Boxee on the HD200?

[Brent]

I would imagine the title I put on this thread attracted a few peeks. This is more of a question than anything else. Does anyone know if it would be possible to run Boxee on the HD200 in standaolone mode?

Reason I ask is there seems to be a new thread on the Boxee forums asking this very question. If it's possible I can see tons more people purchasing the HD200. Think it sold out fast this last time? Just wait....


But then I don't know if it's possible. Seems like it should be, but I don't know honestly. What do you think?

[emveepee]

Why should it work? The SMP8635 is fairly low powered and while it has a quick DirectFB based framebuffer, that isn't going to cut it for 3D graphics. AppleTV, iPhones etc have much more power with their OSX based infrastructure. Next years SMP8644 and 54's will have 3 times the processing power so maybe then, but if one wants to keep with the Sigma Design family, units you probably would need to wait until their 3D based SoC's come out.

A better question is, is SageTV going to be as open as the NMT for potential user application development so those of use that could do this, can try for ourselves?

Martin

[Brent]

Originally Posted by emveepee

Why should it work? The SMP8635 is fairly low powered and while it has a quick DirectFB based framebuffer, that isn't going to cut it for 3D graphics. AppleTV, iPhones etc have much more power with their OSX based infrastructure. Next years SMP8644 and 54's will have 3 times the processing power so maybe then, but if one wants to keep with the Sigma Design family, units you probably would need to wait until their 3D based SoC's come out.

A better question is, is SageTV going to be as open as the NMT for potential user application development so those of use that could do this, can try for ourselves?

Martin

Martin,
You don't seriously think the AppleTV is better than the HD200 do you? And doesn't the PCH use a Sigma 8635 (albeit different 8635) chip also?

A better question is, is SageTV going to be as open as the NMT for potential user application development so those of use that could do this, can try for ourselves?

Better question for who... Care to be more specific? What is it you are wanting access to? And why?

I know you can use Studio to create whatever UI you want and create plugins for the HD200 - not sure beyond that though.

[emveepee]

No I don't think that ATV could touch an SMP8635 based machine when it comes to playing media, but that isn't what Boxee or xbmc are all about. They have the eye candy that I don't think is available with 2D graphics. I liked cover flow when I first saw it now it just slows me down.

I'm sure STV PC users feel the same when they try MP, it's style vs substance.

For the second question, I thought you were asking the community and not Sage about running Boxee on the 200.

Martin

[Brent]

Originally Posted by emveepee

No I don't think that ATV could touch an SMP8635 based machine when it comes to playing media, but that isn't what Boxee or xbmc are all about. They have the eye candy that I don't think is available with 2D graphics. I liked cover flow when I first saw it now it just slows me down.

Reason I asked that is because Boxee runs on AppleTV. And would run on the HD200 much better I would imagine. That would be the point there.

For the second question, I thought you were asking the community and not Sage about running Boxee on the 200.

Yes I was asking the community about running boxee on the HD200...........

Originally Posted by emveepee

is SageTV going to be as open as the NMT for potential user application development so those of use that could do this, can try for ourselves?

My question still stands: Care to be more specific? What is it you are wanting access to? I asked this so I could understand what isn't "opened up" that needs to be to do something like this - not to antagonize or anything...

[emveepee]

It's sort of like the eee box. You might be able offload HD and BluRay to the GPU especially when they have the 3450, but you shouldn't expect the CPU to do the work of a mainstream computer. The MIPS processor built into the 8635 runs at 291.84 bogomips, which is good ... for a router, but not good enough for OpenGL plus you really need hardware acceleration for 3D graphics that aren't available.

I'm not trying to be antagonistic either I just don't see how you are proposing to run apps on the HD200.

Martin

[jvl711]

Originally Posted by emveepee

It's sort of like the eee box. You might be able offload HD and BluRay to the GPU especially when they have the 3450, but you shouldn't expect the CPU to do the work of a mainstream computer. The MIPS processor built into the 8635 runs at 291.84 bogomips, which is good ... for a router, but not good enough for OpenGL plus you really need hardware acceleration for 3D graphics that aren't available.

I'm not trying to be antagonistic either I just don't see how you are proposing to run apps on the HD200.

Martin

I have to disagree a little bit here. Yes I would agree there is not much horsepower in the HD200, but Sage is currently running there product on it in Standalone mode. If it has enough power to do that it might be able to run other applications on it.

Plus the HD200 is wide open. You can log right in using telnet.

[Brent]

Since Boxee runs on AppleTV I am wondering how the HD200 compares to AppleTV. Are there obvious deficiencies with respect to this sort of application with the HD200 compared to the AppleTV?

Martin said:

that isn't going to cut it for 3D graphics. AppleTV, iPhones etc have much more power with their OSX based infrastructure

And went on further to say that the processor in the HD200 doesn't do 3d. How does that compare with the ATV?

[fyodor]

Brent

I guess my impression is similar WRT to the Apple TV. The Apple TV is more of a standalone computer with an 1ghz cpu, Nvidia video card, etc so it can run the types of applications that normally only run on computers. However the Apple TV doesn't have the dedicated decoding hardware that the HD extenders do so it isn't as versatile or powerful a media streamer.

Also, people have been hacking the AppleTV for a while, so it's much easier to port new software to run on it. I'm not aware of anyone having hacked the HD extenders to run new software.

Followup comment-One thing that may not be coming across clearly in this discussion is that Boxee, as ported, is an application that runs locally on the Apple TV. It's not a server application that the Apple TV accesses on another computer.


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