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Comment by CrazedGeek | Hacker News Reader

The ability to run Android apps would be the key. Plus, for an HTPC, Android (tablet UI or Google TV, take your pick) has a much better interface than XBMC, IMO.

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But the RPi is an awful HTPC, it's way too underpowered and can only barely cope with 720p decoding. It definitely doesn't cope well with having to do composite overlays like XBMC uses to display controls. The FPS you get in the menus is only also only barely acceptable so even if your content does play the experience is choppy. Yes it's cheap, but it still sucks.

Do you have a source for this? All the reviews I have read claim that 1080p playback on the RPi is smooth.

It depends on the exact encoding parameters of the content. Certain container formats and decoder options decode better. Some content does playback fine but I have a large amount of higher bitrate content that doesn't play well.

Part of why I use XBMC is because it will play almost anything you throw at it. Sticking it on extremely resource constrained hardware gets rid of that feature.

with my pi/raspbmc the 1080p movie playback is indeed smooth but the menus stutter awfully. But the reason for that might be that the menus doesn't fully utilize the opengl es of the pi or something else (bad skin?) so I wouldn't blame the pi yet.

That seems to be a common issue with UI on the Pi... I think a few things are going to need to be rewritten to push work away from the CPU and onto the GPU.

Waiting with baited breath for mine to turn up! :-)

Nah, look at the history of XBMC (started on the Xbox), it's a nasty piece of work when rendering to the screen.

However, it was very naive of the grandparent poster to think that slow CPU powered menu screens means that the hardware accelerated video is lacking.

I never even mentioned the CPU speed. I didn't say the hardware decoding was lacking (which it is, since it can't decode most of my BluRay rips in real time) I said it made an awful HTPC, which it does because the UI FPS is awful and whether or not your content will actually play depends on a bunch of technical factors I can't be bothered to keep track of.

This is why I hope they will port Jelly Bean to it as well, so it doesn't stutter anymore.

I don't know about that. I have seen Android on OpenPandora (whose performance is similar to that of the Raspberry Pi, more or less) and lots of applications ran just like on my Android Galaxy S phone. Most games (even 3d ones) were working fine, too. It's definitely not going to be the best Android device around, but it will run many things well, I am confident about that.

I this from personal experience? Yesterday I played a little with Raspbmc[0](XBMC based distro) on my Pi. Besides a brief pause when changing menus/start-playing everything is silky-smooth. Including 1080p video playing. And this was while running from a crappy 3MBs SD card.

[0] http://www.raspbmc.com/

I'm waiting for the day when you can get a raspberry pi style machine that will do full 1080p and will transcode anything I throw at it in real time or faster. It can't be that far off in the future can it? A couple of years maybe?

By then we will all have moved on and you'll be waiting for a raspberry pi style machine that will do full 4320p :p

Damned progress

I found it amusing that "demand progress" is an anagram for your comment, alluding to the love/hate relationship we have with technological advancement.

That's... not true. Have you tried a recent XBMC build on Raspbian?

No, it doesn't play my 13GB copy of Tron, but it plays every single 720p MKV I've thrown at it.

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