[mythtv-users] Arm Based Frontend

[Timothy Krantz]

Hello all,
I know, here we go again, another question about low power front ends.

Well, not really.  I ran across some notes that said there was now VDPAU for
the sunxi/mali400 chip devices.  It seems to sit on top of the "binary blob"
drivers.

So, I fired up my trusty hackberry board and installed Fedora 20, got it
completely up to date with the latest kernel off of the sunxi site.
3.4.79ish.  Followed all the instructions on installing "binary blob"
drivers and fbturbo and finally VDPAU.

Then, being a masochist I downloaded the latest fixes .027 and went about
compiling mythtv.  Yes on the hackberry itself, I have not yet fiddled with
cross compiling.  I only compiled libs programs and yes it took forever.
There was a syntax error in the ffmpeg portion.  I found a patch for it in
the ffmpeg forums and then it compiled ok.  In fact everything compiled ok.

So, I fired up mythfrontend.  Damned if it did not come up.  I set video
play back to vdpau slim, audio to the hdmi device and went to play back a
recording.  I chose a very low file for my first test.  A recording of "It
takes a thief".  After some crackling, it played.  Yep it played.  Not
perfectly.  Not usably, but it played.  Oddly it played too fast as if I had
chosen to play it back at maybe 1.5 times normal.  There was some video
tearing but the VDPAU stuff is still very new, perhaps that will change.  I
can't get the OSD to appear, not sure why.  Choosing OpenGL for the painter
gives a black screen (I fell back to qt).  Oh and playback continued with
30-50 percent idle processor.  Audio seems to be sketchy, I will try it with
the non-hdmi connector to see if that makes a difference. 

Playing back higher quality digital programs produced similar results.
Attempts to playback recordings from my HDPVR resulted in a ball of
scrambled pixels in the center of the screen.

Anyway, I *think* this may be the farthest anyone has gotten with one of
these boards and I just wanted to share my experience.

Tim
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