Raspberry Pi $25 Media Player

[daniel_owen_uk]

My opinion, which of course is the only one that counts is that it's not always the most technically able that wins. Look at VHS vs Betamax. The best will probably be the product with the most developer support and for me that's currently the pi.

For cost comparison, it's different for anyone, some people have cables floating around, others will have to purchase new ones.

[accident]

(06-15-2012 01:27 PM)daniel_owen_uk Wrote:  The best will probably be the product with the most developer support and for me that's currently the pi.

I know in the US, the place to get the pi isn't even taking orders right now. Might be worth to keep an eye on the new sigma and what that price point ends up being. If your plan is xbmc on the pi, you can't get much more developer support than the chipset maker doing the port and hiring key xbmc team members to do the critical parts. I"m hoping it really impacted the sigma sdk also because it's the areas of playback where they got most involved.

You mentioned kids room which is really where the lowest cost, not highest end output is most attractive.

[halfelite]

(06-15-2012 01:27 PM)daniel_owen_uk Wrote:  My opinion, which of course is the only one that counts is that it's not always the most technically able that wins. Look at VHS vs Betamax. The best will probably be the product with the most developer support and for me that's currently the pi.

For cost comparison, it's different for anyone, some people have cables floating around, others will have to purchase new ones.

I still disagree on the dev power of the PI, Like was mentioned broadcom is stingy with information, the A10 stuff already has ubuntu,andoird 2.3 and 4.0. With android 4.0 hardware acceleration does work for video. I think a lot of people jumped on the PI when the teaser video of it running xbmc came out. And we all know what is the number one complaint with NMJ and pch its UI its slow, XBMC on the pi is slow in the UI. While i agree the price point is nice. its not a practical device at this point in time nor do I think it will be made into a practical device, The A10 stuff is more polished and ready for consumers,

And from my understanding and posts on xbmc gimli an xbmc dev has working hardware decoding running on the A10 stuff.

jump to 7 minutes http://tinyurl.com/7uwgl48 to see xbmc running on the pivos Arm A9 with mali 400 as you can see they are running the music EQ while moving around the menus and its fast compared to just the PI without even having the music EQ going.

My bet is going with the A10 stuff, big name people like pivos that do mediaplayers and things are jumping all over the A10 the PI is left for the type of people that like to hobby around and it makes a cheap dev platform it has its place but I just dont see it making it into peoples home

[sugatam]

Now that the mpeg2 and vc1 licenses have been added, this box has some great potential! For a total of 40 bucks, (the licenses come out to less than $5 at the current exchange rates), I have a device that' does it all. The biggest difference IMO from sigma and their ilk - open source software. Why sigma guards its sdk to zealously is beyond comprehension to me, but that's why you have a situation where one has to wait for the oem and their paltry development resources to fix the most trivial of bugs, and the entire open source community can do nothing but watch.

At this point, using omxplayer and http streaming, I can stream full blu-ray rips if I don't decode DTS. They're talking about a DTS GPU license now, so when that happens, watch out sigma/realtek and all those with closed SDKs.

FWIW, I've owned two A100s, one A110 and one A200, and most recently a Dune H1. IMO the entire media player market has been let down due to the quality of the software, and the quality of the software is a direct consequence of the closed SDKs.

[accident]

now the licensing has my attention.. that's really what the open hardware was missing. Very interesting.

[halfelite]

(09-01-2012 08:36 PM)sugatam Wrote:  Now that the mpeg2 and vc1 licenses have been added, this box has some great potential! For a total of 40 bucks, (the licenses come out to less than $5 at the current exchange rates), I have a device that' does it all. The biggest difference IMO from sigma and their ilk - open source software. Why sigma guards its sdk to zealously is beyond comprehension to me, but that's why you have a situation where one has to wait for the oem and their paltry development resources to fix the most trivial of bugs, and the entire open source community can do nothing but watch.

At this point, using omxplayer and http streaming, I can stream full blu-ray rips if I don't decode DTS. They're talking about a DTS GPU license now, so when that happens, watch out sigma/realtek and all those with closed SDKs.

FWIW, I've owned two A100s, one A110 and one A200, and most recently a Dune H1. IMO the entire media player market has been let down due to the quality of the software, and the quality of the software is a direct consequence of the closed SDKs.

You are a little mistaken why they get the licenses it does not mean it will be open source software. The software blobs that handle the audio and stuff will still be closed source. Just what access' the blobs will be open source. Its the same way all the android stuff works, You get access to the android api that in turn accesses the closed source software blobs that came from the chip makers. Its no different then sigma not giving people access to its closed software blobs. Take the current android software blobs and it does handle dts as is but its very buggy there was a patch for the A10 stuff to enable it after it was removed and even though android is open source the software blob is not and you have to hope the chip manufacture will fix any problems.

The only way you will get open source and things running is if things like ffmpeg are ported over that handle everything in software and not passing things off to hardware as this is where it becomes problematic and you run into the same problems likes syabas vs sigma.

[sugatam]

No mistake here - I realize very well that the Videocode IV API is closed source. The point is, it's API is *open*, as are the header files and link libraries, which lets anyone tweak any open source code apps to their hearts content, or write new apps (open source or not). So, while there is the possibility of bugs in the closed source stuff that needs to be fixed by Broadcom, that is no different from the Windows software industry which writes against MS's closed source but open access SDKs, and some of what they write are open source, some not. What I find frustrating about Sigma is their CLOSED SDK, where I can't even write a hello world app (that does anything interesting a/v wise) without paying them big bucks.

Look, I know there are a lot of Sigma fanboys here, but anyone not seeing the closed SDK model as a huge problem is delusional.

---

And BTW, here is the equivalent of "mono" for the raspberry pi. Fully open source, and I just built it locally (though I could download prebuilt binaries), Makes full use of the broadcom GPU for accelerated video - no ffmpeg software decode here (and the pi couldn't handle that anyway).

https://github.com/huceke/omxplayer

[halfelite]

Ok I understand now. My main concern myself with the android/ARM stuff is none of the chip markers will put out the effort for a clean bug free driver any time soon. I have high hopes for projects like ouya that are quad core as they can actually manage audio and video in software mode were if they do get direct access with clean drivers we will all be smiling but if not there is room to work within software decoding to make a decent player if needed.

And all the little strange bugs that go with the android type players. I dont know if it was a limit set by nixeus or by marvell but the player on the nixeus box if an mkv had over the spec ref frames it just flat out refused to play not even try to play just nope not supported.

The arm/android player market really needs a big name behind it to drive companies to make it work. Hopefully Pivos can accomplish some of it but not sure they have a strong enough market hold to make the chip makers move.

[gwrace]

I'll check it out. Thanks for the info

[accident]

I think the work PI is doing to get comapnies to allow individual licenses is just going to help. I don't think the PI is the end all project board for a media device but their educational angle is making doors open for many others to do similar with devices more for media.

[sugatam]

Agreed - IMO whether the raspberry pi itself becomes the ultimate media player or not is beside the point, though its huge user and developer base will help. I'm excited because it is the first SOC with full media capabilities that has an open (though not fully open source) SDK.

[daniel_owen_uk]

I am careful about what I say on these forums, it is after all funded by the PCH people.

I have in the past owned A100, A200, C200 and they have all been very good devices.

I do however now own 4 raspberry pi's and they are on every TV in my house. They are now my primary media players.

[accident]

(09-05-2012 04:13 PM)sugatam Wrote:  I'm excited because it is the first SOC with full media capabilities that has an open (though not fully open source) SDK.

It's nowhere near the first, xbmc works on it because years ago an arm port was made for the beagle board. Technically even the sigma stuff was easier to get originally although damn pricey but that was a long time ago. then you have all the sheeva units which technically were the marvell dev kits and more recently all the a10 based hardware that your finding in all the other "android" boxes right now.

[sugatam]

It is the first with a GPU (the Broadcom Videocore IV) that's capable of so much. The xbmc ports to armv6 were all fine and dandy from running the gui standpoint, and were fine if you wanted to use xbmc for music only, or just liked to stare at static screens. Without something like this gpu, there wasn't a single arm soc capable of video playback. I have first-hand experience, I run a sheevaplug for fileserving and mpd.

Now the A10 is a completely different, and also recent, beast. It has the MALI-400 GPU, and at the moment it is somewhat more closed than the Broadcom, according to my understanding. Hence all the struggles with xbmc on android on the thing.

[accident]

Like I said previously, the pi is opening certain doors being it's designed around the educational use, and that's a good thing. You can't say it's the first though there are lots before it. It's a nice start that's perfect for it's design and the mobile wars has improved options..

side note: I don't really follow xbmc on other devices as I don't really like xbmc or think it's family friendly in it's layout and usage. but I have done some work with arm/mali and I found the engineers to be very approachable and willing to help solve your issues. It may not be as open but perhaps the "we'll just figure it out approach" for those working with mali gpus isn't the best way to get their results.