[frank]

I agree with the XBMC.org post that there are amazing possibilities with having Android and XBMC on the same device. This is gonna be a sweet ride!

+1 Best news Online this year. Cant wait to recycle my Win 7 HTPC for a LiveTV Android set top box.
Here are a few great options to kill your apple junk.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/4848...f=category
http://www.kogan.com/au/buy/agora-smart-tv-hdmi-dongle/
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouya...me-console

[geggog]

Just to highlight the pulling power of XBMC ... Amazon has just listed that they've run out of stock of the XIOS DS:

http://www.amazon.com/Media-ULTRA-Compan...roduct_top

[Pivos_BigC]

Pivos-BigC, a couple of questions.

1) can you confirm Pivos Group are pursuing licensing of lossy and lossless multichannel audio codecs so they can be passed through the HDMI connection? (ie AC3, DTS, TrueHD and DTS-HD sent to a receiver to decode. Not too concerned with having the XIOS decode and send as LPCM although others might be.
2) can you try playing this video I posted earlier: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/91624507/Samsun...40Mbps.mkv

Once the XIOS DS can bitstream I will definitely buy two through one of your US retailers (unless it's available in Australia for a reasonable price!)

1) Android has certain limitations, and then there are licensing issues. I have been told 'we are working on licensing DTS' by the business side. I'm a tech guy, so I get to be a mushroom with that stuff.

2) I downloaded the video. The XIOS gives it a valiant effort, and did much better when i fed it via external HDD vs a usb stick, But ultimately it seems to have trouble decoding your L5.1 video. Framerate was full, but there were artifacts. This may be because of the Alpha build I am using. I will try again once I get a beta build.

[Speedst3r]

1) Android has certain limitations, and then there are licensing issues. I have been told 'we are working on licensing DTS' by the business side. I'm a tech guy, so I get to be a mushroom with that stuff.

Fingers crossed, stereo is fine for a living room TV but for a HT media player multichannel audio is really needed. Hopefully the hardware is capable of bitstreaming and ARM linux is still an option if Android can't do it.

2) I downloaded the video. The XIOS gives it a valiant effort, and did much better when i fed it via external HDD vs a usb stick, But ultimately it seems to have trouble decoding your L5.1 video. Framerate was full, but there were artifacts. This may be because of the Alpha build I am using. I will try again once I get a beta build.

Thanks for that, I didn't realise it was L5.1 - I don't think it's been encoded with anything special so rewriting the header to L4.1 shouldn't be a problem. Framerate is the most important stat I was after - and that it doesn't stutter certainly is promising. None of my other media has bit rates that high so it's another plus for the hardware decoding of the DS!

[rogerthis]

If I buy the Sumvision Cyclone Nano Slim Plus am I funding xbmc's development?

I doubt it as Sumvision isn't Pivos (even though the xios box and the Nano 1 slim + hardware seems to be the same). Geniatech make the boxes but they could in theory be making a box specifically for pivos that is spec'd up to suit XBMC - so at some point in the future through their sponsorship they could use the XBMC name in advertising (confidently knowing it will work well) and more importantly have some specific advanced developments on their firmware to make XBMC run that bit better than similar boxes with the same SoC.

No reason why Sumvision or any other reseller (or even Geniatech) could not also sponsor XBMC - I don't think they have signed some exclusive rights of any sort (in fact I doubt the XBMC team can or want to do that - think they are more comfortable with it being as open as possible).

I dumped a load of info here on UK boxes and possible replicas of the current XBMC team platform mentioned that the current apk has been tested on (which may change with time through sponsorship as noted above - so buyer beware).

I think I'll hold off until Pivos have an European supplier. It's a big incentive for me, that there is money going back to xbmc development.

[geggog]

2) I downloaded the video. The XIOS gives it a valiant effort, and did much better when i fed it via external HDD vs a usb stick, But ultimately it seems to have trouble decoding your L5.1 video. Framerate was full, but there were artifacts. This may be because of the Alpha build I am using. I will try again once I get a beta build.

Is it possible to get a view as to how hard the VPU is working whilst decoding the vid? It'd be interesting to understand how close to the limit the device is (given that it's not dropping frames ...)

[sipart]

I think I'll hold off until Pivos have an European supplier. It's a big incentive for me, that there is money going back to xbmc development.

I think donating directly via http://xbmc.org/contribute/donate/ is just as valuable (if not more so as you theoretically could be donating more cash direct) and helping spread testing across other devices is more beneficial to the openness and wider availability of XBMC.

[extremedigital]

Another long time user of xbmc (xbox days) but to be honest been using wdtv media boxes for the last couple of years. (fairly well known in that community as i made the mega template pack and some themes)

Registered on here to say just how excited i am to see xbmc on android, only got it to work on my htc flyer so far.....but hd playback is choppy......

[davilla]

Is it possible to get a view as to how hard the VPU is working whilst decoding the vid? It'd be interesting to understand how close to the limit the device is (given that it's not dropping frames ...)

No and it's not an issue of having to 'work harder', the VPU must understand the encoded format in order to decode it. For example, XIOS DS can play the infamous 'killa' test video that is encoded to very non-standard h264 specs BUT it macroblocks like crazy because the level/profile used specifies too many reference frames and the VPU just drops them as the level/profile used has a set number of permitted reference frames.

There are also other components in play such as actually having the memory bandwidth to move 1080p/60fps of yuv/argb date over the bus. The ATV2 has this issue, it can actually decode 1080p/30 just fine, but couple that with actually displaying it (even at 720p) and you run out of memory bandwidth and so we cheat a bit by having the decoder scale down the video so we don't run out of memory bandwidth.

Now that's not to say XIOS DS will never handle 1080p/60, I just don't know the limits yet as I've been spending all my time getting basic playback working and the XBMC for Android port.

[extremedigital]

so excited about the xbmc...so much potential, it makes my transformer horny

but seriously folks, i have a question..i saw someone else ask it and the answer was never developed or reached...

i've been getting error 2: share not available when i try to add a windows share (smb)..

the first time i installed the app, it worked fine.i was able to add a location...since then, i tried to add another, and i get that error
i have deleted all cache, app data, etc...i have uninstalled, reinstalled, restarted the tablet, etc etc...nothing makes it pop up

i've tested other apps with samba shares, and they all work fine...and even worse, when i go to add video files, if i select upnp, i see my pc with xbmc (which is the same pc as the smb/network shares)..and i can add those libraries...the problem is that it doesn't recognize the info as well as if i could just add a network share (the movie data is mostly missing, it won't register in the "movie" category in certain skins, all add-ons for info (universal scrapper, rotten tomatoes, etc) does not load...but on the first ever time i added a share, it worked flawlessly...

so any idea on how to fix it?

i know jezz said to not be too harsh as this is like pre-development...so i don't want to sound too down on the app..i love it, it has great potential and for the mostpart, it works great..so keep up the good work guys...


additional info:
windows share is coming from a win7 64 bit pc
xbmc remote on my gnex (with jelly bean) works fine on both tablet and pc
tablet is a transformer prime

thanks for the help!

Hi truthlesshero, i had a similar problem, trust me if i can find a bug i will It took a while to solve but hopefully this will help...


Goto Setting--->Services---->SMB Client---->WINS server

change to 0.0.0.0


Hope that helps

[geggog]

Is it possible to get a view as to how hard the VPU is working whilst decoding the vid? It'd be interesting to understand how close to the limit the device is (given that it's not dropping frames ...)

No and it's not an issue of having to 'work harder', the VPU must understand the encoded format in order to decode it. For example, XIOS DS can play the infamous 'killa' test video that is encoded to very non-standard h264 specs BUT it macroblocks like crazy because the level/profile used specifies too many reference frames and the VPU just drops them as the level/profile used has a set number of permitted reference frames.

There are also other components in play such as actually having the memory bandwidth to move 1080p/60fps of yuv/argb date over the bus. The ATV2 has this issue, it can actually decode 1080p/30 just fine, but couple that with actually displaying it (even at 720p) and you run out of memory bandwidth and so we cheat a bit by having the decoder scale down the video so we don't run out of memory bandwidth.

Now that's not to say XIOS DS will never handle 1080p/60, I just don't know the limits yet as I've been spending all my time getting basic playback working and the XBMC for Android port.

Gotchya

[Mike Pisano]

Great work Scott (As always)

Just ordered my Pivos box from Newegg and I'll have it tomorrow, Now I wait patiently (Note: Chomping at the bit) for your hardware build.

Awesome News!!!!!! You Guys Rock!!!

[Dixon Butz]

How much free space do those Pivos boxes have? I see they only have 2 gig flash?

[geggog]

How much free space do those Pivos boxes have? I see they only have 2 gig flash?

The idea is to either i) stream your media over the network, ii) play it off a USB drive connected to the device, or iii) play it off a MicroSD card inserted into the device (up to 32GB).

http://www.pivosgroup.com/#!vstc2=specif...vstc0=xios

[Dixon Butz]

How much free space do those Pivos boxes have? I see they only have 2 gig flash?

The idea is to either i) stream your media over the network, ii) play it off a USB drive connected to the device, or iii) play it off a MicroSD card inserted into the device (up to 32GB).

http://www.pivosgroup.com/#!vstc2=specif...vstc0=xios

I understand all that. But XBMC can't be moved to SD. And it can grow to gigs. Doesn't seem like enough room.