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[LINUX] XBMC for Linux port to ARM architecture CPU and SoC chips? - Printable Version

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- davilla - 2011-01-22

brock_gonad Wrote:Hey Scott,

Was wondering if you could tell us a bit of the story behind the story?

When there's a will, there's a way Smile

Part I:

To start, James of FireCore donated two atv2s to me right after they were available. I've known James a while and his thinking was 'give davilla some toys to play with and you never know what he comes up with' Smile Money is tight (still is) and I have to thank James for doing this again, I don't think I would have bought them myself.

I spent two weeks trying to build xbmc depends on the actual atv2 using telesphoreo libs only to find out that the native gcc would not compile armv7 and that means no neon so bag that.

In the mean time, atv2 #2 had an iPod connector soldering in place and a rather large hole cut in the side to see if that would gain us USB host. Buzz road kill, signals don't match that of normal iPad connector so scratch that for now. Pictures of that are here http://code.google.com/p/atv-bootloader/source/browse/#svn%2Fbranches%2Fweb_items%2Fatv2 . Somewhere in the live testing and poking, doing very rude things to this atv2 and pop goes the wired network. Bummer wifi only for mr.atv2 #2.

Back to xbmc depends and another three weeks later ios-depends is born and we are cross-compiling xbmc depends on osx. Now I'm racing XBMC devcon because I want to show it off there.

First up is EGL, we need EGL for rendering, iOS 4.x can do it but under the atv2 you are a frappliance, a plugin to frontrow. Can't get to EGL directly. Lucky me, some atv1 devs figure out how to get to a UIView and from that I can get to EGL. First demo frapp using EGL is alive now and I can spin a multi-colored square. Rush, rush, devcom is fast approaching, after lots of late nights and swearing, FINALLY get compile, a few days later get link and now its time to play Launch, Crash and Burn and try to figure out why... IcANHazNoDebugger Sad

Finally hunt down the issues and fix them but I can Launch XBMC but I don't see anything, don't have the EGL layer right. XBMC.log looks good, clean launch and rss is rolling but all is black. No time to fix and off to devcon I go.

Part II later.

Soju Wrote:Is there an actual distro for ATV2? (or any A4 based device). I haven't found anything on a cursory googling.

It's listed in the announce on xbmc.org

https://github.com/xbmc/atv2

This contains both atv2 and ios.

For installing, see the wiki info, also listed in the announce on xbmc.org


- brock_gonad - 2011-01-22

davilla Wrote:When there's a will, there's a way Smile

Nice read. Thanks Scott!

With a fully working ATV1 on Crystalbuntu, I have basically no reason to get an ATV2, but I now find myself drawn to the Apple Store nonetheless. I can't figure out how that works.

Your wife must be very patient. Mine will probably threaten divorce if I buy yet another box for under the TV.


- Soju - 2011-01-23

davilla Wrote:When there's a will, there's a way Smile

It's listed in the announce on xbmc.org

https://github.com/xbmc/atv2

This contains both atv2 and ios.

For installing, see the wiki info, also listed in the announce on xbmc.org

Sorry Scott,

I meant I looked for a Linux distro compatible with the ATV2 and couldn't find one. There are a few projects that leverage the IOS/HW now, XBMC being the most exciting, but there doesn't seem to be a Linux platform that can run on it.

That said, thanks again for the awesome work. I was waiting for it the minute you hinted at it Smile. Bought an ATV2 from Amazon when I saw the front page, LOL. The age of the Arm finally is upon us, cant wait to see where we are in a year's time. $99 XBMC STB is a massive game changer.


- davilla - 2011-01-23

Soju Wrote:I meant I looked for a Linux distro compatible with the ATV2 and couldn't find one. There are a few projects that leverage the IOS/HW now, XBMC being the most exciting, but there doesn't seem to be a Linux platform that can run on it.

There are none at the current time.


- McGeagh - 2011-01-25

Im still very interested in phusho's changes... and im sure im not the only one

A world without X11 or SDL dependencies is a very nice looking world...


- topfs2 - 2011-01-25

McGeagh Wrote:Im still very interested in phusho's changes... and im sure im not the only one

A world without X11 or SDL dependencies is a very nice looking world...

I'm starting to think it never happened Smile

davilla have made patches for iOS which removes most of SDL and I have done the missing ones for panda (linux), I did this by using X11 code but should be more than possible to clean it up and continue and remove X11 (the worst work is SDL which is done).

When davilla have time to merge back whats needed I will merge in my changes and when the panda crew releases non-x11 drivers for ubuntu I will continue and yank out that part aswell.


Omap 5! - slicemaster - 2011-02-09

Hey guys, I just thought I’d toss in some news about TI OMAP since there has been a fair amount of talk regarding panda board and getting a fully functional Linux ARM port up and running on it. Anyways, just though I’d let you guys know that TI has just announced that TI OMAP 5 platform which looks very promising. What caught my interest the most is the claimed turn-key support on various Linux platforms. I’m assuming this means full driver support out of the box from the software guys at TI, this is something I think panda board is lacking right? I’m thinking this might also allow for development that takes advantage of the hardware media decoder or the improved graphics subsystem (as far as i can tell these libraries are open-source). Anyways, you can read all about it on their website…there seem to be numerous improvements over the current OMAP 4 offerings that might be interesting to explore, not to mention a speed boost.

I wonder when development boards will be available with this baby, panda board turbo anyone?
Cheers,
Slice


- McGeagh - 2011-02-09

ha, it will be a while for sure.
Best guess, 2 years from now.


- xmarsx - 2011-02-09

slicemaster Wrote:Anyways, just though I’d let you guys know that TI has just announced that TI OMAP 5 platform which looks very promising. What caught my interest the most is the claimed turn-key support on various Linux platforms.
I wonder when development boards will be available with this baby, panda board turbo anyone?

The OMAP4 has been announced in Feb. 2009 and it took round about 1 year and 9 month until the Pandaboard did show up.
Still there is hope that a OMAP5 powered board could be based upon the current board which would speed things up.
I think it will take at least 1.5 years until we can get hardware to play with.

By the way I'm still waiting for my Pandaboard ordered the first days in December 2010. Digikey answered I may get it late February 2011....I hope so as it's already over a month overdue.
Finally...at least the UPS label has been printed...seems this time it's true: I'll get my Pandaboard end of February! YES!!! Smile

On the software side I assume that it will be possible to use the DSP and PowerVR graphic better within the next 2-3 month. There has been some progress as far as I can tell. The only thing I don't have any clue about is how good the DSP and PowerVR driver stuff can be used by XBMC.
Currently the DSP is not used (at least that's what I assume after reading the previous comments). If the DSP can be used for decoding the video higher fps should be possible.
The experts (topfs2,...) can correct me if I'm wrong.


- topfs2 - 2011-02-09

xmarsx Wrote:The OMAP4 has been announced in Feb. 2009 and it took round about 1 year and 9 month until the Pandaboard did show up.
Still there is hope that a OMAP5 powered board could be based upon the current board which would speed things up.
I think it will take at least 1.5 years until we can get hardware to play with.

By the way I'm still waiting for my Pandaboard ordered the first days in December 2010. Digikey answered I may get it late February 2011....I hope so as it's already over a month overdue.

On the software side I assume that it will be possible to use the DSP and PowerVR graphic better within the next 2-3 month. That has been some good progress as far as I can tell. The only thing I don't have any clue about is how good the DSP and PowerVR driver stuff can be used by XBMC.
Currently the DSP is not used (at least that's what I assume after reading the previous comments). If the DSP can be used for decoding the video higher fps should be possible.
The experts (topfs2,...) can correct me if I'm wrong.

I am atm investigating dropping X11 since that sgx driver seems to have an aweful integration with it, i.e. its making it unnecessarily slow. Still just a hunch though and nothing confirmed. Finally the driver sdk have been put out so should be possible to make proper distros with those drivers now.

OMX is still not hooked up with panda + xbmc, have not had the time to look into that just yet, been focusing on the gui. It works just fine outside xbmc though. One worrying detail is that from what I can tell the omx stuff in panda does not a) support image decoding and b) does not support the overlays. a) is just a niceness thing and makes imageloading much faster, could possibly be fixed with neon built image libraries. b) means we need to use gles for presentation, which may drag down performance somewhat, hopefully the IVA-HD is fast enough so thats not a problem.


The XBMC keep black screen on beagleboard XM - dreamfly281 - 2011-02-12

Hi XBMC experts,

I have tried to run the XBMC on the beagleboard-XM follow the guider from http://elinux.org/BeagleBoard/GSoC/2010_Projects/XBMC,

But meet some problem, when start xbmc from console, the full screen keep on black and the xbmc control GUI not display.

after kill the xbmc.bin process, there console show some output like below:
FPS: 0.59
FPS: 0.66
FPS: 0.66
FPS: 67.26
FPS: 67.26
FPS: 69.10
...
FPS: 67.19


The system environmental I used as below:

Hardware:
beagelboard XM rev A
System Software:
Angstrom beagleboard distribution;
Linux beagleboard 2.6.32 #3 PREEMPT

XBMC version:
xbmc_10.05-r11 which generated from the Angstrom build package
xbmc_10.05-r11+gitr0+e2ab481ebe964321c358ab9d6402088c714adcbe.6_armv7a.ipk

The xbmc log file also be upload to http://pastebin.com/qPPWVsdV

From the xbmc.log the first error is like below;
17:59:05 T:1114804224 M:456945664 INFO: GLES: Maximum texture width: 2048
17:59:05 T:1114804224 M:456945664 INFO: load default splash image: /usr/share/xbmc/media/Splash.png
17:59:05 T:1114804224 M:456945664 INFO: msg: PICTURE::LoadImage: Unable to open image: Error: (2)
17:59:05 T:1114804224 M:456945664 ERROR: Texture manager unable to load file:

But I don't why this error happened, Could any xbmc experts give some suggestion or hint? any help will be appreciated. If the above error info is not enough, I'd like to supply more follow your requirement, Thanks.

BR /Yanbo


- topfs2 - 2011-02-12

It fails to load alot of the textures, I have seen this on xM before but I have never been able to understand why. I only own a c4 one and I can't replicate it on that one. From what I've seen the skins in the addon manager do work though, for some reason. PM3.HD for example.

However, you should still see something and you should be able to nav the gui, just missing a lot of textures.


- dreamfly281 - 2011-02-13

topfs2 Wrote:It fails to load alot of the textures, I have seen this on xM before but I have never been able to understand why. I only own a c4 one and I can't replicate it on that one. From what I've seen the skins in the addon manager do work though, for some reason. PM3.HD for example.

Thanks for you reply Smile
Sorry, I'm just a beginner, which file can be used to modify the default skin

topfs2 Wrote:However, you should still see something and you should be able to nav the gui, just missing a lot of textures.


Unfortunately, there is nothing except the black screen and the mouse pointer. Anywhere I'll struggle with it to see any progress lately


- dreamfly281 - 2011-03-16

Hi,
Finally, I enable the XBMC running well on the beagleboard-XM revB,
It runs very well, thanks for all you help.

But now I meet another performance problem:

I'm try to use XBMC to play 720p movie, but the FPS is very low,
around 10fps, the CPU occupy is nearly 100%.
But under the same system environment, the Mplayer play the same 720p
movie very smooth, nearly 24fps. and the CPU
occupy is no more than 50%.

My confuse is the Mplayer and XBMC use the same FFmpeg as video codec,
and when the XBMC play the movie in full screen mode.
the XBMC GUI should not eat too much CPU resource. Why the result is
so different? Does any specify system optimize or parameter needed?

Any experience share or suggest will be great welcome.


- topfs2 - 2011-03-16

Which branch are you using? Mainline uses gles and shaders for the presentation and yuv-rgb conversion which is super slow on beagle in general, my gsoc branch make use of the hw overlay for both of this and in general if the CPU can decode in 720p it will present it no problem.