New XBMC Port Promises ARM-Powered HD In the Palm of Your Hand

Engadget has a recent teaser video promising HD content via XBMC running on a 600MHz Beagleboard. This could mean great things for home theater putterers, with the Beagleboard tipping the scales at a modest $150 and the ability to fit in the palm of your hand. Already running on everything from MIDs to AppleTVs and now moving to ARM-powered devices like the Beagleboard, it looks like XBMC needs to be renamed from "Xbox Media Center" to "ubiquitous media center."

Comments

Cheapest

[manekineko2]

This looks incredible if they can pull it off, but until this is out, what is the cheapest XBMC machine I could throw together that would be able to play any content I throw at it?

I'd love to jump on upgrading from my vintage Xbox XBMC, but I'd hate to drop a few hundred on an upgrade only to find out that it plays 99% of videos out there, but chokes on all high bit rate 1080p MKVs with lots of action, or something like that.

Re:Cheapest

[Henriok]

600 MHz ARM-processor won't be able to play 1080p MKV. This can almost play 480p apparently.

Re:Cheapest

[aicrules]

so we just need two of them!

Re:Cheapest

[Vuojo]

Anything with Nvidias ION board can handle high bitrate 1080p movies without dropped frames. Here is a link to the board I used for my XBMC http://pden.zotac.com/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage_images.tpl&product_id=169&category_id=15&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=1

Re:Cheapest

[0100010001010011]

Hardware Decoder...

Right now people are working on getting the CrystalHD from Broadcom working under OS X and Linux. Supposedly they can't release it for NDA reasons.

Then there is also VDPAU. I know there isn't an ARM port (YET!). Feature Set C decodes nearly everything in HD. I was playing 1080p with 10% CPU.

There are a ton of those set top box devices from WD and other companies that advertise to 1080P with a small fanless device.

Re:Cheapest

[Anonymous Coward]

It all comes down to what's on the board. No one does 1080p in software anymore, unless you're a 2nd class citizen with drivers and vid cards. Many consumer devices are coming with blu-ray ICs for media handling, like the range from sigma. They're cheap, they handle just about everything you throw at them, and there's little CPU involvement. Even TVs have these chips built in today, the need for HTPC is almost redundant if you have new gear. E.g. Samsung's TVs will play mkv from a network device, I'm sure other brands offer similar functionality.

Re:Cheapest

[RattFink]

The processor on the board, a OMAP3530, also has a ~500mhz C64x+ DSP and a POWERVR SGX video accellerator. There is plenty of power on it.

Re:Cheapest

[manekineko2]

Have there been improvements since this post? I just headed over to the XBMC forums and looked for relevant posts, and came across this post claiming they had some dropped frames with the Zotac IONITX-C-U and the Zotac IONITX-D-E:
http://www.xbmc.org/forum/showpost.php?p=411435&postcount=5

Thanks!

Re:Cheapest

[Anonymous Coward]

This suggestion is great for downloaded media. The problem these days comes in when you try to stream HD content from Hulu or other sites. Then you can say goodbye to any semblance of hardware decoding -- you're back to relying on a beefy processor.

Re:Cheapest

[Nadaka]

Its not really the Arm doing the heavy lifting here. Its the coprocessors. Beagle board is based on the TI OMAP 3530 chipset that has hardware acceleration for a large number of video codecs and definately supports at least 720p HD video output.

Re:Cheapest

[AmericanGladiator]

There's already a distribution of Angstrom Linux that'll do 720p24 decode using only the ARM + NEON acceleration without any optimization IIRC (surf around on beagleboard.org). To go much further though, they'll need to take advantage of the TMS320C64x+ DSP also in the OMAP.

Re:Cheapest

[drgould]

A recent Lifehacker article suggested the $200 Acer Aspire Revo. Pros: 160GB HD, HMDI output, Gigabit ethernet, reportably plays 1080p, runs XBMC. Cons: single-core, 1GB RAM, no built-in expandability, WiFi or IR.

For $320, the Revo's big brother also has dual-core, 2GB RAM and built-in WiFi.

Re:Cheapest

[Vuojo]

I have never had dropped frames with my box. It has 4GB of memory and I'm using XBMC Live installed on a flash card so there aren't any extra processes wasting CPU time. It would be nice to hear if those who are experiencing dropped frames are using stock Ubuntu installs or XBMC Live installs.

Re:Cheapest

[AmiMoJo]

Plus you can get an Acer Aspire box for $200 which comes with a 160GB HDD and uses x86 so it can do other stuff (XBMC runs on top of Linux so you can install a full distro and run servers etc). The HDD is useful for recording to or using a local video storage, and the nVidia ION GPU does 1080p without problems as well as running many games.

While ARM is very low power and this is a clever solution, when it comes to the bottom end of the market it will have to be spectacular to compete with generic x86 nettops or it's price advantage will very quickly slip away.

Re:Cheapest

[manekineko2]

Oops, actually I just re-read my link, and realized that what he's saying is that the D-E didn't drop frames but the C-U did. Both the D-E and the A that you have use dual core Atom 330's. In fact, I can't seem to figure out what the difference is being the A and the D-E from Zotac's horrible website.

Maybe I'll look into getting one of the Atom 330 ones like you have for myself.

Have you tried many of the alternative fancier skins with transparency and title lookup/cover preview? Do those run smoothly on your system?

Thanks for the help!

Re:Cheapest

[b0bby]

Check out this lifehacker post:
http://lifehacker.com/5391308/build-a-silent-standalone-xbmc-media-center-on-the-cheap
The Acer AspireRevo is $199 & seems to do it all.

Re:Cheapest

[WilliamX]

Personally, I think this isn't a very attractive option at all. The Beagleboard is.roughly $150? The Zatec Ion board (Intel Atom dual core processor using Nvidia's Ion chipset) is around $172 ($190 with the powerbrick), cheaper if you go for the single core version. And would far out perform the Beagleboard.

Re:Cheapest

[WilliamX]

Forgot to mention the $172 and $190 prices include a mini-pci-e wireless card installed. And with a low cost M350 Mini-ITX case, you can mount the system on the tv itself using the wall mounts.

Re:Cheapest

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a review of one of the Zotac ION boards at Anandtec, and here's a link to some customer reviews at newegg. They are sold with an external (brick) power supply or an ATX connector. An interesting little critter, this board, if your CPU demands aren't high, but you need decent video performance and low power usage.

Re:Cheapest

[Anonymous Coward]

$150 for a new 600mhz ARM based beagleboard with OpenGL ES 2.0, or $50 for used refurbished 733mhz Pentium-3 based Xbox with Nvidia NV2A.

Both run Linux. Xbox also runs Xbox titles and plays DVDs.

Which would you choose?

Re:Cheapest

[clarkn0va]

The A model takes DC input and ships with a 90W power brick. The other Atom 330 model takes standard ATX power input.

I have watched plenty of trouble-free 1080p on my IonITX-A board running Ubuntu (no XBMC, just smplayer with the vdpau patches) all while seeding multiple torrents from the same internal hard drive.

Re:Cheapest

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

The processor on the board, a OMAP3530, also has a ~500mhz C64x+ DSP and a POWERVR SGX video accellerator. There is plenty of power on it.

Yeah, its right there in the name!

Re:Cheapest

[slim]

does it enforce DRM?

XBMC? The media player that plays video files inside RARs on the fly?

No, enforcing DRM is not one of their priorities.

Re:Cheapest

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Well, one fits in the palm of your hand and consumes under 2.5watts. The other, not so much.

Re:Cheapest

[freedumb2000]

I am planning to build an ION system with Tiny Core Linux on flash based media for storage (SATA to SDHC or CF connector). Have you tried compiling anything on it? I worry that the performance may be unbearable since flash can't really handle writing of small files well.

Re:Cheapest

[Locutus]

that board you linked to says that it's compatible with Intel Atom( x86 ) and so right there you are talking over 10W of power minimum. The beagle, IIRC, runs at less than 5W so as long as you don't need it to run in your hand or run for very long in your hand, other x86 based configurations would work.

The beagleboard or more specifically the ARM Cortex-a8 boards are very powerful with little power usage. That's why they are what's in the new smartphones like the iPhone GS and Motorola Droid amongst others.

LoB

Re:Cheapest

[ZorMonkey]

The XBox can not do HD reliably enough though. 720p is the best you'll do (although you can squeeze a bit of 1080i out of it). And x264 performance isn't great (you'll get a lot of dropped frames, if it works), so you'll be stuck with xvid. But it is quite nice for the price.

Re:Cheapest

[ZZane]

Acer Aspire Revo. You can pick one up for $200 at Best Buy in store or buy online at Newegg, Amazon, etc.

Specs: Atom 230, nVidia ION LE, 1GB RAM (expandable to 2 or 3), 160GB HD, HDMI & VGA, 6 USB 2.0, 1 eSATA, 1 Gigabit ethernet port, SD slot. Pulls 65 watts max and physical size is 7.1"x7.1"x1.2".

This can play back full 1080p without dropping frames and will run XBMC or Boxee under both Windows and Linux.

I purchased one yesterday and so far I've run XBMC under Linux and Boxee under both Windows and Linux and will be sticking with Boxee running under Ubuntu 9.10. The performance is great and currently the only down side is that flash playback isn't very good but Flash 10.1 will fix that.

Re:Cheapest

[ZZane]

There's an open SODIMM slot inside and you can expand to 2 or possibly 3GB (I have 2GB in mine). There also appears to be an open mini-pci slot inside where a wifi card could be installed. Looks like you could pretty easily swap out the HD for a large one as well.

Re:Cheapest

[psbrogna]

It's not the cheapest but the Phenom Quad Cores can actually rip a DVD and play hi-def off the hard drive at the same time. I put together a box based on one of these for around $400 (4 Gb RAM + 1 TB storage + DVD drive, used on-board everything else cause it was good 'nuf). If you've got a monster DVD collection you're looking to rip to HD it's all about how many DVDs you can feed it every night without cutting into "theater hours."

Re:Cheapest

[Goaway]

Except there aren't really any opensource tools that can take advantage of that hardware on the OMAP3.

Re:Cheapest

[hairyfeet]

It ain't dirt cheap like a beagle, but if you want it to work any format you can throw at it something like this would be your best bet. It has an Atom dual, ION graphics, 2Gb of RAM, 320Gb HDD, and a slim DVD burner to top it off. Put in a cheap capture card and you are ready to go.

And if you have an XP Pro license lying around you can look up "TinyXP Beast Edition" which is an ultra stripped down XP Pro that only uses 63Mb of RAM and almost no CPU, great for running something like XMBC or my favorite Mediaportal. Of course you can always go with the new Win7 HP, but I figure why add the extra bloat if you don't need it. But the above box with either media center sounds like just what you are looking for, something that will play all formats and still look nice in the entertainment center.

Re:Cheapest

[blincoln]

I'd love to jump on upgrading from my vintage Xbox XBMC, but I'd hate to drop a few hundred on an upgrade only to find out that it plays 99% of videos out there, but chokes on all high bit rate 1080p MKVs with lots of action, or something like that.

It's been 6-8 months since I last used XBMC, but back then I couldn't even get it to keep the audio and video from an AVI file in sync, it dropped frames when playing DVDs, and functions could only be mapped to a single key, not a key combination (due to the backwards way that the functions were mapped - IIRC the mapping file was by key, not by function). The UI was great for the most part, but it didn't work very well at - you know - playing videos. This was on a P4 system with 2GB of RAM, an Nvidia video chipset, and the Nvidia binary Linux driver, so performance shouldn't have been a concern. I have trouble imagining it working better on a lower-powered system.

Re:Cheapest

[pjl5602]

Yeah, I wish ASRock made a real bare-bones model with no hard drive and no optical drive vs. just no operating system. I'd be all over it.

Re:Cheapest

[OrangeTide]

you have to add RAM and flash or a hdd to get the mini-itx board going. The beagleboard has all that. So you're probably off by about $50 on the real cost of a Zantac w/ NVidia ION.

Re:Cheapest

[WilliamX]

Beagleboard includes 256MB of DDR RAM, and 256MB of NAND Flash. 1GB of DDR2 ram is $15.00 for the Ion board. So yeah, maybe a little off, but the small amount more gives you a huge difference in system performance, and for HiDef media, the difference would be night and day for what amounts to a small difference in cost.

Re:Cheapest

[loutr]

I'm running XBMC on a Zotac ION MB (A model I think, the one with a single-core Atom and 90W PSU). 1080p videos play without an hitch, skins run smoothly, and the system is passively cooled. Perfect solution for a relatively cheap media center. I'm running Arch but the XBMC live distro seems to work great.

Re:Cheapest

[BikeHelmet]

Correct. Western Digital's WDTV, Asus's O!Play, and others...

Texas Instruments has the OMAP 3530 playing back 1080p H.264; all that remains is an open source codec being created to do the same task...

Re:Cheapest

[aztracker1]

Honestly, I found lower-power AMD chips on AMD 780 or higher boards work extremely well, but you'll draw a bit more power (60-90W from my testing for a full system), lower at S3 idle.

Re:Cheapest

[aztracker1]

The atom CPU is a lot faster than most P4 generation CPUs. Also, an onboard 8000 series nVidia is faster than many of the nVidia cpus from 4-5 years ago. It's hard to get a specific comparison though. Also an Atom 330 is dual core.

Re:Cheapest

[hairyfeet]

Why? From what I've seen ASRock generally puts quality parts into their barebone kits, and why would you want to use old parts on a new build? Better to just go ahead and get a quality barebones where all the parts are matched and ready to go, and the ASRock will last you for years and it a quality machine.

Look at it this way-for $350 you get everything you need to build a nice media center, just add OS and cheap capture card. And $350 for a nice mini like that, complete with dual core CPU, 350Gb HDD, and 2Gb of RAM, is actually a pretty decent price when you figure in you are getting the ION platform, which is made for cranking out quality video without needing a dozen fans or sucking lots of juice.

All in all it is a pretty nice setup for the price IMHO. Just add a stripped down XP with XBMC or Mediaportal and you are good to go. Either a copy of "TinyXP Beast Edition" or if you have XP Home just Nlite it and all is gravy.

Re:Cheapest

[drinkypoo]

There are a ton of those set top box devices from WD and other companies that advertise to 1080P with a small fanless device.

The problem with this notion is that those devices usually can only decode a limited set of video codecs at 1080P, using a companion chip or coprocessor. Many of those OMAP devices don't even have the power to play an AVI and upscale it to 1080P if they have to do it with the CPU. Most of them will hw decode most MPEG streams, but they won't even handle all of those.

Re:Cheapest

[OrangeTide]

With these sorts of things when you add $100 you typically double the capabilities (or more). But really, a box that can play movies over an HDMI connector (even it only works in DVI mode) is going to be hard to do as a PC for less than the beagleboard. With the low cost you have to accept the limitations. And we're not even adding in a case and power, which ended up being a little bit more expensive for the ION board as well ($50 for smallish case for the ION, but $30 for one for the Beagleboard for example).

Re:Cheapest

[MikeFM]

I wonder how this compares to an iPod Touch (about $200 + $50 for cables) for playback quality. I dump HD files on that and play them to my tv all the time and they look good. $150 would be a bit cheaper but not a lot.

Apple is stupid for not giving playback to tv a nicer interface and including a remote (bluetooth?) with the AV cable for the $50. If it worked as a lite Apple TV it'd be a good way to convert people over.

Re:Cheapest

[WilliamX]

$35 for the Ion, and it is mountable on the back of any LCD TV or Monitor. The difference in price is not nearly as much as people here are portraying, and the difference in functionality is so huge that the small difference is barely mentionable.

Re:Cheapest

[OrangeTide]

you complain about small differences, but then argue about $5 difference on the price of a case? Does your case include a DC power adapter, mine does?

I still stand by that it is difficult to build a PC that is 1. small 2. plays 720p videos to a TV 3. can be built for $150-$200. This is especially true for the ION which costs about $130 for one without built-in DC-DC psu, and $155 for one with the PSU option.

N270 Atom w/ DC-DC (D945GSEJT) is $100. add in case ($35), 512MB RAM ($8), 4GB flash+reader ($15) = $158 Which is the best I can do that is near $150 and a PC. Of course if you spent an extra $50 you can have more flash, more RAM and an ION. $200 seems to be the sweet spot for a PC based mini media device.

Re:Cheapest

[pjl5602]

I stream everything from the network (so no need for DVD.) Linux will be installed on a USB drive (so no need for hard drive.)

That's around $100 bucks off the price right there...

Small Correction:

[lobiusmoop]

The Beagleboard runs at 500Mhz, not 600Mhz (they underclock the processor for reliability. I have one btw)

Re:Small Correction:

[PaintyThePirate]

Indeed. Apparently they are releasing Rev C4 of it soon with a 720Mhz processor though.

Re:Small Correction:

[lobiusmoop]

I just noticed that although a stock Beagle Board is 500MHZ, it's possible to change the clock speed in the BIOS, so maybe he's already driving/overdriving the processor in this instance.

Re:Small Correction:

[sootman]

And for those who have never heard of or seen a Beagleboard, it's worth noting that it doesn't have a built-in display. So the headline should be "New XBMC Port Promises ARM-Powered HD Source in the Palm of Your Hand." Which is still pretty cool but I thought they were talking about something that I could hold in my hand and watch. Note to headline writers: small is great, but "fits in your hand" isn't too special unless the device is intended to be used while in your hand.

Why do I have to wait 30 seconds for Post Preview?

[electrosoccertux]

It's hardly even worth actively participating in discussion anymore...

Didn't XBMC drop the Xbox support awhile ago?

[tlhIngan]

I seem to remember a year or two ago there was a call for maintainers of the Xbox port - seeing that they want to get away from it (old/obsolete hardware that few people have left, requires use of Xbox SDK that no one has access to now (legally)).

Of course, the ability to run elsewhere (Windows/Mac/Linux/etc) has given it a lot more legitimacy in the world, so I think the Xbox side has been downplayed to be almost non-existent now.

Re:Didn't XBMC drop the Xbox support awhile ago?

[Pvt_Ryan]

As far as i know the Xbox version is in maintaince only, no new features just big fixes. The never distributed the binary but instead let others do that.

Re:Didn't XBMC drop the Xbox support awhile ago?

[0100010001010011]

Someone is still making nightly builds: http://sshcs.com/xbmc/

It's getting almost all the same new features and bug fixes as everything else. From what I understand it is one massive main source trunk. Everything platform specific is taken care of by #if statements and the config script.

Re:Didn't XBMC drop the Xbox support awhile ago?

[Civil_Disobedient]

I seem to remember a year or two ago there was a call for maintainers of the Xbox port

Funny, I recall a few years before that when the XBMC group were positively adamant that they would never, ever do a Linux port because so much of the code relied on DirectX (MS-only) routines.

I'm extremely grateful they decided to change their position.

Not up to the task

[Anonymous Coward]

ARM gave one of my classes a presentation about the beagleboard and showed a demo. It could barely handle 720p video, and it lagged a lot of the time.

Re:Not up to the task

[slim]

The smart thing to do would be to offload the streaming to a suitable DSP chip. I have no idea to what extent the BeagleBoard supports this (probably does).

Re:Not up to the task

[slim]

/me follows up self.

See other people's posts above. The BB has a TI decoder chip on it as standard.

Mine cost me $85

[Phil Urich]

I just threw an NVIDIA 8400 GS 512MB PCI card into my ancient PIII 600mHz, and since I'm running Linux (Ubuntu 9.04 although I've seriously tweaked the install) XBMC just uses VDPAU to offload all the rendering to the video card. And yes, it can do 1080p x264 video just fine, which amuses me to no end since the majority of the parts in that computer are from 1999!

If you don't have a spare old computer around, or you want to buy a complete solution, basically any of the "Ion-based" nettops should be cheap, tiny and get the job done. There's tons out there, and you can even get one from System76 that already has Ubuntu installed ( http://system76.com/product_info.php?cPath=27&products_id=95 ) at which point you only need to add the XBMC PPA to the repository list, click install and apply, and voila, a tiny cheap machine capable of 1080p video. For some anecdotal evidence on how easily these setups can run you can hunt around the XBMC forums a bit. Basically the key is just to get any kind of machine with a GeForce 8-or-later card in it, and the newer ones have even more features as far as using VDPAU is concerned.

Re:Mine cost me $85

[oracleguy01]

Not all of the 8 series cards support VDPAU. However there is a handy list on Wikipedia of which NVIDIA cards support VDPAU: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDPAU#Table_of_NVIDIA_GPUs

Re:Mine cost me $85

[BikeHelmet]

Handy tip! Great idea for making an HTPC out of old hardware.

However, I prefer to let my CPU handle the decoding, and load my GPU up with quality enhancing shaders. Since I usually watch videos on my gaming computer, CPU speed is a non-issue.

XBMC has been renamed

[Morose]

Although it's easy to still think of it as the X-Box Media Center still, it's been renamed to XBMC Media Center for quite awhile owing to the vast amount of systems it runs on. Lovely fact checking there /. :P

Re:XBMC has been renamed

[Monkeedude1212]

" XBMC Media Center"

Isn't that Redundant? I thought that XBMC = X-Box Media Center. Did they rename it to X-Box Media Center Media Center?

Re:XBMC has been renamed

[Anonymous Coward]

So it went from the Xbox Media Center to the XB Media Center Media Center?

Re:XBMC has been renamed

[tepples]

" XBMC Media Center"

Isn't that Redundant?

No more redundant than "GNU's Not UNIX".

Re:XBMC has been renamed

[analogheretic]

It's "recursive" not "redundant."

Re:XBMC has been renamed

[Anonymous Coward]

LOGIC FAIL

Re:XBMC has been renamed

[Anonymous Coward]

GNU is recursive,

XBMC media center is merely redundant.

Re:XBMC has been renamed

[tolan-b]

It's a recursive acronym. Like GNU.

Re:XBMC has been renamed

[DragonWriter]

Isn't that Redundant?

No, because "XBMC" is now an opaque identifier, not an acronym. So "XBMC Media Center" doesn't expand to "Xbox Media Center Media Center", or to anything else.

Re:XBMC has been renamed

[EllisDees]

No, if it were recursive, it would be XMC Media Center. XBMC is just a case of plain old RAS Syndrome

Re:XBMC has been renamed

[Anonymous Coward]

The extra MC stands for "I wonder how many blood vessels we can pop in the foreheads of angry Aspergers geeks who can't tolerate any deviation from perfect logical construction MC"

XBMC360

[stim]

But when will it run on an xbox 360?

Re:XBMC360

[Rude Turnip]

The 360 out-of-the-box with system updates already does quite a bit. I think I use mine for games maybe 15% of the time at most anymore.

Re:XBMC360

[tolan-b]

It does now, after a fashion:

http://www.ps3news.com/XBox-360/video-xbmc-running-on-xbox-360-ubuntu-by-team-cygnos/

but it's not usable.

So....

[HangingChad]

Is that an HD Beagleboard in your pocket, or you just happy to see me in 1080p?

Re:Where he got it

[tolan-b]

Don't you ever get bored?

Does this come with TI driver source code?

[CockMonster]

Because I've seen some TI driver source code and it's frankly, shit. No wonder they left the camera module off

Re:Does this come with TI driver source code?

[Goaway]

Be glad you don't need to read TI datasheets.

Pandora?

[Spykk]

As I recall, the pandora handheld is also built on an OMAP3530 and has a video out jack. Video playback didn't work out so well for Sony's PSP, but having a HTPC in my pocket that can stream my videos over the network seems like a good thing.

Re:Pandora?

[nevermore94]

Sweet! Another reason why I can't wait to get my Pandora in another 1-2 months.

Points wrong/missing in summary

[donj]

1. XBMC on ARM Branch can be viewed here: http://xbmc.org/trac/browser/branches/xbmc_on_arm
2. Discussion about XBMC on ARM with a lot more background info is going on here in the official forum: http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=35139&page=14
3. You might want to link to the first source i.e. the official xbmc webpage: http://xbmc.org/theuni/2009/10/23/xbmc-on-arm-gles-2-0/
4. XBMC is not called Xbox Media Center anymore, just XBMC.

Re:Points wrong/missing in summary

[Anonymous Coward]

4. XBMC is not called Xbox Media Center anymore, just XBMC.

Catchy! :)

Arm powered

[clone53421]

Reminds me of the arm-powered watches that you wear on your wrist. They wind themselves by the swinging motion as you walk.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Re:Arm powered

[DriedClexler]

A better remark would have been something like:

"My palm is already arm-powered. Come to think of it, so is my sperm bank dispensal mechanism."

No video driver for X.org

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, the Beagle Board has a PowerVR SGX530 GPU, and there is no X.org video driver for it. So, open source operating systems cannot use 2D or 3D acceleration. See http://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/PowerVR.

Re:No video driver for X.org

[BitZtream]

So?

You can signup on their website to get the specs. You can't release the information to others, but then, GPL doesn't allow them to distribute GPL'd code the way they'd like to.

OSS can certain use the acceleration, it just requires binary distribution to fit their agenda. Just like GPL requires source distribution also to support its agenda.

They are two different sides of the same thing, restrictions on freedom.

Re:No video driver for X.org

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm still waiting for the PowerVR PCX2 Linux kernel driver so I can get Quake2 up and running on Redhat 6.

That DRI page looks pretty old, they only acknowledge 3 generations (PCX1/2 from 95-97, Neon250 from 98-99, KYRO from 00-02). This isn't very motivating for development...

PowerVR and NDAs are also another nasty selfish thing. They're even still pop secret about their very first quickly obsoleted generation of chipsets that can't even handle a blend function that isn't alpha blending.

Other hardware like this

[BitZtream]

I've been waiting for an excuse to ask slashdot this question.

What is a good resource for finding cheap, small, not overly feature rich hobbiest boards like this one?

I've done some work with ATmega microcontrollers. Went so far as to create my on little multitasking OS from the ground up based on some knowledge I gained from FreeRTOS. I enjoyed the process and it taught me a great deal about the difficulties associated with task switching. I quit when I realized that I REALLY wanted an MMU, or at least some memory protection.

I've written an MMC controller, a serial console for it, made my own little FS, none of it impressive to anyone with more than a slight clue about this stuff, but it reminds me of reading the notes from Linus about how Linux started out, and for me its a fun time and nice distraction from my day job of writing applications on top of a real OS.

I would prefer an x86 based board, anything 386 or better would be awesome, but it doesn't have to be. In fact since I've yet to see a good 386 simulator/debugger, or at least nothing that to me compares to the stuff that Atmel provides, I'm more than open to any other processor, I'm not tied to anything as I'm simply not that good to make a big difference.

What I would like to find:
A complete board that I can plugin in and debug, relatively cheap would be great.
Debugging ability and supporting software is most important, I use a MacBook so OS X support is ideal, but I've got VMs with Windows and FreeBSD, and installing Linux is more than acceptable for the purpose if need be. I really apprecate the simulator and debuggers the AVRStudio for Windows has, a copy of it for something more powerful would be ideal. The AVR32 is probably the closest I'll get to that, but it doesn't seem that I can really use AVR32s on my on hardware real easy. I can get a get a dev board for it, but throwing the chips onto something custom requires more effort than I would prefer to put into it.
Processor doesn't really matter, x86 would be nice since its probably got the largest base of reference code, but pretty much anything capable of running Linux is fine since I can use that as a reference. Linux is not a requirement as I won't be running it, it just makes a good reference to have handy when the docs for the hardware aren't all that clear or I don't really understand a particular concept.
Onboard IO is pretty much a must. Doesn't need VGA or anything, serial is plenty good enough for what I'll use it for, but some sort of digital output is a requirement so I can control stuff. I don't need a DAC as I can simulate one good enough to do audio as long as I have a digital pin of some sort to work with.
An ADC would be nice.
SPI would be really nice as I'm used to working with it and it makes MMC interfacing much easier.
64k would be more than enough ram, but more is certainly acceptable. I've been shoving 4 processes in to 2k of RAM, and if I have a MMU that supports virtual addressing I care even less, as thats really what I'd like to learn next.
Speed isn't an issue, a 12mhz ATmega was plenty of my toying around so far, I'm not designing an end user OS, just playing.
Onboard clock would be ideal, as I never have properly got an AVR to run on an external clock so thats obviously a concept I don't grasp properly and I'm lazy so figuring it out slows me down.

So fellow geeks, where do I look to find this sort of thing, or what do you guys have experience with that you would recommend me looking into? Something just slightly more powerful than the your typical 8bit Atmel or PIC microcontroller would be the target.

Hell, I don't even have to have a board, I just don't want to get a CPU that requires a bunch of external support circuitry, something microcontrollerish that I can just hookup some power to and start interfacing. I dont mind adding some minor stuff but I don't want to have to spend 3 days working up a board design, then debug the hardware just to get to where I can run some code, otherwise I'd throw an x86 processor on a board myself.

Re:Other hardware like this

[Anonymous Coward]

You could look at www.embeddedarm.com.
They have x86 and ARM single board computers. The TS-3000 line uses 386 processors. They have serial ports and many IO lines.
They don't mention it in the advertising, but I see some headers marked "JTAG" on the 386 boards. That's a little bit out of my area of expertise, but maybe that's what you're looking for?
I considered getting one of the ARM board to make a very small web server, but the prices seemed a little bit high, and I decided to go with an old, cheap, used desktop PC instead.
It might be worth a look anyway, hope that helps.

Re:Other hardware like this

[sabbo]

I would recommend that you check out an ARM board that has good support in OpenOCD. This creates an excellent development platform for the stuff you mentioned.

Check out the Olimex L9260 board. It is based on an ARM926 core and has plenty of RAM and Flash. It also has SD/MMC interface, SPI, I2C, UART etc
http://www.olimex.com/dev/sam9-L9260.html

OpenOCD software:
http://openocd.berlios.de/web/

You need a hardware device for OpenOCD to work. There are plenty of options, most are based on the FTDI 2232 chip. Here is one from Olimex:
http://www.olimex.com/dev/arm-usb-ocd.html

It is possible to use openocd from linux, mac os x and windows.

 

How does this compare to a Popcorn Hour?

[sunking2]

Or other network media tank? I love my IO-100 and it plays everything I have ever thrown at it. Low wattage, runs linux, excellent audio/video connectivity and is I think 300mhz mips.

Re:How does this compare to a Popcorn Hour?

[Killer Orca]

Or other network media tank? I love my IO-100 and it plays everything I have ever thrown at it. Low wattage, runs linux, excellent audio/video connectivity and is I think 300mhz mips.

Do you mean the A-100? If so don't they have an overheating problem that the pricier version resolves?

I've been looking into the best ways to stream the most content from my PC to my TV, currently I am using a 360, but it's limited codec support leaves me wanting. I have researched the popcorn hour, both devices, the media jukeboxes from dvico, now that these nettops are coming out I was wondering too what peoples' experiences was with a pre-built solution versus rolling your own.

Re:How does this compare to a Popcorn Hour?

[sunking2]

There are tons of versions and companies that have their own. Popcorn Hour is just the name of the biggest selling company, like Coke for soda. Mine, the IO-100HD from Dragon Tech Corp is completely fanless and runs cool and quiet. Not a single crash. The actual term to search for is Network Media Tank and you'll find tons of reviews for many different brands. Some have had heat issues. I bought mine to do exactly as you want, to replace the xbox 360 and it's worked beautiful. Plays full 1080P mp4 from a network share no problem.

Re:How does this compare to a Popcorn Hour?

[Killer Orca]

I should have previously stated that Netflix integration is a huge plus, and any unit that could do that too would make it an immediate buy from me.

Re:How does this compare to a Popcorn Hour?

[freedumb2000]

I you want to roll your own, anything with a NVIDA ION based chipset is the way to go. Even the pairing with a single core Atom (230) will play 1080p perfectly and anything else you throw at it. I built a fanlass system for a friend for around 250$ without HDD. With Ubuntu and XBMC it's great media center solution. And it's also a NAS, mailserver, game server and whatever else you might want to have running 24/7.

Re:Cheapest - Under $300

[ironicsky]

Checkout www.mini-box.com
I am building a system from them to do XBMC on my TV
The Board I am buying is this one here Zotac ION

• WIFI Card
• HDMI Out
• Optical Audio Out
• VGA Out / DVI Out

Slap it in a vesa mounted cheap case with a laptop hard drive and I'm done.

My whole media system will be under $300, vesa mounted to the back of my TV and controlled with my existing ATI/X10 Media remote.
All my cds/dvds have been backed up to my file server which has mountable network shares for XBMC to use.

Long live XBMC!

Re:fp

[Anonymous Coward]

barack obama has AIDES.

FTFY.

Re:Cheapest - Under $300

[cayenne8]

I just looked and found that XBMC isn't just for xbox any longer...looks impressive.

I've always played with MythTV...how would people that have used both compare them? Pros vs Cons of each system?

This is nowhere near the cheapes media center

[popo]

WD LIVE blows this away, and has better playback....

A much better bang for the buck.

http://wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=735

Re:This is nowhere near the cheapes media center

[BikeHelmet]

It could very well be the same hardware - just mass-produced by a company, resulting in cheaper prices.

Re:This is nowhere near the cheapes media center

[Abcd1234]

Yeah, except it isn't open. Thanks, but I prefer to go with a solution that I can hack, and these days, that means XBMC or Myth.

Most crappy driver Was:Cheapest,

[Anonymous Coward]

> a POWERVR SGX video accellerator.
Great. It looks like ARM is competing with Intel not only on the front of small CPUs, but also on the reliance on crappy closed-source drivers for PowerVR chips...

Re:Cheapest - Under $300

[MorderVonAllem]

There's a way to watch/play mythtv recordings/live tv on xbmc using the myth:// protocol. I find that xbmc works a lot better than myth for existing media and don't bother running the mythtv frontend.

The power of a good DSP...

[PhunkySchtuff]

You're right, a 600MHz ARM can not decode 1080p HD video, a 2-odd GHz Core 2 Duo (with no other hardware acceleration) struggles to do that.

The Beagleboard also has a ::href="http://www.bdti.com/procsum/tic64xx.htm">TMS320C64x DSP that can decode HD video.

TI also make a DaVinci SoC that can do realtime HD transcoding - decoding and reencoding.

Over on YouTube is a beagleboard doing 720p HD video already...

Re:Cheapest - Under $300

[Eil]

XBMC is a media player only. If you want to record TV, you still need Myth. If you don't, XBMC is roughly 325 million times easier to set up and use.

Power Usage

[PhunkySchtuff]

The BeagleBoard draws a maximum of 375mA when powered from 5V. This is the whole system running at full tilt, with an SD card etc. That equates to a power draw of 1.875W (0.375 x 5) and realistically you're going to be looking at a much lower power draw than this in regular usage.

I have a BeagleBoard with Ubuntu installed and did an apt-get ubuntu-netbook-remix on it. It took a few hours of pretty much 100% CPU utilisation and the chip was barely warm to the touch...

Power figures are quoted from the latest Hardware Reference Manual - warning PDF link...

Re:Cheapest - Under $300

[cayenne8]

"XBMC is a media player only. If you want to record TV, you still need Myth. If you don't, XBMC is roughly 325 million times easier to set up and use."

So, it is basically a glorified DVD player?

For now WDTV Live is good

[Anonymous Coward]

I _loved_ the XBMC on the original xbox, but by now it lacks the computing power to play most of 720p content I have not even gonna mention 1080p stuff.

I love the XBMC interface and all the addons and themes and a ton of other stuff. There is simply no match. So I'd be following this development and hope that something comes to market in two years or less for a reasonable price when I'm looking to replace my current set up.

In the mean time I've settled on WDTV Live for my current media center needs. Its networked, plays 1080p without a problem. Oh and its freaking tiny. But the best part its hackable! So there is some people (b-rad) currently making some homebrew firmware with addons like torrenting, etc.

So while this XBMC port is in development, I'd suggest for anyone looking for a networked media player to have a look at WDTV Live (or even its older version: WDTV). IMO, there is no better match in terms of price/performance ratio.

If someone could port XBMC to WDTV Live I'd literally quit my day job and go into business selling this combo. It would blow the competition out of the water.

PS. I'm not a shill for WD. I have no vested interest other than I'm an owner of two WDTV Live boxes.

I've been looking forward to this

[CopaceticOpus]

The market is wide open right now for products like this. Imagine if someone could sell a little black box that runs XBMC and supports full HD for $100. It doesn't seem that far off. It doesn't need to have storage or memory or any sort of drive. The main connectivity option would be ethernet, for connecting over the LAN to a PC which holds all the content. A USB port would also be nice to support an external hard drive, a flash drive stick, and/or a wireless adapter.

(I know there are already similar products. I currently run XBMC on an Xbox, and I have a PS3. However, the Xbox doesn't handle HD video, and the PS3 has a poor interface and lacks support for some formats. I'm waiting for that simple, cheap, does-it-all option to finally arrive.)

I'd also love to see something similar just for audio. Imagine a little box with just an ethernet connection and an audio output. It would connect to a media server which would stream music to it, and then output that music to some powered speakers or to any sort of device. The music could be controlled by any device on the local network with web access to the media server. It could be a nearby computer, or a phone with a web browser and wifi.

This would give you something like the Sonos multi-room system. But instead of spending over $1000, you could spend under $100. If a person already has a server and a LAN set up, they can use that rather than buying expensive new equipment.

How expensive could it be to make a little box which connects to a LAN and outputs audio? Twenty bucks? You could buy just one to have audio for your kitchen, or buy several and set up your entire home.

Re:Cheapest - Under $300

[wolrahnaes]

Except that it plays basically any media format off of almost anything you can somehow attach to a computer while organizing it all in to libraries, pulling box art, etc.

Xvid, WMV, MPEG1/2/4, Quicktime, even freakin' Real. VCDs, DVDs, great!

Local HD, USB, SMB, NFS, UPnP, iTunes....

I hope you get the picture. And that's just what I used to use it for with my Xbox years ago. I've been more organized since leaving college and switched to a Windows MCE setup once I didn't need to support millions of sources as WMCE had hardware decoding where XBMC didn't, so for HD it was my only choice. That has since changed though, so XBMC is coming back soon I'm sure.

not so impressive

[Anonymous Coward]

HD in the palm of your hand isn't so impressive.
I have a girlfriend in the palm of my hand!

Re:Cheapest - Under $300

[Eil]

A glorified DVD, photo, video, music player with networking, streaming, playlist abilities, profiles, and meta-data management, yes.

Re:Cheapest - Under $300

[slim]

Xvid, WMV, MPEG1/2/4, Quicktime, even freakin' Real. VCDs, DVDs, great!

Local HD, USB, SMB, NFS, UPnP, iTunes....

Here's what the revelation was for me:

Sometimes I'd get video files packed into RAR archives. I'd grumble about having to unpack them before playing them in XBMC.

Then by accident, browsed into a RAR from within XBMC. This thing will stream video files from inside RARs on the fly!

And it plays formats I can't get my Windows box or Mac to recognise.