Minix Neo X5 as a XBMC client?

[SickBoy]

Anyone have experience using one of these with Android XBMC as a client for NPVR? Looks like it could be interesting.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6856178001

[mvallevand]

I might get interesting and certainly the fact that it has the Rockchip RK3066 state-of-the Android art processor helps, but the Stage Fright based players are still pretty experimental. The dev doing the work just got one which can't hurt but he isn't integrating work with the core xbmc yet.

Martin

[WKleeven]

This is far too complex for me, but is the xaf custom build of xmbc an outcome for this problem?
Is it, with this build, perhaps possible to use xbmc as frontend on an android pc and nextpvr as backend?


Wim

[mvallevand]

Caveat emptor. xaf builds are NEVER going to supported officially by xbmc at xbmc.org and they are really just a hack designed to frontend mx player (and notably h/w playback of some files). I have written many hacks like this myself, and they can work reasonably well, but the pvr functionality ideally requires an integrated player.

Martin

[WKleeven]

Thanks for your answer Martin. Just 1 last question: if I don't use the client pc to watch livetv, would an android pc suffice for the rest of the functionality? Would an android pc with xbmc be able to communicate with nextpvr on a windows server at all?
EDIT: this one has hardware decoding and the producer is writing special builds of xbmc that support hardware decoding. Would such a device, theoretically, be able to connect to nextpvr on a windows server?

[mvallevand]

Theoretically yes of course, YMMV in real life especially if you expect to use wifi. HW decoding doesn't define skipping, including comskip or resume functionality or http playback.

I don't trust no-name custom boxes builds especially from unknown sources in China, but there are some that I consider reputable like j1nx from the NL

Martin

[WKleeven]

HW decoding doesn't define

I have too little knowledge to understand what this means. I asked j1nx whether their box does "define" these things. Luckily I live in the Netherlands, unfortunately on the other side of the country. But that's no problem when sending an email. As I understand, this is their android box: http://www.j1nx.nl/product/smart-tv-box/

Wim

[mvallevand]

I've never understood distance in Europe, across the other side of Netherlands would be a local Kijiji purchase for me here in Canada. My point is just because something runs XBMC doesn't mean you get the performance you would on a PC version of XBMC and h/w decoding just means it can play some files without needing a lot of CPU (that just isn't available on these small ARM devices)

Martin

[WKleeven]

Distance, yes, that's relative. Going to J1nx would take me about 2 hours one way and I'm too busy for that ride. In Canada everybody probably has airplanes ;-) ?
A friend of mine has the minix with xbmc xaf build. I think he can play even hd, but I'm not sure. And he has no performance problem.

I don't know if it can connect to nextpvr, but if I understand you correct, that would theoretically be possible. From your post #6, I don't understand if it would skip or resume.
My friend is also very busy, so it's hard to find the time to get together with our different equipment and try. Besides that, I understand I shouldn't be wanting the xaf build at all.

[WKleeven]

Talked to J1nx, spent hours reading fora, I think this is the situation. Please feel free to add or correct.

XBMC by itself works good and is stable when using software decoding.
PVR plugins might cause problems. Maybe anyone on this forum has any experience?
In general with android more power is better here. I would like to know if quad-core processors (coming soon) would help in this matter (with the PVR plugin problems).

The dev-team is doing a lot of work trying to get hardware decoding supported. Libstagefright is the keyword here.
See http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=152005

I'm a bit confused to whether skip and/or resume (perhaps only from PVR sources?) would be a problem when hardware decoding is supported by xbmc. Please elaborate.

Some chipsets are more likely to be going to work (eventually, not at the moment!) properly with libstagefright. I think those are the neon-compatible chips, but there seems to be a lot of difference between these. Please write if you know more exactly which chipsets.