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Allwinner A10 : Is XBMC ported to MALI-400MP ? - Printable Version

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RE: Allwinner A10 : Is XBMC ported to MALI-400MP ? - Ned Scott - 2012-07-02

Outside of what I may or may not know... It's a fairly safe bet that someone like OpenELEC or GeeXboX would come along with something easy to install and use.


RE: Allwinner A10 : Is XBMC ported to MALI-400MP ? - sstavross - 2012-07-02

(2012-07-02, 22:21)Ned Scott Wrote: It's going to be VERY easy to run XBMC on these Allwinner A10 devices...

...that's all I'm allowed to say right now...

I am not going to ask when.... Rofl
I am going to ask: Why?
Is it because the A10 chip is very powerful or because you can "hack" it easily?



RE: Allwinner A10 : Is XBMC ported to MALI-400MP ? - thefrog - 2012-07-02

I had a great time with my RPi and did several things with it, but the no MPEG2 license has me dead in the water with my XBMC plans. There doesnt seem to be any impetus over there to address that, which means my dreams of a little RPi on every TV in the house and all my Christmas gift receiving friends house's are dashed.

A single silicon dust cable card tuner per house, some PVR and a DVD/BD ISO SAN is what I want. My old xbox1 XBMC needs replaced. I just do not like how folks will shrug and want you to transcode years and TB of content and lose all the menu systems and extra content.

I will keep this thread watched ... I know better than to hold my breath... And it is way too early to ask if it will do 'this' or 'that' codec.


RE: Allwinner A10 : Is XBMC ported to MALI-400MP ? - Ned Scott - 2012-07-02

I don't know a lot of the technical details, but one thing to remember is that XBMC for ARM is no longer a baby. We've been running on iOS/ATV2 for over a year, and we're even on several other ARM devices like the Raspberry Pi (wiki), CuBox (wiki), and some of those PandaBoards/ BeagleBoard/Bone. Davilla showed us a sneak peak video in another thread about another ARM box (from Pivos) running XBMC that uses the same MALI-400MP GPU. All these different platforms bleed into each other, too, as well as efficiency improvements from the desktop side.

I do know that the hackability of the A10 gives us more options than we have on other platforms, which certainly makes things easier. No jailbreaking or anything like that required. Being able to run linux on it is very huge.

As for power, I'm not sure how A10 compares to other ARM SoCs out there, but I can tell you that it's more powerful than a Raspberry Pi (just by the specs), and builds for the R-Pi are getting more snappy and better by the day. A dev would have to tell you more, but I suspect the A10 would be able to handle XBMC as good as (if not better) than an Apple TV 2. That's assuming everything goes well and there are no show stoppers (there's still a ways to go).


RE: Allwinner A10 : Is XBMC ported to MALI-400MP ? - Sam.Nazarko - 2012-07-02

Shotgun


RE: Allwinner A10 : Is XBMC ported to MALI-400MP ? - Robotica - 2012-07-02

(2012-07-02, 23:01)Sam.Nazarko Wrote: Shotgun

Besides raspbmc, openelec and xbmclive will also pop rather soon than later

;-)


RE: Allwinner A10 : Is XBMC ported to MALI-400MP ? - Hans0815 - 2012-07-02

That thread sound very interesting.

I can get A10 / A13 Boards from china very cheap. maybe with cases. So i look forward for a ported xbmc version to the allwinner Smile

Thanks to all dev´s


RE: Allwinner A10 : Is XBMC ported to MALI-400MP ? - j1nx - 2012-07-02

It is not just about the CPU and GPU. If it comes down to what we want to do with it, the VPU is actually the most important! Now I have not been involved for the last couple of days but what I unedrstand out of the IRC logs. The linux version of the VPU library == crap


RE: Allwinner A10 : Is XBMC ported to MALI-400MP ? - gabrielbsb - 2012-07-02

Guys, it comes with a remote so I think it has an IR receiver embed, right? So can I use my Logitech Harmony remote to control it? And what about dual boot? Dual boot android/xbmc would be nice, xbmc for everything and android for netflix Smile
I was going to buy the MK802, it's cheaper, smaller a have 1gb ram, but this Mele A1000 seems to be a more solid device.


RE: Allwinner A10 : Is XBMC ported to MALI-400MP ? - Hans0815 - 2012-07-02

(2012-07-02, 23:24)j1nx Wrote: the VPU is actually the most important!

Thanks for that information.

Am i right that there are just a few devices supported then? So i can´t use a tablet-pc board with an allwinner a10 cpu und mali-400 ?

There must be a special hardware specifikation?


RE: Allwinner A10 : Is XBMC ported to MALI-400MP ? - Starstream - 2012-07-03

(2012-07-02, 23:34)gabrielbsb Wrote: Guys, it comes with a remote so I think it has an IR receiver embed, right? So can I use my Logitech Harmony remote to control it? And what about dual boot? Dual boot android/xbmc would be nice, xbmc for everything and android for netflix Smile
I was going to buy the MK802, it's cheaper, smaller a have 1gb ram, but this Mele A1000 seems to be a more solid device.

I would say yes the Mele is nicer device it comes with ethernet, wireless, optical out, HDMI + VGA, a SATA dock and a remote control.

(2012-07-02, 23:49)Hans0815 Wrote:
(2012-07-02, 23:24)j1nx Wrote: the VPU is actually the most important!

Thanks for that information.

Am i right that there are just a few devices supported then? So i can´t use a tablet-pc board with an allwinner a10 cpu und mali-400 ?

There must be a special hardware specifikation?

The VPU is the video processing unit in the A10 chipset it handles the decoding of all the video formats, it's not part of the GPU like it is on PC hardware or some other Arm chipsets. As far as I know all A10 chipsets have the VPU though someone can correct me if that's wrong.


RE: Allwinner A10 : Is XBMC ported to MALI-400MP ? - j1nx - 2012-07-03

(2012-07-03, 00:03)Starstream Wrote: The VPU is the video processing unit in the A10 chipset it handles the decoding of all the video formats, it's not part of the GPU like it is on PC hardware or some other Arm chipsets. As far as I know all A10 chipsets have the VPU though someone can correct me if that's wrong.

You are right! All A10 devices have the VPU unit, including the tablets out there. The kernel sources and driver for the CPU are released. The driver for the GPU althought not fully opensource are released by ARM (up till the framebuffer, the X11 requires closed source libraries till Lima is ready)

BUT the VPU is and will most likely stay closed by Softwinner (software division of Allwinner). So we have to work with the binary blobs they release and what I read today is that the current linux blob is crap. (Androis is fine and further ahead in development)


RE: Allwinner A10 : Is XBMC ported to MALI-400MP ? - Robotica - 2012-07-03

Does this mele needs openmax and omxplayer (gimli's work), like the raspberry? Or is this cedarx decoder something else?


RE: Allwinner A10 : Is XBMC ported to MALI-400MP ? - Speedst3r - 2012-07-03

Sorry to bump my own questions, but does anyone that owns an A10 device have the answers?

(2012-06-26, 16:36)Speedst3r Wrote: a) Output resolutions/refresh rates - gimli's demo is in 720p, does the Mali-400 do 1080p output as well?
b) I read a fair few pages back the driver only does 24 or 60Hz currently. Any plans for other refresh rates (e.g. 23.976, 50)? Wife certainly notices the judder in PAL SD content when played back at 60Hz.
c) Does the A10 bitstream HD audio over HDMI?

Also saw Ned Scott's post that it will be easy to get XBMC running. Not to belittle the work that gimli is doing but that is great to hear! Goodbye ATV2s with your 720p output and crashes!

I wish there was some way I could help with the porting work, alas my coding skills are very rusty!



RE: Allwinner A10 : Is XBMC ported to MALI-400MP ? - minibeardeath - 2012-07-03

(2012-07-03, 01:29)Speedst3r Wrote: a) Output resolutions/refresh rates - gimli's demo is in 720p, does the Mali-400 do 1080p output as well?
b) I read a fair few pages back the driver only does 24 or 60Hz currently. Any plans for other refresh rates (e.g. 23.976, 50)? Wife certainly notices the judder in PAL SD content when played back at 60Hz.
c) Does the A10 bitstream HD audio over HDMI?

I have the pineriver mini-x, and using the unofficial Android 4.0 img.
a) I can get 1080p output no problem
b) I do not have it in front of me, but I remember being able to at least chose 60Hz or 50Hz for the 1080p output.
c) I have no idea about the bitstream audio

(2012-07-02, 23:34)gabrielbsb Wrote: Guys, it comes with a remote so I think it has an IR receiver embed, right? So can I use my Logitech Harmony remote to control it? And what about dual boot? Dual boot android/xbmc would be nice, xbmc for everything and android for netflix Smile
I was going to buy the MK802, it's cheaper, smaller a have 1gb ram, but this Mele A1000 seems to be a more solid device.

On the pineriver mini-x I have had trouble getting the Logitech to recognize the remote control that came with the device. I believe that the Mele devices have a different remote than the mini-x, so you might get lucky. If you do order a device, setting it up as a PVR in the Harmony software seems to yield a result for a matching remote. However as before, this will be totally different for the Mele device which uses a different IR sensor.