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Allwinner A10 : Is XBMC ported to MALI-400MP ?
#46
Still waiting for my A2000 to get shipped out - Tom said that he was going to ship mine this weekend. I honestly can't wait to get it and start tinkering with it. I have no programming skills though, so I have a feeling trying to learn all of this is going to be a bit of a challenge.

I have one question though - why was it so important that the Kernal for 3.0.8 (Supposedly released now?) be released?
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#47
(2012-05-14, 03:26)tastypotato Wrote: I have one question though - why was it so important that the Kernal for 3.0.8 (Supposedly released now?) be released?

You don't want to re-invent the weel. It takes a lot of time to port the 2.6 kernel device drivers into 3.x versions. If they are released by the manufacturer at least you can start where they left of.

About the video decoding;
Yes there is a special handle in the SoC about the video decoding. That nifty little thing communicates with the software on one side and the hardware on the other. Which hardware that is doesn't really matter (GPU or yet another Chip) as long as it will be able to decode the frames without having to rely on the CPU.

There is a library which can be used by software (XBMC/MPlayer/DVDplayer/etc) which can talk to this chip and "give back" the decoded frames. The documentation of this library and an example of how to use it is released earlier;
https://github.com/amery/allwinner-a10-v...f?raw=true


As soon as the kernel issues and device drivers are all sorted out, a brach of XBMC need to be started where just like the Raspberry Pi a new player get's included, just like the OMXplayer from the RPi project.

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#48
I could not have asked for a better explanation!

I've started following the mailing list, which isn't making a whole lot of sense to me right now but once I get my Mele I should be able to try out all of the stuff they're talking about on there.
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#49
If XBMC gets ported to the Allwinner A10, would it also work on the QWare tablets which j1nx talked about? If it does I might as well get a tablet from a local shop instead of ordering a Mele A1000 in China. Or does the Mele A1000 have any other advantages over an A10 tablet? (except remote/VGA/LAN/optical)
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#50
(2012-05-17, 18:42)Snippo Wrote: If XBMC gets ported to the Allwinner A10, would it also work on the QWare tablets which j1nx talked about? If it does I might as well get a tablet from a local shop instead of ordering a Mele A1000 from China. Or does the Mele A1000 have any other advantages over an A10 tablet? (except remote/VGA/LAN/optical)

From what I have heard most A10 devices are very similar so it's very possible. In any case you can just flash a sd card and see if it works in your local shop.
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#51
(2012-05-17, 18:42)Snippo Wrote: If XBMC gets ported to the Allwinner A10, would it also work on the QWare tablets which j1nx talked about? If it does I might as well get a tablet from a local shop instead of ordering a Mele A1000 in China. Or does the Mele A1000 have any other advantages over an A10 tablet? (except remote/VGA/LAN/optical)

Yes!

All Allwinner tablets are booting U-Boot from sd-card as primary boot. So that basically means that if you insert a proper prepared sd card into any Allwinner device it will boot from that card.

The only issue with tablets is that they have other hardware attached to (screen / Touch screen / etc.) If you want to use the touch screen and all you will need to have those drivers aswell.

Now as I can judge from the sideline. The sources released by QWare consists a LOT of this extra drivers (if not all).

It is not very wise to use the tablets as development boards. Allthough you can get a UART console out of the sdcard reader, then you can not boot from it and vica versa.

I would advise to wait a bit. We just figured out we have almost everything for a proper 3d support in X11. So with a bit of effort we could have a proper X11 envirnoment with openGLES. (mali.ko and ump.ko are compiled from sources. mali_drm.ko is almost done and we have all closed source library files from ARM as well)

Then it is only a matter to create a player utilizing the VPU from allwinner.

Give it some time and you would be able to download disk images ready to boot.
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#52
(2012-05-18, 13:52)j1nx Wrote:
(2012-05-17, 18:42)Snippo Wrote: If XBMC gets ported to the Allwinner A10, would it also work on the QWare tablets which j1nx talked about? If it does I might as well get a tablet from a local shop instead of ordering a Mele A1000 in China. Or does the Mele A1000 have any other advantages over an A10 tablet? (except remote/VGA/LAN/optical)

Yes!

All Allwinner tablets are booting U-Boot from sd-card as primary boot. So that basically means that if you insert a proper prepared sd card into any Allwinner device it will boot from that card.

The only issue with tablets is that they have other hardware attached to (screen / Touch screen / etc.) If you want to use the touch screen and all you will need to have those drivers aswell.

Now as I can judge from the sideline. The sources released by QWare consists a LOT of this extra drivers (if not all).

It is not very wise to use the tablets as development boards. Allthough you can get a UART console out of the sdcard reader, then you can not boot from it and vica versa.

I would advise to wait a bit. We just figured out we have almost everything for a proper 3d support in X11. So with a bit of effort we could have a proper X11 envirnoment with openGLES. (mali.ko and ump.ko are compiled from sources. mali_drm.ko is almost done and we have all closed source library files from ARM as well)

Then it is only a matter to create a player utilizing the VPU from allwinner.

Give it some time and you would be able to download disk images ready to boot.

Why do we need X11? The current build of xbmc on raspberry pi works fine without X11.
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#53
(2012-05-18, 14:47)s7mx1 Wrote: Why do we need X11? The current build of xbmc on raspberry pi works fine without X11.

Is it running directly in the framebuffer console? This is the part where I am lacking most knowledge so ......

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#54
(2012-05-18, 16:45)j1nx Wrote:
(2012-05-18, 14:47)s7mx1 Wrote: Why do we need X11? The current build of xbmc on raspberry pi works fine without X11.

Is it running directly in the framebuffer console? This is the part where I am lacking most knowledge so ......

Yes according to http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewto...&start=200

The raspberry pi system only got 128MB memory (another 128MB allocated to GPU) so not running X11 is a big plus.

You can ask Stephan Raue from openelec team if need more info on the way its implemented on raspberry pi.
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#55
(2012-05-18, 16:54)s7mx1 Wrote:
(2012-05-18, 16:45)j1nx Wrote:
(2012-05-18, 14:47)s7mx1 Wrote: Why do we need X11? The current build of xbmc on raspberry pi works fine without X11.

Is it running directly in the framebuffer console? This is the part where I am lacking most knowledge so ......

Yes according to http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewto...&start=200

The raspberry pi system only got 128MB memory (another 128MB allocated to GPU) so not running X11 is a big plus.

You can ask Stephan Raue from openelec team if need more info on the way its implemented on raspberry pi.

I will have a look at the OpenElec build system a bit later. I want to finish the DRM stuff first just for learning, but we might not need it for OE then.

There are some other issue with the framebuffer at the moment, but we wil see.
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#56
(2012-05-18, 13:52)j1nx Wrote: Yes!

All Allwinner tablets are booting U-Boot from sd-card as primary boot. So that basically means that if you insert a proper prepared sd card into any Allwinner device it will boot from that card.

The only issue with tablets is that they have other hardware attached to (screen / Touch screen / etc.) If you want to use the touch screen and all you will need to have those drivers aswell.

Now as I can judge from the sideline. The sources released by QWare consists a LOT of this extra drivers (if not all).

It is not very wise to use the tablets as development boards. Allthough you can get a UART console out of the sdcard reader, then you can not boot from it and vica versa.

I would advise to wait a bit. We just figured out we have almost everything for a proper 3d support in X11. So with a bit of effort we could have a proper X11 envirnoment with openGLES. (mali.ko and ump.ko are compiled from sources. mali_drm.ko is almost done and we have all closed source library files from ARM as well)

Then it is only a matter to create a player utilizing the VPU from allwinner.

Give it some time and you would be able to download disk images ready to boot.

Well, if HDMI output with XBMC works then I'm happy haha. It's more like: why would I order a mediaplayer in China if a tablet from a local shop can do the same for a few more bucks?
I'm planning to use it as a Live TV client. I suppose HD channels won't work but we'll see.
Keep up the good work Big Grin.
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#57
(2012-05-18, 17:08)j1nx Wrote:
(2012-05-18, 16:54)s7mx1 Wrote:
(2012-05-18, 16:45)j1nx Wrote: Is it running directly in the framebuffer console? This is the part where I am lacking most knowledge so ......

Yes according to http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewto...&start=200

The raspberry pi system only got 128MB memory (another 128MB allocated to GPU) so not running X11 is a big plus.

You can ask Stephan Raue from openelec team if need more info on the way its implemented on raspberry pi.

I will have a look at the OpenElec build system a bit later. I want to finish the DRM stuff first just for learning, but we might not need it for OE then.

There are some other issue with the framebuffer at the moment, but we wil see.

A lot people will be happy if you can get xbmc running in either way. But I think frame buffer is better suited for arm devices for its limited resources.

XBMC running on raspberry pi is more than acceptable in term of gui responsiveness. Keep us updated with your progress.
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#58
http://www.aliexpress.com/product-fm/563...alers.html
$75 US
The normal XBMC log IS NOT a debug log, to enable debug logging you must toggle it on under XBMC Settings - System or in advancedsettings.xml. Use XBMC Debug Log Addon to retrieve it.
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#59
(2012-05-18, 13:52)j1nx Wrote:
(2012-05-17, 18:42)Snippo Wrote: If XBMC gets ported to the Allwinner A10, would it also work on the QWare tablets which j1nx talked about? If it does I might as well get a tablet from a local shop instead of ordering a Mele A1000 in China. Or does the Mele A1000 have any other advantages over an A10 tablet? (except remote/VGA/LAN/optical)

Yes!

All Allwinner tablets are booting U-Boot from sd-card as primary boot. So that basically means that if you insert a proper prepared sd card into any Allwinner device it will boot from that card.

The only issue with tablets is that they have other hardware attached to (screen / Touch screen / etc.) If you want to use the touch screen and all you will need to have those drivers aswell.

Now as I can judge from the sideline. The sources released by QWare consists a LOT of this extra drivers (if not all).

It is not very wise to use the tablets as development boards. Allthough you can get a UART console out of the sdcard reader, then you can not boot from it and vica versa.

I would advise to wait a bit. We just figured out we have almost everything for a proper 3d support in X11. So with a bit of effort we could have a proper X11 envirnoment with openGLES. (mali.ko and ump.ko are compiled from sources. mali_drm.ko is almost done and we have all closed source library files from ARM as well)

Then it is only a matter to create a player utilizing the VPU from allwinner.

Give it some time and you would be able to download disk images ready to boot.

Appreciate the update. Keep up the good work, devs!
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#60
be aware that the current xbmc mainline code has no clue about egl/gles and X11. You will have to add windowing support. Right now, X11 assumes GL and not GLES.
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