XBMC Running On an Atom-Based MID

reborn writes "Someone's got XBMC running on one of those MIDs. This one is a Compal Jax10. It runs Linux and is powered by an Intel Atom processor clocked at 800Mhz along with Intel's GMA500, which is basically a licensed PowerVR SGX GPU. Except for the better GPU (and its screen and keyboard, of course), it is similarly specced as some of the lower-end netbooks. XBMC would make a great portable media player, given its ability to play media off the network and virtually all file formats, but in the end it depends on the price-point of these MIDs. Here's the video."

Re:It can't do HD.Fail.

[Shikaku]

http://focus.ti.com/docs/prod/folders/print/omap3530.html [ti.com]

The omap3530 can do HD, and it's not even an Intel processor, it's an ARM, so the power savings are enormous.

http://openpandora.org/ [openpandora.org]

This device will be able to play HD in about the size of a DS lite. It's not out yet however.

http://beagleboard.org/hardware [beagleboard.org] Right now, you can buy a beagle board which will do mostly the same thing, except not in a real handheld.

Re:It can't do HD.Fail.

[timmarhy]

bluray is at best 1920x1080 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc#Technical_specifications [wikipedia.org], and i'm not talking about crappy small screen players, of which there are tons of already and i can't understand why we need another one (it runs linux.. so what?).

really we are all waiting for is for a small, silent, UPGRADABLE media player that can do full hd video/audio at a reasonable cost. so far you are either locked out of codec upgrades by vendors, or it's a fully fledged pc which is both expensive and bulky in comparison.

Re:It can't do HD.Fail.

[zealot]

From what I've read elsewhere, the chipset involved does have video decode acceleration support. After googling, anandtech.com has an article that says that the chipset can support 1080i and 720p decode. A tomshardware.com article says that it can do hardware decode of H.264, MPEG2, MPEG4, VC1, and WMV9 formats.

I don't get it

[Turmio]

I don't get it what's the big deal here. An Atom-Based MID is a PC, which can run Linux, which can run XBMC. Just install Ubuntu Intrepid, add a couple of lines to /etc/apt/sources.list and a dozen pressed keys later you have XBMC installed. Yay.

Re:It can't do HD.Fail.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just don't run XBMC on it.
Use Plex, a fork with an even nicer featureset, good support and a puppy for a mascot.

I'm running Plex on my old mini (1.66, 1GB), and it handles pretty much every 720p x264 I throw at it, and most 1080p ones.

Still want the January replacement or refresh though ;)

Re:It can't do HD.Fail.

[zealot]

But this ISN'T that old, craptastic, power-hungry chipset used by most Atom netbooks. It's a new chipset code-named Poulsbo designed specifically to go with Atom. Quoting a tomshardware.com article:

"The Atom Z500 has a TDP that varies between 0.85 W (for the 800 MHz version without HyperThreading) and 2.64 W (for the 1.86 GHz model with HyperThreading enabled). The SCH consumes approximately 2.3 W in its most evolved version, which brings the SCH + CPU together to under 5 W. By comparison with existing solutions, thatâ(TM)s obviously a big step forward â" the Via Nano, for example, is announced at 25 W for the 1.8 GHz version and a Celeron-M ULV at 5 W at 900 MHz."

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-atom-cpu,1947-3.html [tomshardware.com]

In addition, the Atom Z-series/Poulsbo combo supports the C6 idle power state where the CPU saves away its architectural state in a small SRAM which remains powered up while the rest of the CPU shuts off entirely. Idle power for the processor is somewhere from .01W - .1 W (this is from what I remember reading somewhere, but I can't find a link right now). Not sure what the chipset's powercomsumption is like when idle.

The biggest known downside to this chipset is that it supports 1 GB of RAM max.