[sraue]

You may say that support comes from other projects, but you dropped the original Apple TV (and did so because of a commission
on CuBox-i? o.O).

there is no "commision" on Cubox-i, we dont get any $ from them. Instead the user can use a discount to get a Cubox-i a bit cheaper. Also we know AppleTV users like the SPDIF port, which is rare this days. Thats what we like todo for our users. If a user dont like this, he dont need to use the offer :-)

Some might construe that this revoking of support might be because OE never really did perform well on atv, as opposed to CB.

AppleTV was dropped because upstream support in XBMC/Kodi and the kernel was dropped some time ago. It was not maintained over years, and this makes the code not better. Because OpenELEC moves forward and not sideways we have to use the newest technologies. This also means sometimes dropping support for very old and outdated hardware.

Sam still supports Apple TV, and this is a demonstration that his support for products goes above and beyond other people's,
even when other projects decide a platform is dead for seemingly financial gain.

yeah, but there is no recent Helix build actually? So this demonstrates actually nothing. Sam will run in the same problems like OpenELEC if he uses more recent software. He also told he will maintain CHD support in Kodi and will provide patches. No one has seen any patches from him, so i dont think it will ever happen. Great if i am wrong, then the AppleTV will live another 5 years or so.

So how long can users expect to have their Cubox-i supported by OE? Has solidrun committed to providing upstream patches? I
would suspect that if they don't, or if they stop doing so, OE support for them would likely be dropped as well? Are users willing to take this risk?

see above, if something is unmaintained, then it makes no sense to maintain something downstream. Sadly the whole world works so this days. Also who wants a 7 years old system, which dont support the newest technologies? Dropping support will happen with first and second gen ION devices too the next 1-2 years - then they are also 7 years old.... We dont live anymore in a world where a TV works 10-15 or more years.

[Ned Scott]

Alright, everyone be quiet and sit down. It's story time:

For some reason the OpenELEC guys and Sam don't get along. I think a lot of it has to do with Sam being a little paranoid and, no offense, but his young age (at least years ago when this all started), but there are plenty of times where OpenELEC guys stirred things up when they didn't need to. This spills over to Team XBMC/Kodi because there are a bunch of people who work on both projects.

This gets bigger when the Raspberry Pi comes out and Sam uses a more marketable name (RaspBMC) and thus gets more media coverage than OpenELEC. Is it fair? No. But I don't think Sam did that to manipulate anyone. It's a fairly standard naming convention in the open source world. It sure got under OE's skin, though.

At the same time, Sam seems to think OE people are trying to sabotage him. Things like removing CrystalHD, which had nothing to do with OE or Crystalbuntu. Fun fact, sraue was not in favor of dropping CHD this when Davilla proposed it. (Personally, I think assuming that the ATV1 is outdated garbage just because it can't run the latest codecs is nonsense, but I'm not going to force anyone to work on something they don't want to. It's their time and effort.)

So this goes on and on and things are said and now both groups feel extremely irritated (to say the least) at the other. Neither side are bad people, and I wish they would all get over themselves. We all have flaws, we've all said stupid shit in the past. Get over it. Stop taking every chance you can to snip at each other.

People who post in the hardware forum are not going to buy this. It's the same deal as that other stacking freescale HTPC that wants to make a game cartridge slot (I can't even remember the name). We're bargain hunters who will push our grandmothers over in order to get $5 off on something.

Some people will. Some people will think it's a fair price, a reasonable price for the goods and services they get in return. If this helps fund Sam and his project into the future, I think that's great, and I think over time he'll lower prices because he no longer has that initial start up cost. I don't know if it will turn into a long term business for him, but he's young, he's got energy, and I think he should go for it.

We, here in this forum, know that this $200 price is to cover those startup costs. We know that we can get the same thing for half the price and it will probably be just as supported. Maybe, maybe not. I can't tell the future. I can say that the market is huge for these devices, and there's room for OSMC to try. Is it a cubox-i painted white? Well, yeah, it is. Will I buy it? No.

Everyone needs to be less bothered by what someone else is doing. Of course, I can say this easily because I have no bone in this fight. I really like people in both groups. But on other matters, I'm often no better, and I get mad at what other people do. So when I say "everyone", I still include myself.



What everyone should focus on is that Freescale processors are awesome, and it's awesome to see more people use them. They're one of the most open and well documented ARM processors for open source software (if I understand correctly). Everybody wins.

[hdmkv]

Wow, that quite some history. Seriously, there's room for all players and competition is good.

[Sam.Nazarko]

Alright, everyone be quiet and sit down. It's story time:

For some reason the OpenELEC guys and Sam don't get along. I think a lot of it has to do with Sam being a little paranoid and, no offense, but his young age (at least years ago when this all started), but there are plenty of times where OpenELEC guys stirred things up when they didn't need to. This spills over to Team XBMC/Kodi because there are a bunch of people who work on both projects.

This gets bigger when the Raspberry Pi comes out and Sam uses a more marketable name (RaspBMC) and thus gets more media coverage than OpenELEC. Is it fair? No. But I don't think Sam did that to manipulate anyone. It's a fairly standard naming convention in the open source world. It sure got under OE's skin, though.

At the same time, Sam seems to think OE people are trying to sabotage him. Things like removing CrystalHD, which had nothing to do with OE or Crystalbuntu. Fun fact, sraue was not in favor of dropping CHD this when Davilla proposed it. (Personally, I think assuming that the ATV1 is outdated garbage just because it can't run the latest codecs is nonsense, but I'm not going to force anyone to work on something they don't want to. It's their time and effort.)

So this goes on and on and things are said and now both groups feel extremely irritated (to say the least) at the other. Neither side are bad people, and I wish they would all get over themselves. We all have flaws, we've all said stupid shit in the past. Get over it. Stop taking every chance you can to snip at each other.

People who post in the hardware forum are not going to buy this. It's the same deal as that other stacking freescale HTPC that wants to make a game cartridge slot (I can't even remember the name). We're bargain hunters who will push our grandmothers over in order to get $5 off on something.

Some people will. Some people will think it's a fair price, a reasonable price for the goods and services they get in return. If this helps fund Sam and his project into the future, I think that's great, and I think over time he'll lower prices because he no longer has that initial start up cost. I don't know if it will turn into a long term business for him, but he's young, he's got energy, and I think he should go for it.

We, here in this forum, know that this $200 price is to cover those startup costs. We know that we can get the same thing for half the price and it will probably be just as supported. Maybe, maybe not. I can't tell the future. I can say that the market is huge for these devices, and there's room for OSMC to try. Is it a cubox-i painted white? Well, yeah, it is. Will I buy it? No.

Everyone needs to be less bothered by what someone else is doing. Of course, I can say this easily because I have no bone in this fight. I really like people in both groups. But on other matters, I'm often no better, and I get mad at what other people do. So when I say "everyone", I still include myself.



What everyone should focus on is that Freescale processors are awesome, and it's awesome to see more people use them. They're one of the most open and well documented ARM processors for open source software (if I understand correctly). Everybody wins.

Good post Ned.

There is a fair amount of truth in your post and though I certainly don't agree with everything you've said, I do appreciate the tone and the call for more civil discourse. Sorry Stephan, I wrongly thought that CrystalHD's demise had something to do with the OpenELEC team. To explain, Kodi's wiki for Raspberry Pi had OpenELEC as the only entry until it was edited to list other distributions. I assumed from this that the OpenELEC team had in turn some say in Kodi's roadmap. My bad. I don't think there is any need for any continued animosity between us.

Sam

[fritsch]

What everyone should focus on is that Freescale processors are awesome, and it's awesome to see more people use them. They're one of the most open and well documented ARM processors for open source software (if I understand correctly). Everybody wins.

You also know that cubox / freescale was already nearly dead (!) before we came somewhere near to helix, because not a single fix came upstream after the initial push. It was a great mess to dig arround and find fixes absolutely needed somewhere in the "big cubox distros", be it xbian or OpenELEC. Half of the fixes were totally wrong and harmed the box (triple cpu load in audio engine). These issues were first fixed and changed when taken upstream.

So I hope for the future, that we can work together upstream to bring the core technology (Video / Audio playback) to all users, we are not there yet! You know the cubox for now, will blacken on every third or fourth video playback, cause there is a race between renderer and decoder. The cubox for now is nowhere nearly able to play 1080i50 content, it just copes with non doubled deinterlacing of 576i content, outputting at 25 fps. So I am also quite curious on the Cubox TV - cause yeah basic live tv content does not work at all yet! Concerning the 24p playback - a gpu driven reference clock is plain missing.

These named issues are absolutely needed when establishing a box like this. Remember: Even the PI can do the mentioned content and even ATV21 is able to do that.

Those issues are not unsolvable and they are currently worked on, but should be solved first before another digsize war is starting. I expect the global players here to invest time and also PR own fixes. It's an absolute no go to carry patches in local or hidden repositories just for the sake of being better than someone else.

@Sam: One finale question: Do you really plan to release an ATV helix release with working CHD code? It's really not a shame to not do so, because we had a reason to remove it, but don't keep hopes high if you exactly know it won't happen or better said it can't happen cause of other infrastructure changes in kodi.

Edit: And not to forget. I wish you and your hw project all the best. It will be a rough time with all users starting to bikeshed when things don't work as they expect it. It is a big step in your personal business life to do so, finally coming up with something working in a complete package. Cudos for this! And to make that clear: I am only interested in the implementation / upstream support of the chip features. I neither use OpenELEC (not possible for development) nor debian as it does not fit in my infrastracture. You will have success with the box when all the mentioned issues are worked out.

[Sam.Nazarko]

Thanks fritsch,

i.MX6 has been a bit immature so far: especially a long time ago when it was tied to a 3.0.35x kernel. I completely agree that it makes little sense to keep things downstream, because then we end up with several distros that all do some things fine but have issues with other parts and there is no perfect solution. Fragmentation is a bad idea. Where we can help we will. I have currently been working on the kernel and bootloader for the device (using a DT method so that all i.MX6 chips can run OSMC under one image), Kodi is next on my agenda so I hope you will see more from me in the near future.

With regards to CrystalHD on Apple TV. At the moment I am not using the new DvdCodecs method, but just patched back in the old way for now. It's not ideal, and I remember speaking to @kraqh3d about looking at a new double buffer solution, but I had trouble getting things to work well. The current 'solution' involves a few patches, such as making sure MPEG2 doesn't go through the CrystalHD pathway as it can cause issues with LiveTV. It's not suitable for mainlining: it's why you removed it. The aTV is getting old and maintaining it is becoming a burden, particularly as CrystalHD is becoming quite niche. But if we can patch things back in and keep some people's aTVs going on for a while longer, then we definitely should

I would recommend using a Buildroot environment (gimli has done good work on that and added Hummingboard/i.MX6 support) and Buildroot itself now has a Kodi package upstream. I will offer 24 hour nightlies (compiled via Jenkins) though. This should indirectly help with i.MX6 development as well, because even if you're not using Debian or OE to dev, you may benefit from getting a larger set of testers.

Lastly, thanks for your kind words, they are much appreciated.

[Hedda]

People who post in the hardware forum are not going to buy this. It's the same deal as that other stacking freescale HTPC that wants to make a game cartridge slot (I can't even remember the name).

EzeeCube, which is another small startup company that also seem to be strugeling to find its niche market

http://www.ezeecube.com

EzeeCube add a lot of value on hardware spec, design, and acessories, with the exeption of a remote

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ezeec...ur-content

http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=182171
http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=197141
http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=198296
http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=197502
http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=182563
http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=182563
http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=182563

I understand Stephan "Wolfgar" Rafin who first ported XBMC/Kodi to i.MX6 is associated with EzeeCube

http://stephan-rafin.net/blog/2014/06/05...organizer/

I guess that means that EzeeCube indirectly sponsored the iMX6 port of Kodi and the upstreaming of it

[Koying]

I understand Stephan "Wolfgar" Rafin who first ported XBMC/Kodi to i.MX6 is associated with EzeeCube

http://stephan-rafin.net/blog/2014/06/05...organizer/

I guess that means that EzeeCube indirectly sponsored the iMX6 port of Kodi and the upstreaming of it

I'd leave Wolfgar to answer this, but his first post regarding porting XBMC to iMX6 dates from april 2013!
We created the imx6 repository together early 2014 and the port was already basically done. We worked with a number of devs to bring his port upstream.

So, even if he likes the product enough to give a helping hand, it seems to me that saying a newly formed startup has sponsored the iMX6 port is just BS

[Koying]

On the Vero aspect, I was very, very surprised to learn that the Vero was a cubox clone, when Sam posted a picture of it on Twitter.
He didn't participate in the XBMC port to iMX6 in any way, and it's now fritsh who is putting it into shape for Helix.

I'm eagerly waiting for his PR's to Kodi.
Actually, I would already be eager to see the OSMC sources that are being shipped with vero. The ones on github only seem to support rbp & atv.

[ubuntuaddicted]

I am fully supporting Sam and his efforts with Vero, i can't wait to get my hands on it and do some testing against a Banana Pi and an AppleTV (original) I made a little video going over the what I feel are the benefits to purchasing a Vero. Sam and his community over on the OSMC forums have proven to be a very friendly community and very resourceful. The main draw here is it's plug and play with a remote, with 24Hz and 3D support. That's what I think anyway but this is of course only my opinion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0CVT8upu1k

[hdmkv]

Not having the history here, but intrigued by this, what does Vero offer than CuBoxTV doesn't? Bottom line, what I'm interested in is proper 23.976, 24, 59.940, plus hd audio bitstreaming, plus frame-packed 3D, all via XBMC/Kodi. If these boxes do the former, but not 3D, then fine, but why get them over say a Chromebox?

[ubuntuaddicted]

Not having the history here, but intrigued by this, what does Vero offer than CuBoxTV doesn't? Bottom line, what I'm interested in is proper 23.976, 24, 59.940, plus hd audio bitstreaming, plus frame-packed 3D, all via XBMC/Kodi. If these boxes do the former, but not 3D, then fine, but why get them over say a Chromebox?

to the best of my knowledge OSMC on a Vero will do everything you just posted. The advantage of Vero over CuBoxTV is the bundled remote control, HDMI cable, and a supported OS/device for 3 years. The main points are in my video somewhere so please watch, i realize it's a little long but I felt it neccessary to provide some history so that viewers don't just think some bozo just came to the scene and just packaged up xbmc. The dev of Vero and OSMC has setup a very robust build system that will allow for the easy creation of all the target platforms ie iOS, x86, and ARM. OSMC has a reliable update system also so there's no worrying that doing an update to teh base OS will mess up your XBMC install. There's many more advantages but the key is the 3 years of updates/support and the great community that is the Raspbmc and Crystalbuntu currently. For non-tinkerer's this is a plug and play solution with no need to futz with anything, that's 1 of the largest selling points IMO. Please note that much of this is my opinion but many of it is fact and where I may have mis-quoted a fact please correct me if you know I am wrong

[ActionA]

Don't forget the included, guaranteed to work and provide proper voltage, power supply

[wrxtasy]

Not having the history here, but intrigued by this, what does Vero offer than CuBoxTV doesn't? Bottom line, what I'm interested in is proper 23.976, 24, 59.940, plus hd audio bitstreaming, plus frame-packed 3D, all via XBMC/Kodi. If these boxes do the former, but not 3D, then fine, but why get them over say a Chromebox?

This is from the CuBox thread, whats fixed on the CuBox and what is not working.....

Fixed in the last few months:
- HD Audio over HDMI (DTS MA, DTS-HD Master Audio)
- Limited range RGB for TVs that show crushed blacks if they don't receive 16-235 signal
- CEC (ability to use TV remote to control XBMC via TV)
- VC-1 codec

What is not working:
- Interlaced content direct from a terrestrial TV feed.
- 23.976 is rendered at 23.98, but sends signal to TV at 24Hz
- Gigabit ethernet sometimes plays up, so some people set it to 100Mbps.

[Ned Scott]

Don't forget the included, guaranteed to work and provide proper voltage, power supply

CueBox-i comes with a power supply. Seems to be providing the proper voltage for me.