Maybe HD hardware for Vomp: Beagle Board

[muellerph]

Hello,

I just recently got the news from the now available Beagle Board.
For US it is $150 and for EU it is currently €103,26 + import VAT taxes.

It is only the bord, so you need powersupply, a box, an IRDA receiver and network on top, but it shouldn't be to costly and involves for sure some practice in building it together.

What makes this board so interesting in comparision to other boxes (like the PopCorn Hour) is that it is fully open and even the drivers are available for HD.
For all other devices I have seen so far either no Linux driver exists or it is so much hidden in the security environment that no direct access is possible.
With HD I'm only unsure about the topic of encrypted data.

It can do only 720p, but personally I think this is enough for HD. I don't own an 1040p plasma.

What do you think?

[MartenR]

Well first it looks very interesting, but before thinking about to code anything a device should do:
1) It should at least be able to decode 1080p content(supply enough performance), because if a company boardcast this kind of  material, it should be playable. (Reencoding at the server side should not be an option). This performance issue is at the moment only limited to 720p because they are using ffmpeg with neon optimization and not the integrated DSP (see 2))
2) codecs from the manufacturer for mpeg2 and mpeg4 should be availiable, because I do not think we are able to invest enough time to write assembler code for the dsp by ourselves.
3) Network connection
4) a case, I do not want very user to build its own case, I also want that DAU can use it, if a port of vomp is ready.

So I think we should wait until the DSP is also used by open source codecs.

Marten

[svalavuo]

I agree MartenR.
Device looks interesting and promising, but...
The first thing I noticed as well is the absense of network connection.
Ok, there is ability to use usb-to-eth, but...
And for the final users, there should be casing as well.