Update: This project may be dead in the water. See below. 

The Allwinner A10 is a low power ARM Cortex-A8 processor with Mali 400 graphics. It’s used in a number of inexpensive Android tablets, including most of Coby’s latest devices. But it’s also a popular chip for Android-powered set-top-boxes (or mini PCs) such as the MK802, Mele A1000, or Mini X.

You can pick up any of those little boxes for less than $100, hook up a keyboard, mouse, and TV, and play Android games, surf the web, and even stream video from Netflix. The little boxes also run Ubuntu, Fedora, and other desktop Linux operating systems surprisingly well.

One thing they don’t do very well at the moment is run XBMC — a popular media center application meant to turn a PC, game console, or other device into a media center companion for your big screen TV.

XBMC on the MK802

That’s largely because the XBMC developers don’t have access to all the code needed to take advantage of all the features in the Allwinner A10 chip. The processor can handle HD video playback and hardware-accelerated 3D graphics. But if you try to run the pre-release version of XBMC for Android on an Allwinner A10 device, videos look more like slideshows than movies at the moment.

But there could soon be a better way to run XBMC on an Allwinner A10 devices. Members of the XBMC developer community have been contacting Allwinner seeking support for developing a version of the media center that works with the processor — and now they’ve received a response.

Allwinner is sending emails to at least some of the more than 120 people that have contacted them about the project, and will work to support “standard firmware like XBMC,” which could mean modifying some of Allwinner’s framework to do that.

Update: One of the developers attempting to work with Allwinner says the chip-maker hasn’t exactly been helpful since the initial announcement, and the project appears to be going nowhere.  There are still efforts to create working drivers by reverse engineering the existing solution, but there’s no telling if or when that work will be completed. 

It’s still not clear exactly what will come of this — but hopefully it means developers will be able to get a fully functional version of XBMC for Linux up and running on devices like the Mele A1000 and MK802. It may also mean that other projects beside XBMC may be able to use the tools Allwinner makes available to improve graphics support for other applications.

via ARM Netbooks

Support Liliputing

Liliputing's primary sources of revenue are advertising and affiliate links (if you click the "Shop" button at the top of the page and buy something on Amazon, for example, we'll get a small commission).

But there are several ways you can support the site directly even if you're using an ad blocker* and hate online shopping.

Contribute to our Patreon campaign

or...

Contribute via PayPal

* If you are using an ad blocker like uBlock Origin and seeing a pop-up message at the bottom of the screen, we have a guide that may help you disable it.

Subscribe to Liliputing via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 9,544 other subscribers

5 replies on “Allwinner offers support for XBMC media center for MK802, Mele A1000, other inexpensive Android devices”

  1. Tried XBMC for Windows and didn’t like its interface. My goal is to play standard definition DVD VOB files (maybe even Blu-ray files) without having to transcode them to mp4 first.

    This means I will stick to the x86 platform, as even an Atom Z6xx can play back VOBs with VLC media player. Others have reported that the inexpensive AMD C50 APU can playback 1080p files. I’m waiting for my C50 netbook to arrive and will try out Blu-ray files on it, again using VLC media player. On another laptop, VLC plays Blu-ray discs better than any commercial software I’ve tried.

  2. I can’t help wishing that the MK802 manufacturers had come up with a more euphonious name for this little device… something that would roll off the tongue more easily… like R2D2 or C3PO. Does anybody have a nickname for it yet?

  3. Just to clarify… This is support for XBMC on Linux, and they did not exactly commit, but offered to try the best to support the community.

    1. Thanks, I wasn’t 100% certain whether there’d be any impact on XBMC for Android or not, but I’ve updated the post for clarity.

Comments are closed.