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On Sat, 17 Nov 2012 10:59:28 -0800 |
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Grant <emailgrant@×××××.com> wrote: |
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> Which of these would be the best choice for Gentoo? I have a |
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> Beaglebone but now I'm looking for something with video for HD |
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> playback. |
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> |
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> - Grant |
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I'd say none of them (yet). |
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It doesn't matter what other features in the form of fancy IO and neat |
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circuitry is put on such boards, they are all limited by what the CPU |
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can do. If the board has a RealTek chip, it;s limited by what the |
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RealTek dev software provides. |
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I have a Raspberry Pi, and doing what it was designed to do is |
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something it is very good at. It was designed to teach kids how to |
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program. It was not designed to play full HD video. |
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The Pi suffers with playback the very same way all the other ARM media |
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players out there suffer, whether they be AC Ryan, Medi8ter, Xtreamer |
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or whatever - as soon as you have to run some controlling software as |
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well as the codec, and especially if you have to decode audio on the |
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device (as opposed to having the amp do it in hardware), it stutters. |
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The cpu just cannot cut it. |
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The next generation of ARM chips and software are reputed to be beefed |
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up to deal with this very issue, and Google will turn up many valid |
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opinions about this. Meanwhile, you can get it to work, just be aware |
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things are not 100% there yet (for reasonable definitions of "there" |
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starting with 720p). |
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The cheapest solution by far and the easiest to get working is a |
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Raspberry Pi and an OpenElec built for it. You need one 30 bucks Pi,one |
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HDMI tv and one ultra cheap SD card and you are good to go ;-) |
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-- |
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Alan McKinnon |
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alan.mckinnon@×××××.com |
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