[mythtv-users] Cheap frontend for HD

[Nick Rout]

On Thu, May 21, 2015 at 8:22 AM, Simon Hobson <linux at thehobsons.co.uk> wrote:
> Josu Lazkano <josu.lazkano at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Maybe it is a stupid question, why we could not compile mythfrontend
>> to Raspberry Pi?
>
> It's a FAQ, pops up regularly here - some variation of "Why can't we use ${small_device} ?"
>
> Compiling the program is probably fairly simple. The issue is around the video handling.
>
> For decoding/processing the video, there are two routes :
> 1) You use a powerful CPU that does everything. But you need a fairly powerful and expensive CPU, and it takes a fair bit of power.
> 2) You use a lower power CPU - but you need the help of a GPU to do the video processing. In the PC world this means using vdpau (nVidia) or vaapi (Intel) - both of which are fairly mature (particularly with vdpau) and supported.

You forgot vdpau (AMD)

> But in the non-PC world it's a different matter. Eg, the Raspberry Pi2 can handle quite demanding video decoding in it's GPU - but AIUI the API for it isn't documented (don't know whether that's "well" or "at all") and so far isn't supported by Myth.

This is where kodi has the advantage, it uses GPU on the pi, perhaps
assisted by the fact that one of kodi's devs works for the rpi
foundation.

Having said that I don't think there are any secrets about how to use
video acceleration on raspberry pi.


> So "all" it needs is someone with both the skills and itch to write the code to use the GPU decoding in the RPi and then it'll work. Until that code gets written, it won't work as the CPU isn't up to the job.