Pi 5 (and CM5 and Pi 500) use the BCM2712 SoC which has only has hardware decode for H.265 aka HEVC. The legacy VideoCore codecs present on the older SoCs were limited to (around) 1080p anyway. Unless you need to do something else that is particularly CPU intensive at the same time as watching videos, the Pi 5 will be fine doing video decode on the ARM for Kodi.
Jeff Geerling tested this (https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2024/ ... -handle-4k) and found everything up to and including 4Kp30 was no problem for Kodi on the Pi 5 in H.264. At 60 frames per second (i.e. 4Kp60) it wasn't perfect, but may have improved since he tested it. If you only have 1080p aka 2K content then there will be no problem at all. And for Pi 4 it will top out at 1080p decode for H.264 - anything higher res will be software decoded on the ARM due to the above-noted hardware limitation.
Probably best just to go for the Pi 5 with its faster ARM complex.
Jeff Geerling tested this (https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2024/ ... -handle-4k) and found everything up to and including 4Kp30 was no problem for Kodi on the Pi 5 in H.264. At 60 frames per second (i.e. 4Kp60) it wasn't perfect, but may have improved since he tested it. If you only have 1080p aka 2K content then there will be no problem at all. And for Pi 4 it will top out at 1080p decode for H.264 - anything higher res will be software decoded on the ARM due to the above-noted hardware limitation.
Probably best just to go for the Pi 5 with its faster ARM complex.
Statistics: Posted by andrum99 — Sat Jul 19, 2025 5:32 am