[MediaPi]

Cubieboard: Unlocking CedarX Video Decode Accelerator on AllWinner A20.


Different board but same SOC (allwinner A20). with price so low I'm sure it will get support to work on xbmc. Agreed at the moment its worth $0 if you want xbmc to work on it. But come on modern hardware is capable of running 1080p. you need is a faster SOC. To you have to see the potential of this. Also this soc is like what most chinese sell so if this gets cracked your talking about dirt cheap hardware in the future. won't be surprised if it reaches $20

Also look at this thread
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...5&page=104

""No CedarX acceleration till XBMC get the info they need from all winner.

Until then I am using Gotham RC1 with a XM player and smbwrapper.apk

Runs 90% of the vids with mx wrapper!!

Happy for now, that I didn't totally waste $40 on a paper weight""

so he seems to have something working.

[Nu7s]

It's not even worth $20, and I'm not exaggerating. I have an Allwinner A10 device, and it's total junk.

Mele A2000, turned it into an automated downloader.

[ChicagoBob123]

I have the Banana Pi board and am running Android. Tonight I will try to load XMBC and see what it can do.
I don't use 1080p content but do use DVD (VOB) file playback,
When I see the results I will write back. I have already played Hulu Plus streams played Raw VOB's using MX Player
and run NetFlix (but in droid 4.2 you dont get high res)
I general the speed of this CPU/GPU is much faster.

I also did a quick check with the Raspian build and it was noticeably smoother/quicker.
I have three pi's so it was easy to notice.
My only hope is there will be another once of these with a dual 2Ghz. These inexpensive micro computers are
really great to leave on and do small tasks when I dont want to leave my PC on all the time.
Like being a NAS controller. Or in an inexpensive laptop out of parts.

Anyway enough of being happy to see another inexpensive small computer.
Post what I know tonight or tomorrow.

[MediaPi]

cooool Im excited to see the results. does anyone want ChicagoBob123 to test something? Also ChicagoBob123 if you got time and expertise a video showing the results would be awesome. Also how much did you get it for and where from. thankyou

[ChicagoBob123]

OK here is all I have for you so far.
I installed XBMC and its building the movie database. (thats taking a while)
I set up the Banana PI to 108060P and started to play a DVD movie clips.
All I can say is they play just fine. I dont have a good way upload video examples sorry,
but it played well at 1080p.
Now remember the source is a DVD in raw VOB format.
Its not a blu ray nor an MP4 which has been compressed down.
Its being fed from my NAS drive thats on the network.
I am going to take this thing apart and
place it on my HD set and see how it looks.
So far I am more than pleased.
Its working out very well.

---

Forgot to add I got it from AliExpress for 65. That included shipping.

[MediaPi]

not mentioned what version XBMC. Sorry for sounding suspisious but you make it sounds so easy when people have had hard time with allwinner A10/A20. and you details are to vague. And since you already have 3 Pis I would have assumed natural to compare the results, I would have. If it indeed can play 1080p at this early moment in time. thats amazing news. BUT "seeing is believing"

[nickr]

He didn't say it played 1080p sources. He said it upscaled DVD sources (ie probably 480p or 576p) to a 1080p screen.

[ChicagoBob123]

Wow I didn't know this was so hard because in this case it wasn't.
The Banana Pi has a img file you download for Android I used it and set up the Pi.
I am hooked up to my network via Ethernet.
I went back to a standard Droid Launcher because I didnt like the one that came with the
Banana Pi. The video I think defaulted to 720p so I set it to 1080p 60 in the Android
display settings. I also tried 1080i 60. That just worked.

I first tried ESFile plus MXPlayer to play the DVD folders on my NAS
but it can not play a DVD from folders just individual VOB files.
Since there is no VLC player for Android I looked around the internet and found
a wiki on how to load XBMC onto Android. I also noticed it had ARM 7 support.

I downloaded the only version I knew existed of XBMC for Andriod. Installed it.
I think it said it was Gotham version 13 when I installed it.
If the forum let me upload a picture I would upload the stills from while it was installing.
Once XBMC was installed I connected it to my NAS device which is a Raspberry PI with a USB drive.
It took a little figuring out but I got it to load. While it started building a Database I decided
to try and play a movie from recently added and it did. I played a bit of Back To the Future.
At 1080p resolution. It played fine. I did not know this was so difficult but in Android Mode
everything was pretty simple. I played parts of several more movies. They seemed a little slow
to load at times but then played.
XBMC at times would not let me exit but hitting the esc key on the keyboard brought me back to the
main Andoid menu. I used Advanced Task Killer to Kill everything and go back in to experiment some more.

I am not sure what kind of detail you need or want. It went pretty smoothly.
I unplugged everything from the Banana Pi and moved to hook it up to my 42 inch HD set.
Hooked it up and things went well. I watched clips from several movies and they played well.
I streamed parts of several shows using Hulu Plus and it performed much better than I expected.
Netflix DID not go as well as my PC. This will have to wait for the Android 4.4 update which will include
Netflix HD mode.

Raspberry PI is a great device but Linux is pretty rough on me. Android on the other hand has a pretty big
software base, needs to have things done or it wont work.
In general after I downloaded
Played Angry Birds as well, for a minute or two. So far its been pretty cool.

---

"He didn't say it played 1080p sources. He said it upscaled DVD sources (ie probably 480p or 576p) to a 1080p screen. "

That is correct 480p. I have no 1080p source to play. Dont get me wrong I have a blue Ray player but no blu ray disc for my PC.

So I don.t have any HD content. If you have an internet example you want me to try and its in US format etc.
I can download it.

[ChicagoBob123]

OK I wanted to add I had some home video footage shot in HD. I used Hand Brake to make it into a MKV at 1920x1080 and it played back just fine using MXPlayer, alas XBMC seems to do nothing but crashing now.
Have to reload I guess. Will let you know about XBMC after I reload it.

[MediaPi]

I'm sorry for doubting you! wow thats great CBob. can you add the addon youtube here.

UNOFFICIAL FIXED REVISION 4.14.14

I integrated several fixes to hopefully provide a mostly working YouTube and Vimeo addon. This may not work for all countries or devices. I’ve tested this on a Windows 7 PC in XBMC Gotham and the following issues are resolved on my end in the USA with this YouTube revision...

• Logon working
  
• VEVO, as well as other video issues now working
  
• Live streams working
  

2-Step Verification is probably not working. If you have 2-Step enabled, try disabling it, then logging into your XBMC YouTube account, make sure it’s working, then turn 2-Step Verification back on. That might work.


DOWNLOAD LINK
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/i5k0ua5...ns_4.23.14

To install, first uninstall your addon, then manually install this addon from System>Addons>Install from zip file.

Delete the cookie "yt-cookiejar.txt" located in the following folder: xbmc/userdata/addon_data/plugin.video.youtube. For windows user's, you'll find the xbmc folder in C:\Users\UserAccount\AppData\Roaming.

TROUBLESHOOTING:

LINUX
If you're running this on a linux based system, it's possible your curl is outdated causing issues. Check this post for more information --> LINK.

WINDOWS

1. If you first installed this plugin from the repository, and the revised addon does not work, it's possible XBMC isn't overwriting the original plugin package. Delete the original plugin package, and associated install files to ensure the revised plugin installs properly.
2. First, enter the following into the Windows Start Menu search box: %appdata%\XBMC\addons\packages This will open the packages folder. Now, delete any instance of the file named: plugin.video.youtube
   
3. Next, open the addons folder by entering %appdata%\XBMC\addons\ Look for a folder named: plugin.video.youtube. If that folder exists, then delete the folder.
   
4. Next, open the addon_data folder by entering %appdata%\XBMC\userdata\addon_data Look for a folder named: plugin.video.youtube. If that folder exists, then delete the folder.
   
5. Last, install the plugin manually by starting XBMC, then go to Settings>Addons>Install from zip
   
6. After install, enter your YouTube username and password to see if it works.
   

Thanks to all that fix and post ways to resolve broken addons

LIST OF FIXES APPLIED

YOUTUBE FIXES

• To solve the login problems, I added the fix from this post: Reply #52. If you continue to have login problems, you may have to find a different fix.
  
• To fix a problem with VEVO videos not playing, as well as certain videos added to favorites not playing, I added the YouTubePlayer.py from this post: Reply #217
  
• To fix a problem with LIVE streams not playing, I compared an addon sent to from member RedPenguin, and found a duplicated entry at line 362 & 363 and replaced with the necessary code in YouTubePlayer.py.

VIMEO FIXES

• To get Vimeo working in Gotham Beta 2 I added the fixes found in this post: Post #256, and added the VimeoPlayer.py found in this post: Post #240
  

Set the settings to 1080p and try a link in youtube and see if it plays 1080p

Also its great news that Android has gotten a head start but I would love to know how Linux works on this. thats the main clincher for me and I'm guessing most. Good indepth detail on your progress though. If at all possible and you have time I would love to see if you can run lnux on this. I heard you can run Ubuntu and then maybe install XBMC and see how it goes. Love to see the software start to take of on this. keep us informed CBob

[ChicagoBob123]

I got bad news do you. 1080p from XBMC was awful, The playback worked fine with ESFileShare and MXPlayer under Android. Not sure what optimization MXPlayer has that XBMC doesnt but it doesnt.
So I can use it for my 480p DVD's and thats all for now.
Not sure who takes care of such issues.

[MediaPi]

Thanks CBob. its as expected. Its not got hardware acceleration (yet?) for allwainner A20. Enjoy your board and keep us updated on anything you found interesting. This board might stir interest to get it working under XBMC (lets hope). but to be honest I've gotten used to menu load time in Raspberry pi and I'm quite happy for 2014

[nabberuk]

Its already come down in price
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Free-ship...48169.html

$52.74 (£31.13) shipped and the seller has good feedback and 48 orders. Thats insane. In Uk Raspberry Pi model B is £28.07 thats £3.06 difference.

dual core Cortex A7 processor @ 1 GHz
1GB DDR3 SDRAM
1x SATA port
Gigabit Ethernet
Onboard IR receiver
Micphone-in

for £3 more LOL. omg just need hardware decoding. This has got an amazing platform to launch itself. Price will come down ever more as competition rises and the boards start to sell like crazy. Imagine openelec on this.

It could cost £1 and it would still be useless without hardware decoding...

A product isn't just the hardware.

[nickr]

Has anyone tried vdpau on this board?

https://github.com/linux-sunxi

[MediaPi]

VidOn.Me released some code recently. That could be code needed to get XBMC working on banana Pi. But got news from an XBMC dev KOYING

"The basic verdict is that no core XBMC dev has the desire to take up the task of porting the vidon.me code to XBMC.
A10/A20 being already quite outdated SoC's, it's just not worth it. "

so as things stand and maybe its definite. Banana Pi will not be having XBMC running on this board. So untill something changes (looks unlikely so far) don't buy banana pi for running on XBMC. But if interest peaks high enough maybe that would persuade XBMC team...