New XBMC Port Promises ARM-Powered HD In the Palm of Your Hand

Engadget has a recent teaser video promising HD content via XBMC running on a 600MHz Beagleboard. This could mean great things for home theater putterers, with the Beagleboard tipping the scales at a modest $150 and the ability to fit in the palm of your hand. Already running on everything from MIDs to AppleTVs and now moving to ARM-powered devices like the Beagleboard, it looks like XBMC needs to be renamed from "Xbox Media Center" to "ubiquitous media center."

Re:Cheapest

[Anonymous Coward]

This suggestion is great for downloaded media. The problem these days comes in when you try to stream HD content from Hulu or other sites. Then you can say goodbye to any semblance of hardware decoding -- you're back to relying on a beefy processor.

Pandora?

[Spykk]

As I recall, the pandora [openpandora.org] handheld is also built on an OMAP3530 and has a video out jack. Video playback didn't work out so well for Sony's PSP, but having a HTPC in my pocket that can stream my videos over the network seems like a good thing.

Re:Small Correction:

[sootman]

And for those who have never heard of or seen a Beagleboard, it's worth noting that it doesn't have a built-in display. So the headline should be "New XBMC Port Promises ARM-Powered HD Source in the Palm of Your Hand." Which is still pretty cool but I thought they were talking about something that I could hold in my hand and watch. Note to headline writers: small is great, but "fits in your hand" isn't too special unless the device is intended to be used while in your hand.

Re:Cheapest

[slim]

does it enforce DRM?

XBMC? The media player that plays video files inside RARs on the fly?

No, enforcing DRM is not one of their priorities.

Re:Cheapest

[drinkypoo]

There are a ton of those set top box devices from WD and other companies that advertise to 1080P with a small fanless device.

The problem with this notion is that those devices usually can only decode a limited set of video codecs at 1080P, using a companion chip or coprocessor. Many of those OMAP devices don't even have the power to play an AVI and upscale it to 1080P if they have to do it with the CPU. Most of them will hw decode most MPEG streams, but they won't even handle all of those.