On Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 10:34 AM, Wookey <[email protected]> wrote:
>> If I look at packages.debian.org I can see that lots of things like vlc, >> mplayer >> etc. are available for arm* - but there's a difference between having built >> successfully and actually working on real hardware at real data rates. So do >> those packages know about e.g. video hardware features in any of the >> available >> ARM hardware? > > I've been thinking about this too - and was kind of waiting for some > suitable hardware to turn up too. > > As I run a very old via ITX box for TV I know all about hardware > that's not quite fast enough - and that has hardware MPEG2 decoding, > but still requires plenty of tweaking to work nicely. > > I'd expect that to make this work at useful framerates you'll need a > big fight with proprietary drivers and some hardware with the right > sort of video decoding assist. I know that, for example iMX51 hardware > can do 720p OK (with the proprietary drivers), but it simply can't > manage HD video. i've been studying and tracking HD-capable ARM processors for quite some time now, and it's a very short list. 1080p60 (which is the upcoming DVB2 / IDSB-T standard) you can flat-out forget (irony...). you have to get _really_ specialist TV-capable MIPS processors which have absolutely rubbish general-purpose performance to get full 1080p60. so let's assume you're happy with 1080p30 (when all the DVB2 and ISDB-T broadcasts will be 1080p50 or 1080p60... *sigh*...) the list is something like: Samsung's S5PV210 (and S5PC110); NXP's PNX8491 (bought out by tridentmicro recently); TI's OMAP4440; Ziilab's ZMS-08 (watch out for this one: creativelabs are GPL violators, see latest list.gpl-violations.org post), Telechips TCC8902 (ARM11, massive GPL violations going on with this one) that's it. in fifteen months of searching, there exist really only *five* "available" ARM processors, two of which are from companies that are riddled with GPL violations problems, one of which is specialist and not really targetted at general-purpose computing, one of which is only available in volumes of 10k+ and one of which is only available in volumes of 100k+. the smart bunnies amongst you will have noticed that that equals... five :) [ oh wait - there's that marvell armada 610, but who wants to sign marvell's NDAs to get at the required info?? ] regarding the OMAP44xx series: phytec are the only people authorised by TI to sell OMAP44xx processors in volumes less than 100k. they have a "module" and a corresponding motherboard that's about the same size as a pandaboard. the module has an option of 1gb of RAM. but at least there do exist, now, a few systems at affordable prices, with that S5PV210 (or S5PC110) processor. take a look at http://hardkernel.com for example - the ODroid-T or ODroid-S or even the original ODroid has been converted to a 1ghz S5PC110 now. regarding DVB hardware: use a USB dongle, for goodness sake. freecom or hauppaug, they're all happily supported (although they're known for getting, um... a bit warm shall we say). i installed the linux pvr project several years ago, got on with it quite well, but now am quite happy with the command-line tool, scantv, to find the stations, and then just use "xine dvb://{program name}" and it works really well. ...but i'm a luddite, and that was on x86 hardware :) yeahhh, bottom line: i'd pick a pandaboard and use DVB dongles and USB-to-SATA converters. the OMAP44xx has a 4-port hub built-in so you will *not* be overloading one single USB channel with SATA data. remember to get a decent 2-head SATA drive, otherwise playback+record will spang the drive heads back and forth, eventually breaking something. l. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] Archive: http://lists.debian.org/[email protected]
