[coachclass]

It seems like every quadcore Android TV box out there right now is based on the Rockchip 3188 CPU. But it seems none of them have hardware video decoding. As I understand it, it's because Rockchip doesn't open source the code to interact with the hardware graphics components...something like that.

Which begs the question - is there such a dearth of chip manufacturers out there that EVERY quadcore Android TV box uses Rockchip? Are there no chip makers who are helping the device makers and the community support hardware decoding?

It just seems a really odd situation for Android boxes. A open source OS is being held back by closed source hardware?

Admittedly, I don't understand the details of how/why this roadblock exists. I don't understand what it means for Rockchip to open source their hardware.

I am holding off on buying these things. I'd rather give my money to a chip maker that isn't getting in the way of progress. Do I have the wrong perception of the situation?

[joelbaby]

Wait for atv580, ATV1800, ATV180 ... or whatever Pivos will repackage these devices as.

These come with m8 chips which are more powerful than rk3188.
http://www.geniatech.com/pa/atv580.asp
http://www.geniatech.com/pa/atv1800.asp
http://www.geniatech.com/pa/atv180.asp

Eta: November

[Starstream]

Android has a universal system for video decoding called libstagefright this is what general XBMC for Android uses.

Not all chipsets and accompanying builds of Android support libstagefright, Rockchip does but only to a degree and bugs/issues in their libstagefright implementation can break video decoding on XBMC. Rockchip are aware of this but whether they will fix it I don't know (that's what I last read on the situation).

The various media players on Android app store often sign private agreements to get access to the hardware bypassing libstagefright but that is something XBMC will never do as it goes against open source.

Amlogic XBMC is a separate thing from the general Android XBMC, these builds of XBMC are meant specifically for Android running on Amlogic chipsets like the boxes joelbaby points out, Amlogic allowed open source access to their hardware video decoding which made this a possibility.

At least that's my understanding of the situation if it helps.

There are more advanced chips like the Amlogic M8 in the pipeline but also boxes using other Android chips like Nvidia ones in the works too that work with libstagefright, in fact Archos have just launched the TV Connect which features a dual core TI OMAP 4470 a chip with is similar to the hardware in the iPad 3 & a rare item for this Android TV market, I have one on the way to check out.