[e8hffff]

The Mele A2000 is probably the best hardware for price/performance/power-consumption to run XBMC. If the XBMC community doesn't get behind it then they risk missing a great opportunity to replace their old XBOX or other power guzzler and space stealing PC.

It runs a Mali400 GPU which can easily do 1080p or 2160p, whilst performing most video decoding.
It's an ARM based CPU (Allwinner A10) which has latest Ubuntu 12.04 ARM repositories and kernel ready.

The Linux ARM community is getting rallied up now on this CPU and the Mele unit. The GPU that is integrated in the CPU is yet to be fully exploited on Ubuntu, which is the reason why there isn't a out of the box experience for XBMC for this device. Time is on our side.

Images:
https://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl...le%20a2000

Sites of interest:
http://rhombus-tech.net/
http://www.cnx-software.com/2012/04/28/h...based-stb/
http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/pipermail/arm-netbook/ (check 'threads' of month for mele news)

Buy Point:
http://www.aliexpress.com/product-fm/560...alers.html

[djfourmoney]

Nice, thanks for the post.

[Santicity]

I've just started looking into streaming media and xbmc. If this works it looks like an extremely cheap way to get a good xbmc!

[muer-d]

seems a lot of work to hack it and run a linux or xbmc,
what about this http://www.asiapads.com/product_info.php...rrency=EUR
or this with dual boot http://www.asiapads.com/product_info.php...ts_id=2178
I' looking for a cheap device to run a xbmc

[j1nx]

Guys you are better off to continue the discussion at the XBMC Allwinner thread;
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=126995

[Ned Scott]

Yeah, check out the link j1nx posted. Seems Tom Cubie even sent one of the XBMC devs a Mele A100 to play with, and another dev posted a video showing a different box running XBMC that used the same GPU as the Mele.

Could still be a while before we see anything usable, but things are looking bright.

[Ribuck]

Do you have a link to the video to the developers video running xbmc on a cortex A8 with Mali or is the other hardware a cortex A9

[frieten]

yeah more info on this running xbmc please! dont let this thread die!!

[poofyhairguy]

It runs a Mali400 GPU which can easily do 1080p or 2160p, whilst performing most video decoding.

That is the same GPU in my phone. I have run through my phone my entire testing suite and I can confidently say I would rather a Mali400 over anything but a newer Nvidia or AMD card (so yes its better than the Crystal HD, AppleTV2, and almost every Intel GPU out there).

This could be exciting.

[Ned Scott]

See also this thread: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=126995

[stewiegriffin]

No more news on porting xbmc to the mele? Im looking into getting a mele a2000 and i was thinking of using it with xbmc, just like i use my raspberrypi but i have been searching and it seems that this device doesn't run xbmc well due to lack of development =/
So now im wondering if its worth the investment or not. Do you guys recommend this device or i should wait/get something else?

[j1nx]

No more news on porting xbmc to the mele? Im looking into getting a mele a2000 and i was thinking of using it with xbmc, just like i use my raspberrypi but i have been searching and it seems that this device doesn't run xbmc well due to lack of development =/
So now im wondering if its worth the investment or not. Do you guys recommend this device or i should wait/get something else?

It is not lack of development, but lack of proper support of Allwinner. They said they will support the community, but they do not want to acknowledge they have a flaw in their CedarX library.

If they would just let Gimli sign a NDA to help them fix it, now it is to late.

[stewiegriffin]

I have read about the lack of support from allwinner(thats actually what i meant by lack of development). I just don't understand how a company wouldn't want to make sure their product is used to a full max and to attract more buyers.
So i should just stay away from any allwinner devices? Other one i was considering is the mk802 III, but it has the downside of not having ethernet and the sata port(but it is cheaper, has a dual core a9 processor and 1gb of ram), so i should avoid that one also?

[Vaevictus2]

go with amlogic mx or amlogic m3 based devices. Source is open, hardware decoding works well (proven with the PIVOS XIOS). J1NX is working on linux for it too.

I have the mele a2000 and it is such a shame allwinner are being awkward because the presence of SATA on this device truly makes it special.

[stewiegriffin]

Indeed, the presence of sata really sets the mele apart from the others and it would be useful to use as a server to stream content instead of having my laptop on to stream.
I will look for devices with amlogic but i do have my selection limited because i will use amazon.com gift cards to buy and i have a 90$(includigin shipping) budget, so that doesn't leave much to choose from amazon had one that seemed interesting, its the g-box midnight that had amlogic but its out of stock and no indication if it will be back. Do you know any device with amalogic that i can order from amazon.com?

Also, since you have the mele, have you tried any other media center software on it? I know this is a xbmc forum and to be honest i would prefer xbmc much more because im used to it and i like the way it organizes the media and everything, but i have read that plex can be run on android. Have you tried it on the mele? It wouldn't be my favorite software, but im curious to know if it runs well.

Edit: Also, what about rockship? i found a few that have the RK3066, is that any better than the allwinner ones?