Re: [gentoo-user] Beagle vs. Panda vs. Raspberry on Gentoo

[Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>]

On Sat, 17 Nov 2012 12:43:38 -0800
Grant <emailgrant@gmail.com> wrote:

> > > Which of these would be the best choice for Gentoo?  I have a
> > > Beaglebone but now I'm looking for something with video for HD
> > > playback.
> > >
> > > - Grant
> >
> > I'd say none of them (yet).
> >
> > It doesn't matter what other features in the form of fancy IO and
> > neat circuitry is put on such boards, they are all limited by what
> > the CPU can do. If the board has a RealTek chip, it;s limited by
> > what the RealTek dev software provides.
> >
> > I have a Raspberry Pi, and doing what it was designed to do is
> > something it is very good at. It was designed to teach kids how to
> > program. It was not designed to play full HD video.
> >
> > The Pi suffers with playback the very same way all the other ARM
> > media players out there suffer, whether they be AC Ryan, Medi8ter,
> > Xtreamer or whatever - as soon as you have to run some controlling
> > software as well as the codec, and especially if you have to decode
> > audio on the device (as opposed to having the amp do it in
> > hardware), it stutters. The cpu just cannot cut it.
> 
> That's too bad.  I thought the GPU on at least some of these boards
> was capable of smooth 1080p playback.  The Pandaboard ES claims "Full
> HD (1080p) multi-standard video encode/decode" but I suppose that
> doesn't mean it's stutter-free.
> 
> http://pandaboard.org/content/pandaboard-es
> 
> - Grant

I had the same disappointment. I suppose 1080p is a rather variable
quantity - a konsole in 1080p is not exactly the same thing in terms of
computing requirement as Transformers3 :-)

But what the heck, get yourself a Pi anyway and run OpenElec on it.
Improvements are constantly being made to the code, you might find it's
acceptable for your needs. And besides, it's always a thrill getting
that tiny little pcb running something useful.


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com