[erhnam]

I am quite excited about this project http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi

The platform is ideal for xbmc. It has HDMI, a powerful CPU and DSP (BCM2835) capable of output 1080p HD videos. Most importantly the price is only about $35 for the model B with 256MB memory.

I believe it uses OpenMax as the API for video hardware accelerated decoding.

From the available demo videos I have seen so far it looks like it does not have Xorg instead fb device is used for video rendering.

The hardware is almost identical to Ruku 2 XD.

They will probably release it in 1-2 months time. Anyone interested?

You should talk with Davilla about this

[McGeagh]

I have played with the Raspberry Pi, and it is frustratingly slow (not surprising based on spec) running ubuntu/lxde
I think it would be on par of beagleboard, so dont expect high framerate without a lot of optimisations. This is all guesswork as I have not worked on getting xbmc on it yet.
The only good thing is the cost, so cheap, anyone and everyone should pick one up, if only just to play around with it!

[topfs2]

I have played with the Raspberry Pi, and it is frustratingly slow (not surprising based on spec) running ubuntu/lxde
I think it would be on par of beagleboard, so dont expect high framerate without a lot of optimisations. This is all guesswork as I have not worked on getting xbmc on it yet.
The only good thing is the cost, so cheap, anyone and everyone should pick one up, if only just to play around with it!

I think the interesting part is if it has a usable dedicated video decoder and it can handle the interesting content. Because even beagle is enough to display a limited skin of xbmc in 720p with 30fps. So could be a contender (or floss version) of atv2.

But yeah, the GUI might need customization, don't buy it and expect every skin to run perfect on it.

[s7mx1]

I have played with the Raspberry Pi, and it is frustratingly slow (not surprising based on spec) running ubuntu/lxde
I think it would be on par of beagleboard, so dont expect high framerate without a lot of optimisations. This is all guesswork as I have not worked on getting xbmc on it yet.
The only good thing is the cost, so cheap, anyone and everyone should pick one up, if only just to play around with it!

According to ebenupton (pi employee) the GPU of Raspberry Pi is about 3 times the speed of an OMAP 4430 in common shader-heavy benchmarks. The GPU/DSP is cable of 1080p 30 fps full HD H.264 Video Encode/Decode.

The BCM2835 was designed to have a much better GPU than its competitor's product. I believe someone in the forum is already working on it. Will wait things to unfold in the next month or so.

[szemo77]

For those who are interested in the amlogic development you can have a look at the documents here

http://openlinux.amlogic.com/download/linux/doc/

amlogic seems to have developed their own media player called amplayer2 which also uses ffmpeg. The amplayer2 can run as daemon and being controlled via socket and dbus. I believe we can at least use xbmc to launch external player (amplayer2) to utilise the hardware acceleration. The android sys image reveals that openmax api is being used (needs someone to confirm) but similar library is not present on the linux rootfs.


If you need more help you can contact Zhi Zhou from (extracted from one of the documents linked above)

email: [email protected]
msn: [email protected]
skype: rising_o

I may volunteer for the translation but google translate is your best bet as I am a really lazy chap

Some sources for Amlogic 8726M
http://www.androidtablets.net/forum/amlo...ation.html

http://openlinux.amlogic.com/wiki/index....726M_Howto

May be someone have login and password for that:
https://svn-bj.amlogic.com/svn/

[miskol]

anybody has working RS232 on geniatech ATV2000(Amlogic 8726-M) ?

[davilla]

anybody has working RS232 on geniatech ATV2000(Amlogic 8726-M) ?

It's not RS232 on the white connector, its 3.3v TTL serial. you need to use a 3.3v serial TTL adapter.

[RockerC]

Do you think that you could run Linux and XBMC on-top on Rockchip RK2918 ARM Cortex A8 chipset based hardware?

if XBMC can't be ported to Android yet could this box with Linux still become a cheap 1080p alternative to Apple TV 2?

I think I might have stumbled onto a 1080p capable hardware platform that might make an Android port of XBMC worth while.

DealExtreme.com now sells this "1080p Full HD Android 2.3 Network Media Player" box for only $115 US-dollars with free worldwide shipping
http://www.dealextreme.com/p/1080p-full-...cal-101713
could possible be found much cheaper elsewhere like eBay or China import, just google "Android TV Rockchip RK2918" to find other sites like
http://www.chinashop-easy.com/products-w...2918+.html

These boxes may look different outside but all uses Rockchip RK2918 SoC, checkout the hardware specification on Rockchip's website
http://www.rock-chips.com/product.php?id...height=500
http://www.32bitmicro.com/component/cont...tex-a8-soc
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockchip

Rockchip Android TV box at Hong Kong Fair 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLcA1AHzkLQ

To summarize, this Rockchip RK2918 SoC package contains a ARM Cortex A8 Single Core processor capable of running up to 1.2Ghz, with 3D GPU hardware graphics using Vivante GC800 that claims to do up to 57 million triangles per second and full OpenGL ES 2.0 and be fast enough to smoothly run all the latest Android 3D games.

The above "Android TV" box uses Rockchip 2918 chipset and 512MB DDR II RAM with 2GB built-in flash memory and supports USB mobile HDD up to 1TB, or SD card up to 32GB.

Other features of this Rockchip Android TV box hardware package include

• Neon co-processor and 512kb Cache
  
• 2D/3D graphic processor (GPU), supports OpenGL ES 2.0/1.1, OpenVG 1.1, DirectFB, GDI/DirectDraw, Flash Graphics Processing Unit, 60M tri/s at most.
  
• H.264, VP8, RV, WMV, AVS, H.263, MPEG4, WebM VP8, and more 1080p video decode
  
• HDMI V1.3, supports resolution up to 1920 x 1080
  
• 3 x USB + LAN + AV-Out + YPbPr + HDMI + Optical + SD
  
• LAN and WiFi 802.11b/g
  
• Supports 2.4GHz wireless mouse/keyboard (3 meters operation range)
  
• 1 x Remote control (2 x CR2035 battery/included)
  
• 1 x AV cable (139cm)
  
• 1 x HDMI cable (140cm)
  
• 1 x Audio cable (106cm)
  

Vivante GC800 GPU
http://www.vivantecorp.com/GC-Series.html
http://www.chipestimate.com/ip.php?id=18719

"Rockchip claims that their RK2918 processor has a better performance than the Samsung Hummingbird in the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7″, Samsung Galaxy S1 and that it’s also faster than the Apple A4 in iPad1 and iPhone4"


As for very cheap tablets based on the same Rockchip 2918 SoC checkout ranges from no-name, to N5Zero, and the newest Archos Arnova 8, also many more
http://www.dealextreme.com/p/7-capacitiv...2918-73312
http://armdevices.net/category/chip-provider/rockchip/
http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/26/archo...bin-video/
http://www.alibaba.com/showroom/rockchip-2918.html


If XBMC could be ported to Android and run on these devices then could it contend with the Apple TV 2 and other iOS platforms for XBMC users?

If can be ported to Android yet then perhaps we could just run Linux on any of the these Rockchip 2918 devices?

[davilla]

@RockerC, I already answered that question in another thread that you started, please don't threadjack.

[RockerC]

@RockerC, I already answered that question in another thread that you started, please don't threadjack.

I have not started any threads about Rockchip RK2918, sorry but I find no answer or reply about it?

I see that you have replied to someone else who asked about about a Realtek box that do not support OpenGL ES

Could you be confusing this with what that other guy wrote? Rockchip is not the same as Realtek

Again, I am asking about the Rockchip RK29xx chipset, a chipset with Vivante GC800 GPU that support OpenGL ES
http://www.rock-chips.com
http://www.rock-chips.com/upload/image/RK29/29.jpg
http://www.rock-chips.com/upload/5%2823%29.jpg

[miskol]

It's not RS232 on the white connector, its 3.3v TTL serial. you need to use a 3.3v serial TTL adapter.

thx
It works with 3.3 TTL adapter
ATV2000

Lets start with port of some distribution
latest Ubuntu start support ARM.

[McGeagh]

I have not started any threads about Rockchip RK2918, sorry but I find no answer or reply about it?

I see that you have replied to someone else who asked about about a Realtek box that do not support OpenGL ES

Could you be confusing this with what that other guy wrote? Rockchip is not the same as Realtek

Again, I am asking about the Rockchip RK29xx chipset, a chipset with Vivante GC800 GPU that support OpenGL ES
http://www.rock-chips.com
http://www.rock-chips.com/upload/image/RK29/29.jpg
http://www.rock-chips.com/upload/5%2823%29.jpg

There is ARM support, and there is Open GL ES 2.0 support (for the most part), so in theory, yes Rockchip is a possible SoC that XBMC can run on.

If you do manage to do this, and things needed modifying, etc... we would greatly appreciate patches in order to merge into xbmc.

Thanks

[RockerC]

There is ARM support, and there is Open GL ES 2.0 support (for the most part), so in theory, yes Rockchip is a possible SoC that XBMC can run on.

Can you define "for the most part"? Do you think this RK2918 chipset could be good enough for running XBMC at 1080p smoothly?

Vivante claim that their GC800 GPU support all these APIs
http://www.vivantecorp.com/p_mvr.html

• OpenGL ES 2.0
  
• OpenVG 1.1
  
• OpenGL ES 1.1
  
• OpenGL 3.0/2.1
  
• X11/EXA
  
• DirectX 11
  
• DirectFB 1.4
  
• GDI/DirectDraw
  
• EGL 1.4

It is hard to find more information about this RK2918 chipset since most things Rockchip have is in Chinese, I have however learned that Rockchip reference/developer platform for this specific chipset is called "R-box"
http://www.rock-chips.com/index.php?do=news&id=128
http://www.gizchina.com/2011/04/13/rockc...droid-2-3/
http://cn.engadget.com/photos/rockchip-a...-tv-r-box/

If you do manage to do this, and things needed modifying, etc... we would greatly appreciate patches in order to merge into xbmc.

Sorry but I am not going to have time in the foreseeable future to try to begin with a such porting job myself

I was just hoping on tipping someone here about this very cheap 1080p capable hardware for a XBMC port

This RK2918 platform could maybe be the affordable 1080p hardware we all been looking for?

[madmalkav]

Rockchip is one of those SoC producers that won't provide source code not matter how hard you try, so you better avoid it, or sooner or later you will need to modify something i.e. in the kernel and be totally stuck. That is why I prefer Amlogic, even if they won't give git access to almost anyone, they update sources on their web site every two months or so.

[RaGeS]

Hi,

I try to compile XBMC pvr branch on pandaboard.
I have this error when make:

Code:

CPP     xbmc/cores/DllLoader/exports/emu_kernel32.o
In file included from /usr/include/GLES2/gl2.h:6:0,
                 from /home/emanuele/xbmc/xbmc/system.h:271,
                 from emu_kernel32.h:26,
                 from emu_kernel32.cpp:22:
/usr/include/GLES2/gl2platform.h:20:29: fatal error: KHR/khrplatform.h: No such file or directory
compilation terminated.
make[1]: *** [emu_kernel32.o] Error 1
make: *** [xbmc/cores/DllLoader/exports/exports.a] Error 2

help me plz ...

Emanuele