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Port XBMC to PS3 (PlayStation 3) to run on Linux ("Other OS") or natively on GameOS? - Printable Version

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- YodaEXE - 2011-01-15

poofyhairguy Wrote:One thing I will say, the drama involving the cracking of the PS3 is priceless. Sony is trying to put horses back into barns using legal maneuvers, and may end up getting a precedent set against Eulas in the process. Sony is the only reason us Americans have any notion of fair use (outside the stupid exceptions of the DMCA), and they might accidentally destroy the framework that has protected closed source software and hardware for ages.

In fact, Sony hasn't handled anything so badly in a while. They are obviously terrified of pirates, because in there mind pirates equals "needing a PS4 sooner than we wanted" even though full scale piracy has been going on with the Wii and 360 communities for a while (especially the Wii, Wiiflow is amazing) and both those consoles are still going strong. Sony is just super control freaks, from their media departments to their hardware department.

The drama is more interesting than the hardware....

Agreed. It's been fascinating watching the train wreck that is Sony's response to everything that has happened recently.


- htpc guy - 2011-01-15

Are we still talking about this?


- waldo22 - 2011-01-15

poofyhairguy Wrote:The only people its a best option for are those who are too cheap to shell out for a HTPC.

I've made this point before, but I want to re-iterate it here.

I think it's a great option for people who already have one.

And that's a lot of people (not me, all I have is an Xbox1, with XBMC4Xbox, of course...).

My point is, if you have to go out and buy something for your new HTPC, who would buy a PS3 if they could buy an ION? No one should.

But if you already have a PS3, and there's a working XBMC port that installs with a USB key and no hassle, then you don't have to spend a dime to have an awesome media center.

I completely understand why the devs aren't working on it, and I agree with their decision.

But they said they would be glad to accept patches! They're not opposed to any working port, they just don't want to do it themselves.

Perhaps someone could pay Nvidia to compile their closed Linux driver for PPC? Wonder how much dough that would take...


- stoli - 2011-01-15

When are the Devs going to port to the best gaming system ever:
Image


*correction* - joebrady - 2011-01-15

Image


- TugboatBill - 2011-01-15

I can see it now.... XBMC is finally ported to PS3 and the first support post occurs:
"Why is it so slow?"
Laugh


- nikiiv - 2011-01-15

Hm.. every one is looking to PS3 linux port (beside non-devs speaking for the devs, that is pathetic imho).
However lesson from the past is that XBMP fro XBOX was possible because there was an XDK leaked right?
I don't think that there is a option for a viable port unless one of
a) There is a decent graphics driver which includes hardware based H.264 decoding
OR
b) there is a leaked development kit, which can be used to make the port utilizing the API that Sony have for PS3 developer


- squarepusher - 2011-01-21

poofyhairguy Wrote:But see, that is where you are wrong. Its not that there is some pre-key/post-key mentality. It is that, quite honestly, in 2011 a PS3 isn't that great of HTPC hardware. Back in 2006, it was amazing. In 2011? Not so much.

This is where you are 100% wrong. The PS3 on its best day is a worse media center than any ION system. Why?

I guess the general reaction to your entire post would be - maybe you don't care about a PS3 XBMC port, but others do. Others would like to see XBMC on PS3, and just because you don't is, well, frankly, irrelevant.

For instance, I honestly don't care about any ION system, to be frank with you. Have no interest in ever buying one.

A PS3 port of XBMC has awesome written all over it - everybody is talking about it, everybody wants it, and judging by the amount of requests you're getting, looks like the only ones that don't feel the same way are the devs.

It would be a return to its roots - and that is console-land with a leaked SDK. That's how XBMC (and XBMP, its predecessor) began, that is what the GUI is built around (fact) and nobody can pussyfoot around that and act as if it wasn't. I'm sorry if you guys weren't around when this project was called XBOX Media Player, but I was. This project began as a media player FOR a console - not a HTPC box.

PlayStation3 is fast becoming the Xbox 1 of its day - and to have this kind of apathetic response from a development group that should know better is quite frankly just inexcusable. Everybody could add 2 + 2 together here and realize the amount of potential there is in having a Lv2 GameOS XBMC port - IF IMPLEMENTED WELL.

I don't care about running the latest super-duper skin - if a PS3 XBMC port could manage full-speed H264/x264, then most users would be satisfied. That it would be inferior to an ION would be quite frankly irrelevant - what counts is that it does what most people want out of it.

I don't wish to be antagonistic here - but it's quite dispiriting to have to sift through page and page here of litanous posts where people are getting scorned for even daring to ask about a PS3 port. It just sounds like people are making up excuses for not wanting to do a port in the first place, and instead are insistent on telling others how much the PS3 sucks and that they would not want a port anyway. That is not a constructive response.

Back on-point:

Me and Themaister have been working on a Mplayer port - it already works on PS3, but the current problem is that H264 is damn slow. We're already using a shader for the YUV-to-RGB conversion, so that takes some of the load off the PPU. We don't use the SPEs due to lack of experience on that front, although to get anywhere we would obviously have to.

Github is here:

https://github.com/Themaister/SLIMPlayer

We researched some of the OtherOS development back in the day - it seems like none of them eventually delivered on an SPE-accelerated H264 decoder - although there are a bunch of academic dissertations on the topic.

We will need some more experienced devs to help us out if we're going to make some progress on this.

Quote:1. A PS3's Cell CPU for general purpose tasks (like the power needed for skins like Aeon) is about as slow as a Pentium 3 800 MHZ CPU. Yeah, really.

This is a bit of a flawed analogy. You're talking about the PPU that is the equivalent of a Pentium 3 800MHz CPU (and even that is a massive exaggeration - Pentium 4 is more the kind of ballpark we're talking about). You simply can't expect an in-order PPC to be fed code full of branches and other stuff that out-of-order branch-predictive Intel CPUs have no problem with and then declare it to be the equivalent of a 'Pentium 3 800Mhz CPU'. You have to optimize for the specific architecture - and in this case, since the architecture is fixed, at least you know what to aim for. There's only one fixed hardware set to optimize for - a blessing in disguise in some cases.

You are aware how insanely fast the SPEs are, right? And you have 6 of them - there's lots of potential there - the only problem is how to use them efficiently for programs of this type.

Quote:2. A PS3 has only 256mb of RAM, meaning that all decent skins will CRAWL on there. I know this because my AppleTV has the same restriction and its hardware is "fully utilized." An ION system with 2GB of RAM is magnitudes better.

You have 256MB of additional RAM on the RSX that you can use and allocate as well. Read up on the SDK docs.

Quote:3. A PS3 has a rotational HD, in the age of SSDs. An ION system with a SSD will have MAGNITUDES better performance in that area.

PS3, unlike the Xbox 360, allows you to easily replace HDs. You can put an SSD in if you care about that kind of stuff - Digital Foundry did just that and saw GT5 loading times becoming vastly better as a result of it.

To whoever did the OpenGL ES driver - that looks promising - might be a good stepping stone towards getting XBMC eventually on the PS3.


- topfs2 - 2011-01-21

squarepusher Wrote:I guess the general reaction to your entire post would be - maybe you don't care about a PS3 XBMC port, but others do. Others would like to see XBMC on PS3, and just because you don't is, well, frankly, irrelevant.

I haven't even read the rest of your post because it is irrelevant. If you want it, you do it..
Patches welcomed.


- snipes420 - 2011-01-21

OK I only skimmed this thread but I didn't notice anyone mention the opensource toolchain for the native ps3 OS.

PSL1GHT

what linux on the ps3 is lacking is any decent support for the gpu (RSX drivers) but my understanding was that since psl1ght is native it does have support for Cg

Oohhh! Nvidia.... (droooool...)


- squarepusher - 2011-01-21

topfs2 Wrote:I haven't even read the rest of your post because it is irrelevant. If you want it, you do it..
Patches welcomed.

It's very unfortunate that you didn't take the time to read the rest of my post (I don't mean this sarcastically). Because if you did, you'd find that I had posted a link to a Github page and the call for 'experienced devs' to help out - in this case, a slim port of Mplayer.

Quote:Back on-point:

Me and Themaister have been working on a Mplayer port - it already works on PS3, but the current problem is that H264 is damn slow. We're already using a shader for the YUV-to-RGB conversion, so that takes some of the load off the PPU. We don't use the SPEs due to lack of experience on that front, although to get anywhere we would obviously have to.

Github is here:

https://github.com/Themaister/SLIMPlayer

We researched some of the OtherOS development back in the day - it seems like none of them eventually delivered on an SPE-accelerated H264 decoder - although there are a bunch of academic dissertations on the topic.

We will need some more experienced devs to help us out if we're going to make some progress on this.

It's already running on PS3, it just runs H264 very crappily - and there needs to be a good SPE decoder implementation for that. It can be done - the academic dissertations prove that it can be done, and that the SPEs can work wonders for it - it's just hard to code, and beyond our current skillset.

First - ffmpeg/Mplayer needs to be running H264 decently before we even begin to consider trying to port XBMC to PS3. And whether or not we are going to do that or have the necessary skillset to do that is even up for debate. Up to this point, we just ported mainly console videogame emulators.

At least we're willing to give it a try. Hopefully some skilled devs in here on the hardware side have some experience with H264 and can give us some pointers on how to do an SPE-based decoder for it.


- squarepusher - 2011-01-21

snipes420 Wrote:OK I only skimmed this thread but I didn't notice anyone mention the opensource toolchain for the native ps3 OS.

PSL1GHT

what linux on the ps3 is lacking is any decent support for the gpu (RSX drivers) but my understanding was that since psl1ght is native it does have support for Cg

Oohhh! Nvidia.... (droooool...)

It's been my general understanding that only the PS3 SDK at the moment has the Nvidia runtime Cg compiler -the PSL1GHT front page on github states that it can't do fragment shaders yet - although I have seen some tools such as Hermes' PS3Loadx use some NV40 shaders, so I guess it is possible in a backwards fashion.

Still, I don't see the problem with having an XBMC PS3 port that uses the PS3 SDK as its main target - remember that XBMC started out with the XDK- and before it was ever ported to PC, that was its main target. They never used OpenXDK for XBMC because it was too lacking - PSL1GHT is still lacking in some ways compared to the PS3 SDK but it's progressing nicely.


- wildwassit - 2011-01-21

Just want to wish squarepusher and Themaister good luck. I would love to have a one box solution for console gaming and media and hope you manage to get it working.

Unfortunately I'm not a dev but if there is anything I can do let me know.


- topfs2 - 2011-01-21

squarepusher Wrote:It's very unfortunate that you didn't take the time to read the rest of my post (I don't mean this sarcastically). Because if you did, you'd find that I had posted a link to a Github page and the call for 'experienced devs' to help out - in this case, a slim port of Mplayer.

And if you would have read my previous posts I have said that playback may be possible since there exist SPU accelerated players. So this is not news. As stated multiple times in this thread, playback is not the problem.

squarepusher Wrote:Still, I don't see the problem with having an XBMC PS3 port that uses the PS3 SDK as its main target - remember that XBMC started out with the XDK- and before it was ever ported to PC, that was its main target. They never used OpenXDK for XBMC because it was too lacking - PSL1GHT is still lacking in some ways compared to the PS3 SDK but it's progressing nicely.

And we don't want to go back there. It was a legal nightmare and the legal action (no matter if won) against the key hacker by sony shows that they will hunt people doing stuff like that. XBMC is finally gaining recognition as a major player in the STB market and we have contacts with multiple companies, why risk this by having legal actions from sony on our heads.

That being said, it is GPL. You are more than free to pursue this on your own and you are more than free to fork and do this work wherever you please. The devs have made it clear we are not interested in doing this work which is why I stated so clearly, if you want it, you do it. This thread is really closing to end of discussion phase.

Cheers,
Tobias


- XBMC is Dead - 2011-01-21

topfs2 Wrote:And if you would have read my previous posts I have said that playback may be possible since there exist SPU accelerated players. So this is not news. As stated multiple times in this thread, playback is not the problem.



And we don't want to go back there. It was a legal nightmare and the legal action (no matter if won) against the key hacker by sony shows that they will hunt people doing stuff like that. XBMC is finally gaining recognition as a major player in the STB market and we have contacts with multiple companies, why risk this by having legal actions from sony on our heads.

That being said, it is GPL. You are more than free to pursue this on your own and you are more than free to fork and do this work wherever you please. The devs have made it clear we are not interested in doing this work which is why I stated so clearly, if you want it, you do it. This thread is really closing to end of discussion phase.

Cheers,
Tobias

How sad all them years i've held XBMC bench mark. All the support and now just another product.

Well thanks for many years of hard work. I mean that really.

Phil

So whats the next standardHuh