On 04.01.21 13:47, Torsten Duwe wrote:
Hi all!
Our current HTPC runs happily with Leap + Kodi, but it's too bulky
for most of the prospected new furniture ;)
HTPC == only play back local / streaming media, no live TV via DVB-S/T/C?
After a lot of research for FLOSS, I consider to replace it with a
Ferguson Ariva ATV TT [1]. The Hisilicon hi3798cv200 seems to be
designed specifically for STBs and is supported mainline, and even the
reference board's DTS (hi3798cv200-poplar.dts) only hooks up a few LEDs
to GPIOs. I assume H.264 on Panfrost works?
I don't know what panfrost is, but if it is not a software decoder then
I doubt it will work.
And if it is a software decoder, then I doubt the chips performance will
be good enough, and integrating the bits and pieces for live tv will be
... interesting.
My biggest concern however is the SoC's support for secure boot.
Alternative firmware images for Ferguson boxes show now hints towards
that, but maybe someone here can confirm this?
Any other hints or pointers?
The main market of this linux Satellite TV boxes is still
stealing/sharing paytv subscriptions. The manufacturers will not do
anthing like "secure boot" that will prevent people from shipping their
favourite custom image. In fact most of the manufacturers do not even
try to provide their own software but just ship some variant of openATV
or openPLI, or they ship somehting akin to "openDOS" in old PC days:
Software solely made to be replaced before first boot ;-)
So I would not worry about secure boot, if the box is sold with "e2" on
its label.
But I would also not hope for a recent kernel, a documented boot
mechanism, good drivers.
And do not even dream about open source drivers ;-)
But for the unlikely case that I'm wrong and the box has all that, then
I'd be interested to hear about your success, my STI7111 boxes are
growing old now and the platform is long abandoned by ST ;-)
--
Stefan Seyfried
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over
public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." -- Richard Feynman
