, including ones based on Chrome and FireFox:

    https://www.raspberrypistarterkits.com/guide/best-web-browser-raspberry-pi/

    In addition, Kodi (and I presume other media players under RPi) can play m3u8 links to live or prerecorded streaming channels.
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  7. jagabo: From the videos I am watching on YouTube it seems the Raspberry Pi 4 is quite useful technology. I think I would be mostly using it for playback of video from a USB portable hard drive. I am kicking myself I hadn't checked on USB 2 TB Hard Drive prices as of late and Best Buy had a sale where the price had dropped to about 60 bucks each. Those little hard drives are so handy. We recently backed up our home videos that we taped with our digital video camera. I used Vidcoder to convert them to 360p .h264 and 360p h265 .mp4 files.

    My Mom loves Pysol Solitaire and she can be on her laptop for hours playing it; so it would be nice to have a Raspberry Pi 4 hooked to her bedroom TV so she can play it there as well.
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  8. Mr. Computer Geek dannyboy48888's Avatar
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    I own a 2gb pi 4 YouTube video in chrome skips on 1080p for now, but if you drop the link in vlc or get it with youtube-dl it plays fine via hardware decode. Kodi works now and I've tested 1080p avc with no issues. No mpeg-2 license needed as the pi 4 CPU is fast enough, on the site it will tell you dont buy if its for a pi 4. Now that its been out for a bit and polish has been applied to rapsbian it truly is a full blown PC. And yes he gigabit lan will do 1gb no problem, I routinely move file to and from via samba from my windows PC. Get a powered USB 3.0 hub for external drives though as the pi's power supply ain't meant to run it a full speed and a external load.
    if all else fails read the manual
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  9. dannyboy48888: Thank you for your post. If it is of interest Pysol Solitaire has many Solitaire Games. I have played it for years on our Windows Desktops and Laptops. If 720p plays smoothly that is terrific. A powered USB 3.0 hub that is a good suggestions as I was wondering whether plugging in a hard drive would tax it too much.

    I have read that the boxes you drop the Raspberry Pi 4 into that some slots don't match up and people are not happy with the wear and tear on the mini usb and mini hdmi cable ends.

    What about the keyboard and mouse do they tax the power supply to a great degree and can one use a full sized keyboard or wireless keyboard and mouse?
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  10. Originally Posted by Tom Saurus View Post
    I am kicking myself I hadn't checked on USB 2 TB Hard Drive prices as of late and Best Buy had a sale where the price had dropped to about 60 bucks each.
    Why kick yourself? That's the everyday price at Amazon and NewEgg. Black Friday sales will be coming soon.
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  11. Originally Posted by Tom Saurus View Post
    I have read that the boxes you drop the Raspberry Pi 4 into that some slots don't match up
    Just make sure you get a case designed for the RPi 4.

    Originally Posted by Tom Saurus View Post
    and people are not happy with the wear and tear on the mini usb and mini hdmi cable ends.
    Yeah, I don't like the smaller connectors in general. But that's only a problem for devices you will be disconnecting a lot. You can always use short pigtail cables to go from mini to mini or normal connectors and disconnect at the end of the pigtail rather than at the RPi. Of course that adds to the cost.

    Originally Posted by Tom Saurus View Post
    What about the keyboard and mouse do they tax the power supply to a great degree and can one use a full sized keyboard or wireless keyboard and mouse?
    You can use pretty much any keyboard and mouse that works with Windows. Keyboards and mice are very low power devices that are very easily powered via USB.
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  12. Mr. Computer Geek dannyboy48888's Avatar
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    The zebra cases by c4 labs are awesome, got from them for my pi 3&4. For hubs certain ones may cause read errors from external drives. Had one by blackweb that did that. This is the hub I'm using now: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07G8CMR18?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title
    if all else fails read the manual
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  13. What I got from folks using Raspberry Pi4, you'd need heatsink, it tends to heat up now, for the power it has, check amazon, so basically the whole thing comes close to $100. Or something ~75-$80 if not needeng kit, but just model and heatsink with case, depends what RAM you get. It supposedly manages to play fullHD as mpeg2 without decoder. Not saying it is not useful to buy mpeg2 decoder, just presenting that it got faster again.
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  14. jagabo: Thank you for answering my questions. I live in Canada so the prices are higher here. The 2TB hard drives at the regular price are just shy of 90 bucks both at Best Buy Canada and Amazon Canada. However I remember paying 140 bucks per these type of drives; so even the regular price is a lot better than it used to be. It probably won't be all that long before Best Buy Canada puts them on sale again. Does anyone know if one was to go to a higher capacity drive such as 4 TB does Raspberry Pi 4 have any issues? 2 TB seemed to be maximum for most devices. This being written though I will probably stick to 2 TB hard drives but I do notice they have slim 4 TB hard drives now at a nice price point. I intend some to buy a Solid State Drive.

    dannyboy48888: Thank you for providing this information. The Hub that you bought does it have a nice long power cord?
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  15. _Al_: Thank you for this information.
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  16. Member mikesbytes's Avatar
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    I've too have been thinking of purchasing a Raspberry Pi, the model will depend on what I want to do with it. At the moment I'm looking Raspberry Pi High Quality (HQ) Camera. Has anyone used it and how did you go?
    Have a nice Day
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