Allwinner A10 : Is XBMC ported to MALI-400MP ?

To keep you all a bit updated;

Another box is on the market based on the same Allwinner configuration. We must admit, they are getting sexier by the day.
http://detail.china.alibaba.com/buyer/of...91800.html

Secondly. QWare a Dutch reseller overhere sells the Allwinner tablet in "Intertoys" and "Kruidvat" shops.
They have released the sources of both android 4.0.3 as well the kernel 3.0.8.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost...tcount=121

Kernel 3.0.8 has been released. http://qware.nl/_resources/downloads/lichee4.03.tar.bz2

Im subscribed to the ARM-NETBOOK Rhombus mailing list, they mostly talk of the Mele A1000 / A2000

it has been suggested that the Mali GPU does not perform the actual video decoding and there is a separate Video Processing Unit on the device's board.

I wonder how this will change the outlook for getting XBMC on this family of devices.........

Thread subscribed

I hope there will be support for this in the future, I'd love to get my hands on one of these if they'd be running XBMC

(2012-05-13 10:21)Vaevictus2 Wrote:  Im subscribed to the ARM-NETBOOK Rhombus mailing list, they mostly talk of the Mele A1000 / A2000

it has been suggested that the Mali GPU does not perform the actual video decoding and there is a separate Video Processing Unit on the device's board.

I wonder how this will change the outlook for getting XBMC on this family of devices.........

won't change the outlook anymore than the outlook for any other arm device that's being worked on...pandaboard, raspberry pi, beagleboard, etc...they all have their own way of doing the video decoding... why would it be any different for the A10?

Still waiting for my A2000 to get shipped out - Tom said that he was going to ship mine this weekend. I honestly can't wait to get it and start tinkering with it. I have no programming skills though, so I have a feeling trying to learn all of this is going to be a bit of a challenge.

I have one question though - why was it so important that the Kernal for 3.0.8 (Supposedly released now?) be released?

(2012-05-14 03:26)tastypotato Wrote:  I have one question though - why was it so important that the Kernal for 3.0.8 (Supposedly released now?) be released?

You don't want to re-invent the weel. It takes a lot of time to port the 2.6 kernel device drivers into 3.x versions. If they are released by the manufacturer at least you can start where they left of.

About the video decoding;
Yes there is a special handle in the SoC about the video decoding. That nifty little thing communicates with the software on one side and the hardware on the other. Which hardware that is doesn't really matter (GPU or yet another Chip) as long as it will be able to decode the frames without having to rely on the CPU.

There is a library which can be used by software (XBMC/MPlayer/DVDplayer/etc) which can talk to this chip and "give back" the decoded frames. The documentation of this library and an example of how to use it is released earlier;
https://github.com/amery/allwinner-a10-v...f?raw=true


As soon as the kernel issues and device drivers are all sorted out, a brach of XBMC need to be started where just like the Raspberry Pi a new player get's included, just like the OMXplayer from the RPi project.

I could not have asked for a better explanation!

I've started following the mailing list, which isn't making a whole lot of sense to me right now but once I get my Mele I should be able to try out all of the stuff they're talking about on there.

If XBMC gets ported to the Allwinner A10, would it also work on the QWare tablets which j1nx talked about? If it does I might as well get a tablet from a local shop instead of ordering a Mele A1000 in China. Or does the Mele A1000 have any other advantages over an A10 tablet? (except remote/VGA/LAN/optical)

(2012-05-17 18:42)Snippo Wrote:  If XBMC gets ported to the Allwinner A10, would it also work on the QWare tablets which j1nx talked about? If it does I might as well get a tablet from a local shop instead of ordering a Mele A1000 from China. Or does the Mele A1000 have any other advantages over an A10 tablet? (except remote/VGA/LAN/optical)

From what I have heard most A10 devices are very similar so it's very possible. In any case you can just flash a sd card and see if it works in your local shop.