(2012-12-18, 14:57)Katch Wrote: I would guess at 'our firmware won't work on other boxes' as being FUD - The way these boxes work the worst you could do is softbrick - so long as you have an SD card slot and an original firmware you'll be able to roll back to your box's stock firmware.
My gut is that any M3 box whose board rolled out the same factory doors as the Pivos will work with Pivos firmware just as was true of the M1 box. It makes sense that Pivos would like to make people scared to buy other boxes/try their firmware on other devices.
This is just my guess but if I had an off-brand M3 box that looked identical to the Pivos (like the MyGica EnjoyTV 510b), I would have already tried to flash it with Pivos firmware.
The compiled firmware is tied to Pivos-specific boxes. The code is that makes up the firmware open to anyone if they are willing to compile it and test it themselves. It's not actually that hard, but does take time, especially if someone wants to tweak the firmware (both in XBMC and in Android) to bring out the best for specific hardware.
General designs for the hardware is often seen in multiple boxes, and in some cases there are basically identical boxes, but multiple factories push these guys out and can make custom accommodations for hardware orders. This can mean something as basic as Pivos putting some kind of ID on their boards, or it could be more drastic like some cheaper box with the same parts excluding an important voltage regulator.
I'm honestly not sure how it is with the AMLogic hardware in the Pivos, but I heard a lot about things like Allwinner A10 hardware, and how many drastic variations that nearly identical hardware (when viewed form specs and the outside) can have. Everything from parts of chips on the circuit board, the grade of plastic used, or even the quality of flash memory or quality of solder on the circuit boards.
I do know one Pivos example; they got hit with a batch of units with bad wifi, and it turned out to be something as simple as the placement of the antenna inside the box. This is something that is hand assembled, so now they make sure whatever factory is making XIOS boxes has to assemble those boxes more carefully.
All this being said, I don't doubt that there is some similar/identical hardware that is just as good, or possibly better, than the Pivos XIOS. There might even be some of the cheaper made boxes where those shortcuts in manufacturing don't realistically impact the person using it. I like to recommend Pivos XIOS because that's an option I don't have to guess about and I know it will be a good experience for the end-user, but there will be others like that too.
It will not work, it will softbrick if force applied to non-Pivos M3s. Now some are upset about this, saying it's against open source but remember this, source code for the pivos/xbmc, pivos M1/M3 kernels, and M1/M3 libamplayer are present in the Pivos github. M3 source code was pushed public about 15 mins after the binaries were posted. Pivos is very open source. Pivos has made changes in certain AMLogic libs to enhance their API for usage with XBMC, those changes are present in github. We have also made changes in the kernels to enhance their performance. These changes are also present in github. If you want to use them, fine. Go compile your own and use it.
If this leaves you with a bad taste, then ask yourself what source code is your vendor is giving you on your non-Pivos boxes? When will g-box devs give out their kernel driver changes like they are required to do under GPLv2 ? How are they really supporting you besides grabbing Pivos binaries and playing the Android mix and match game to try to get them to work well.
If the non-Pivos users/devs had just compiled their own apks either from xbmc or the pivos xbmc github repo like the Pivos devs asked them to do in the very beginning instead of just grabbing the Pivos binaries, the Pivos devs would have never taken such measures. But it is what it is.
For the record - I have no issues with the way Pivos have approached this issue. As Davilla says - all you need is out there and to be honest the changes needed to build for other m3 boxes are neither many nor difficult. We as a community are lucky to have them actively developing on these platforms at all.
I personally have 2 M1 boxes - one that I bought from Pivos and one that I picked up from another vendor. If you can afford to support Pivos then you should but I know money is tight for many people these days so if you go for a cheaper vendor it shouldn't be too hard to get a working image built.
I'll be skipping the M3 hardware - I would rather wait for a dual/quad core alternative preferably with sata.
(2012-12-19, 10:46)davilla Wrote: It will not work, it will softbrick if force applied to non-Pivos M3s. Now some are upset about this, saying it's against open source but remember this, source code for the pivos/xbmc, pivos M1/M3 kernels, and M1/M3 libamplayer are present in the Pivos github. M3 source code was pushed public about 15 mins after the binaries were posted. Pivos is very open source. Pivos has made changes in certain AMLogic libs to enhance their API for usage with XBMC, those changes are present in github. We have also made changes in the kernels to enhance their performance. These changes are also present in github. If you want to use them, fine. Go compile your own and use it.
(2012-12-19, 11:12)Katch Wrote: For the record - I have no issues with the way Pivos have approached this issue. As Davilla says - all you need is out there and to be honest the changes needed to build for other m3 boxes are neither many nor difficult. We as a community are lucky to have them actively developing on these platforms at all.
If you are really agree with Davilla, please stand up and help me doing it! I am working to get a port working on f16ref hardware, but it looks like it is only me who is really doing something. All others just talk about it, or are doing dirty tricks to get it working (like the stuff mentioned above).
My sources are also just out in the open on github. My goal is to set it up such a way that in the end any bugs reported and fixed by the f16ref community can be easily pushed back to the Original Pivos repository as pull request.
I do not want to bypass Pivos or something. I justr want to have a fun project which allows me to develop my skill further and become better in combination with the ARM architecture. As the Allwinner road appears to be a dead end if it comes down to XBMC (I still very much like it for any other ARM development, don't get me wrong about that), I moved over to Amlogic.
I could just bought a Pivos one and compile and run that, but what is the fun of that!
EDIT: I am NOT doing Android Dev. Android is for touch devices, ask me again when the Google TV NDK is released.
Anyone knows anything about an upgrade and/or if empatzero will still work on A10 now that gimli quitted?
I'm afraid nobody can answer that question except for Allwinner. If they cannot provide decent binaries or support then there will be no progress whatsoever.
Anybody in for a good laugh?
pompous whiner - great. making war with allwinner ;-) did he mention, that we're talking about linux? btw, xbmc runs (?fine?) here.
Haha, he really has no clue .
Too bad that xbmc won't work because that U2 player is a great deal.
Quote: The truth is that MX Player and Mobo Player (and others) are adding features like mad, it won't be long until they're doing everything XBMC is doing.
I wonder when those players will work on Windows, Linux, OSX, iOS and Android and have all the features that xbmc has at this moment.