Info-beamer hosted OS 14 december update šŸ„³

Announcements
1

The stable release branch of the info-beamer OS has been updated to version 241217-d34b18. It is now the default for all new devices and will eventually roll out to all existing devices starting next year.

If you want to apply the update manually, go to a deviceā€™s detail page, click on Manage, then select ā€œActivate stable channelā€¦ā€ and confirm. This will download the update in the background, install it and then quickly reboot into the new version.

This update brings a lot of nice additions and performance improvements (more detailed changes can be seen in individual updates made in the forum post thread):

  • The Linux kernel has been updated to 6.6.65
    • Among the usual security updates, this includes a ton of improvements regarding stability of the DRM (direct rendering manager) subsystem which info-beamer uses to place content on the screen. Some of those changes resulted from our bug reports and discussion on the Pi forum: 1, 2
  • New features:
    • General performance improvements for high memory Pi4/Pi5 devices thanks to the new NUMA feature. (Deactivated for now, as it can cause flickering for 4K 10bit HEVC videos on 4K output).
    • On Pi4/Pi5, the status of the attached display is now forwarded to the dashboard as a maintenance event. Reconnecting the display clears this event.
    • Faster implementation of content processes, used by the new browser package. This almost doubles the framerate and everything should be perfectly smooth now.
    • Optional 64bit mode for older Pi3 and Pi Zero 2 devices: If activated, they can too use the new browser package and benefit from the performance improvements made in the Pi4/Pi5 version of the playback engine. More info on that in a follow-up post soon.
    • Added support for CM5, Pi5 2GB model and newer board revisions of the Pi5.
    • Added support for the 7" display on the Pi5.
    • Audio/video syncing has been improved.
    • Overall optimizations in the info-beamer playback engine, like minimizing overdraw when rendering videos on top of each other.
  • Bug fixes:
    • When using a package that supports streaming, sometimes the ability to stream wouldnā€™t be applied properly after a reboot.
    • Stability improvements due to the above mentioned DRM fixes and internal reorganization on how info-beamer renders content on the screen.
    • Removed 512MB video memory limit on Pi5. It can now use the full system memory if needed.
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