Android TV

[YordanPavlov]

Hi there,
Recently a number of media devices running Android have emerged. They are manufactured by not so popular Chinese firms, build quality is questionable, support is not existent. Still it looks like a really promising concept. Some good people have started collection information in a wiki:

http://androidtvwiki.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

The product itself looks something like this:

http://www.asiapads.com/index.php?cPath=190

My intention is to start some discussion on this topic. Does any of you has experience with them? Since the hardware seems similar to that of WD can their OS be run on WD. I personally would love to see this come true.

[mad_ady]

I had a quick glance and the hardware is nowhere similar (except for the small form factor ). For one, those devices have an ARM processor, while the WDTV has a MIPS processor. It's a completely different instruction set.
This is why nobody suggested to run android on the wdtv (haven't heard of an Android compiled for MIPS)...

Also, there is no reference to any sigma chip... And from their specs, it looks like their video decoding capabilities are far lower that the WDTV:

The video decoder sub‐system can decode all HD video formats. H.264, Real Video, MPEG 1/2/4, VC‐1/WMV and MJPEG streams are processed by dedicated hardware together with the flexible dual Media DSP engines.

And the price is not exactly cheap. If you want a dedicated media player, stay away from those. If you want an android device to hook up to your screen, you can give it a try. They look like smartphones without the touchscreen and radio hardware...

[YordanPavlov]

For one, those devices have an ARM processor, while the WDTV has a MIPS processor. It's a completely different instruction set.

Hm.. my mistake I always thought that WD use ARM.

This is why nobody suggested to run android on the wdtv (haven't heard of an Android compiled for MIPS)...

Well now that you mentioned it, I googled for "android on mips" and found quite some results.

Also, there is no reference to any sigma chip... And from their specs, it looks like their video decoding capabilities are far lower that the WDTV:

I have no experience with programing SoC so I am not even sure what that means. How does one program for sigma chips?

[mad_ady]

Well, to do that you'd have to buy the SDK and documentation from Sigma (for lots of $$$) and they give you some sample code that you can modify, or you can just ship it with changed logos, like WD did

[weddingcoo]

now, well , hi I always thought that WD use ARM. this is my mistake.

[bagira]

This is why nobody suggested to run android on the wdtv (haven't heard of an Android compiled for MIPS)...

Also, there is no reference to any sigma chip... And from their specs, it looks like their video decoding capabilities are far lower that the WDTV:

The video decoder sub‐system can decode all HD video formats. H.264, Real Video, MPEG 1/2/4, VC‐1/WMV and MJPEG streams are processed by dedicated hardware together with the flexible dual Media DSP engines.

And the price is not exactly cheap. If you want a dedicated media player, stay away from those. If you want an android device to hook up to your screen, you can give it a try. They look like smartphones without the touchscreen and radio hardware...

Android can be compiled for MIPS. Look at this page: http://developer.mips.com/android/ All MIPS Android source code can be viewed online at: http://www.github.com/mips
But because WD has encrypted the kernel, we cannot flash custom kernel to WDTV devices at the moment(!)...
...despite the fact, that in the Android Porting Guide you can already read about porting to platform with SMP86xx chipset. WDTV has also this smp86xx (SMP8655 and SMP8654) chipset.

With an Android based HD media player (and with a Rii Mini or similar keyboard-and-mouse device) you can simply browse the web, use any android program you want (or you can develop your own), and you can play H.263 encoded content, which one is not supported by WDTV.

And the price: below 100$ you can already buy ARM Cortex A9 CPU with 1Ghz, android based hd media player... Today I have ordered such a device for $58 for development purpose only

[mad_ady]

I don't know about this. I think it would be able to run android, as you say, but it might lose the hardware decoding capabilities built into the wdtv firmware (would behave like a general purpose computer). After all, dmaosd knows how to send the video to the hardware decoder for processing. If the market has a lot of sigma devices and there is interest to run Android, there might be ways to use the hardware decoder as well.
And one more thing - the video playing software needs to be able to work with the hardware decoder, so most likely one would need a specific video player software on the box...

Anyway, it sounds like an interesting project. I'd like to see some Android flavor run on the wdtv...

[Dartman]

I bought a cheap Chi Tablet too a while back and yes it plays all kinds of media files and will output then at native resolution to my TV through HDMI if I want too. It has a single core 1ghz arm chip of some flavor as far as I can tell and was 69 bucks shipped, plays angry birds well too. I wouldn't want to try and run it as my main media player on the A/V setup but it's great for dragging files around with me and being able to play them on it's screen or any HDMI equipped TV handy.
It works better then my first PMP that can only output to 720p and has issues playing anything 1080i or better and I can play games, surf the web with wi fi, check my mail, and watch videos and play music on the go.
The Android market is great and has all kinds of useful free apps and some nice pay ones too.