[0ldfart]

I bought a PI which arrived in december and lasted about 2 days before it got put back in a drawer as it was not really capable as a media center.

I have had my eyes on a cheap dual core Android device, but having just come from the XBMC Android wiki, which pretty much says that its too immature as yet for HD playback, I have put that idea back on the drawing board.

So I have a question, I am hoping the community can assist with.

the hardware decoding for Android - is it possible to run Linux on ARM and have hware decoding work?

Im trying to differentiate between the hardware and the OS. Has anyone had any joy with Linux XBMC on these small, low cost devices?

Frustrated as it seems the hardware requirements really are quite modest, and the promise is there, but not quite the infrastructure for it to work. Or have I missed something?

I take from what I have seen that there still is not a 'small box' option that will reliably do what a full-blown x86 setup will do?

[cpmiller22]

I bought a PI which arrived in december and lasted about 2 days before it got put back in a drawer as it was not really capable as a media center.

I have had my eyes on a cheap dual core Android device, but having just come from the XBMC Android wiki, which pretty much says that its too immature as yet for HD playback, I have put that idea back on the drawing board.

So I have a question, I am hoping the community can assist with.

the hardware decoding for Android - is it possible to run Linux on ARM and have hware decoding work?

Im trying to differentiate between the hardware and the OS. Has anyone had any joy with Linux XBMC on these small, low cost devices?

Frustrated as it seems the hardware requirements really are quite modest, and the promise is there, but not quite the infrastructure for it to work. Or have I missed something?

I take from what I have seen that there still is not a 'small box' option that will reliably do what a full-blown x86 setup will do?

I'm not really sure I understand your Pi comment? What "media center capabilities" won't it perform for you? Many people (including myself) run one or many of these devices and are very happy with the results.

Many people are ruining XBMC on an ARM Linux setup (including all the openelec Pi users). I'd also suggest you take a look at the threads on Pivos XIOS running Linux.

What you mean exactly when you "what a full blown x86 setup will do"?

[noggin]

I bought a PI which arrived in december and lasted about 2 days before it got put back in a drawer as it was not really capable as a media center.

Did you buy the MPEG2/VC-1 codec licenses? It's very limited without these - but with them it becomes quite a bit more versatile.

I have had my eyes on a cheap dual core Android device, but having just come from the XBMC Android wiki, which pretty much says that its too immature as yet for HD playback, I have put that idea back on the drawing board.

Android support is very early stages - and there are multiple approaches being taken for hardware acceleration

So I have a question, I am hoping the community can assist with.

the hardware decoding for Android - is it possible to run Linux on ARM and have hware decoding work?

Yes - that's what Pivos have done with their XIOS player. They offer a full Linux build of XBMC for their machines. Full hardware acceleration, and pretty nippy. I don't have a XIOS but managed to port their build to my DVB-S2 AMLogic box and it was a bit nippier in GUI terms than the Pi, and pretty impressive.

Im trying to differentiate between the hardware and the OS. Has anyone had any joy with Linux XBMC on these small, low cost devices?

Frustrated as it seems the hardware requirements really are quite modest, and the promise is there, but not quite the infrastructure for it to work. Or have I missed something?

I take from what I have seen that there still is not a 'small box' option that will reliably do what a full-blown x86 setup will do?

The key issue with any of these ARM SoC (System on Chip) boxes is support for the VPU (not the GPU) that does hardware acceleration. Many SoCs don't have open source support for their VPUs - and without this it becomes next-to-impossible to do hardware accelerated playback within XBMC.

The ODroid is widely tipped to be the next ARM platform, after the Pi and the Pivos, to get decent support - but it isn't there yet... (Pandaboard and Cubox also have some support - but it's not that mainstream and is probably not a great route to go down)

At the moment - none of the ARM boxes fully match a well built x86 box - but they are getting better. An x86 box with decent nVidia graphics card and an SSD is still going to be tricky to beat in performance terms - but in price, size and power consumption the ARMs are very competitive.

[davilla]

It would be hard to 'equal' an x86 box, there's no way to match x86 in terms of raw CPU ponies, even with the new quad-core ARMs. So if you are looking for something to match/out-perform x86, forget it, it's a pink pony that does not nor will never exist.

However, if you are looking for a box that is much less expensive, completely silent, does a acceptable job with GUI and handled most all video content, then ARM SOCs are quite competitive.

Case in point, compare an ARM SoC dual-core against an Intel Atom dual-core w/ Nvidia GPU (aka Intel Ion) with both running Aeon-Nox. The ARM is about 1/2 to 1/3 the price and is acceptable in GUI. Is the Intel Ion 'faster', yes.. Does it really matter... Not to the 80 percentile of users out there. Performance geeks will not like it but they will not like the Intel Ion either

So the real question to ask is, "Is this acceptable to YOU"

[j1nx]

^^ Like this!

Should be somewhere on top of a wiki page in bold.

[Dchizza8]

Can someone please help me, I have a Ausus eee box b202 running xbmcbuntu! I've got everything working perfectly, lirc windows media centre remote! I use the remote with a Lenovo ir receiver! The porblem is When I put the computer in suspend mode there is no power to the USB, the ir receiver doesn't flash! I've enabled all the USB device, I've played around with everything I could read about on the net! I'm stuck! Can someone please help! I'd like to wake/resume the pc on with the remote! Please help!