[mythtv-users] Raspberry Pi now ships with 512MB RAM

[Nick Rout]

On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 2:12 PM, Per Hatlevik <jakeisawake at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 6:02 PM, Michelle Dupuis <mdupuis at ocg.ca> wrote:
>> From what I recall from the last discussion on list, accelerated video is not supported for that video chipset, so not suitable...
>>
>
> not suitable until someone writes it. vdpau was not supported until
> someone wrote support for that. i have actively been researching
> openmax and the implementation doesn't seem that bad if i had the
> time.
>
> definitely having 512MB should allow us to run the full frontend which
> helps, and then there's just openmax. my problem is that i'm
> comfortable programming just never really programmed video encoders or
> decoders so that is a learning experience but i definitely have
> openmax on my list of things to do if no one else beats me to it, just
> not a lot of spare time these days to spend doing anything.
>
> the hardware h264 encoder on the raspberry pi could be of interest to
> a lot of people as well....

Well the code is there in xbmc, and presumably omxplayer.

vdpau was implemented remarkably quickly into mythtv, but there seems
to be little interest in incorporating openmax.

Still, on the positive for those that want mythtv's features on an RPi:

1. xbmc has announced that both their PVR code and their RPi code is
being brought into their main codebase.
http://xbmc.org/natethomas/2012/10/10/xbmc-september-cycle/

2. RPi now hardware decodes mpeg2 for a one off cost of GBP2.40 per
unit [1].  So those North American and other users with mpeg2 being
broadcast, the limitation of Rpi only hardware decoding h.264 is
removed. http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1839

3. mythbox will work against myth backend 0.25, even if not straight
out of the box. http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=129021

So if you can get mythbox to work with 0.25-0.26 you should be able to
leverage xbmc's inclusion of openmax.

Still playing with my pi, will report back if I can get that to work.

Nick.

[1] In fact their website seemed to round it down to GBP2.00 when I
purchased, I felt mean, it is so little anyway and they are a charity!