[.:B:.]

I think the issues lie not with the XBMC team but with Allwinner paying lip service to better Linux support and hardware acceleration, but doing nothing more than that.

If the hardware is a) poorly documented, b) even more poorly supported by its manufacturer, and c) XBMC devs recommend against it in general, then take your losses and get something that is supported.

Compare Allwinner with Broadcom's CrystalHD - it was supported almost from the get-go with XBMC, thanks to Broadcom providing excellent support and a codebase to build on.

[ChicagoBob123]

But isn't the acceleration done through the Mali400gpu? Also why is mxplayer working great on Android? Its hardware accelerated and can play hd. I program do i don't think your complaints are valid but i know little about the ARM/Android code world. To me if mxplayer can do it the XBMC developers should be able to as well, even if they just use open gl es as the basis for acceleration. Lots of support for that.

[noggin]

But isn't the acceleration done through the Mali400gpu?

No - this is a common misconception. On ARM SoCs the GPU doesn't handle video decoding, there is usually a separate VPU/MFC or similar which is distinct and separate to the GPU. On the Allwinner this, I think, referred to as Cedar, though I may be wrong. Lots of ARM SoCs use Mali 400 GPUs, but they have very different VPUs, most of which are not open sourced or accessible easily using Open Source software (either because of poor documentation or broken Linux drivers)

The platforms which XBMC supports hardware acceleration on (Raspberry Pi, i.MX6, AMlogic) are supported because they have hardware acceleration that can be accessed reliably using documented code bases, and where manufacturers have co-operated to provide the required information in a manner compatible with Open Source licensing.

Also why is mxplayer working great on Android? Its hardware accelerated and can play hd.

mxplayer isn't open source. They can sign NDAs and/or pay money to access closed sources. XBMC - being open source - can't do that.

I program do i don't think your complaints are valid but i know little about the ARM/Android code world. To me if mxplayer can do it the XBMC developers should be able to as well, even if they just use open gl es as the basis for acceleration. Lots of support for that.

I'm not sure Open GL ES is relevant to H264, MPEG2 and VC-1 decoding is it? It's more about rendering. (Or are you suggesting software decoding using GPU compute - which is a very non-trivial process)

[ChicagoBob123]

Check out http://edn.com/design/consumer/4426346/P...-OpenGL-ES

[Ned Scott]

Anyone can do it, but no one wants to do it. VidOn.me did some work to start, but it's very messy and needs a lot of clean up for it to be accepted into mainline XBMC, since throwing it in as-is would probably break tons of stuff and just messes things up that someone would be forced to clean up eventually (or just go insane). It's buggy as hell.

There was a time when people wanted to work on A10/A20 stuff, but then Allwinner dicked everyone around, and then two years passed by. So yeah.

If you already have an Allwinner A10/A20 device, you can probably find some of the unofficial builds based on that work floating around. There were a few even before the vidon.me stuff, IIRC. If you don't have an Allwinner A10/A20 device, then don't sweat it. For $60 you can get something better than a Banana Pi.

You guys sound so disappointed to find out that you don't get to ride on the bus with no breaks and no working air conditioning. There's other busses that are much nicer...

[Ned Scott]

Check out http://edn.com/design/consumer/4426346/P...-OpenGL-ES

That's not about decoding video codecs, though.

[ChicagoBob123]

Your comments got me curious so I read a couple of wiksi about the A20. If you can ever overcome the source issues is quite a processor capable of decoding 4K.

[davilla]

Check out http://edn.com/design/consumer/4426346/P...-OpenGL-ES

Zero to do with decoding, everything to do with composing (aka rendering).

[MediaPi]

Its not $60 cheapest one I found is $52
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Sales-of-...63544.html

That equates to £30.90 people are paying about this or more in the UK for a Raspberry Pi. This would probably pass cutoms to in the UK so your not charged the price of the board over. Stuff like cubox i will most def want you to pay customs so its never straight forward convert to pounds and your done.

If hardware acceleration worked on the banana Pi. you get dual core 1ghz arm. 1gig ram. and so much more stuff that I wont bother listing. I've already got the peripherals from my Raspberry Pi. so to say that I'm not dissapointed that XBMC wont work with banana Pi (although I understand) is an understatement.

Just like to add Ned yes their might be better buses but your being biased and they mostly in the US. Its a diffeent story here in the UK....

[Mike34]

I'm going to try one, hopefully the amount of interest will increase and drive the development.
If it can't be used for xbmc yet then it will good as a little low powered server with its sata connection and 1gb network connection.
I have found it for £49.99 delivered from place here in the UK just waiting for the stock to come in.

Another toy to learn on and is add to my collection lol

[MediaPi]

Mike at that price why bother? especially since even if it ever works you'll be waiting 6months to a year. from the point of Devs coming on board.

I would rather buy this mini itx board
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gigabyte-GA-J180...J1800N-D2H

£47
buy ram (if not you dont already have) buy cheap from china 1 gig for £5

and a power supply £20

since Banana pi doesnt come with a case. you basically got an x86 system that is about 5 leagues ahead of banana Pi in which you have XBMC out of the box!! for only about £20-£25 and not having to wait a year for software maturity.

Also buy the time XBMC works on this (which is never) boards like Minnowboard Max will be released http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=191481. says $99.

anyway if I had the money I rather buy that mini itx-board.

[Mike34]

I have got my zotac like that, I've added ram etc nice case the works and it works great.
I like the idea of it being so small and low powered like the Raspberry.

[MediaPi]

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Cubieboard2-A2...54074083bf

power cable included cubieboard

[lewzer]

I was a former user of a RasperryPI XBMC for more than a year myself. I really liked it, the video decoding of 1080p is really great and it pretty much played everything that I've thrown at it. On top of it the huge benefit was the GPIO pins which allowed me to make myself an DIY backlight (Using hyperion) for my TV and a IR receiver system without much hassle and without any extra hardware except the LEDS/IR receiver.The PI was running on stable 1200mhz and the performance was really great. Loved that thing.
That being said I recently moved to a Baytrail Q1900-ITX because I wanted to have a more powerful machine so I could host a local webserver and few extra things together with the XBMC. However, since these mobos do not have GPIO's like the PI I had to get myself Arduino for the things such as backlight for TV, IR receiver, temperature sensor and so on.
IMHO, the rPI was and still is the perfect solution for the beginners who prefer to have something that could be fiddled with (OC'd, interacted via GPIO pins, etc) and want to run XBMC. The heavily OC'ed rPI is is almost as fast in XBMC as the quad core BayTrail.
Now my lovely rPI is resting safely in the box until I think of a use for it. Poor fella has been OC'ed and running at much, much higher clock rates than it was certified for a year and it still never failed me and runs perfectly even today. <3 rPI.

[noggin]

I'm going to try one, hopefully the amount of interest will increase and drive the development.
If it can't be used for xbmc yet then it will good as a little low powered server with its sata connection and 1gb network connection.
I have found it for £49.99 delivered from place here in the UK just waiting for the stock to come in.

Another toy to learn on and is add to my collection lol

There was a lot of interest in the Allwinners about 2 years ago when the first A10 players like the Mele started appearing. Then Allwinner started messing around with the developers - not appearing to honour agreements etc. I don't think many of the devs here are interested in revisiting and flogging that dead horse when other platforms are available with better manufacturer support. If Allwinner had done the right thing 2 years ago - we'd be in a very different place. They didn't. We're not.

At the moment the Broadcom in the Pi, the single core AMLogics and the i.MX6 (which is available in up-to-Quad core versions) appear to be the best ARM platforms supported by Linux XBMC. (Android is a different matter)

However x86 is getting cheaper as well it seems - and offers some things that the ARM platforms don't, currently, like HD Audio bit streaming. I just wish Asus would launch the Celeron 2955U Chromebox in Europe. If that is priced at the £130 or less point it will be an amazing XBMC box. (2GB RAM, 16GB SSD, WiFi+Bluetooth, USB 3.0, HDMI + Displayport, GigE, HD Audio bit streaming, full hardware acceleration, YADIF 2x sw deinterlacing etc.)