Can Android Media player be converted to PUPPY mediaplayr

[gcmartin]

Barry shares this.

It looks to have the features of a good media player and is about $25 (US) cheaper than the Logitech GoogleTV or the latest Vizio GoogleTV.

One of the responders to Barry's blog comments on it being a PUP???

Question

• I thought it appropriate to ask if, currently in Puppyland, we, in fact, have a Puppy Media Player that mimics what DealExtremes is offering?
• That is, Is a Puppy that does what Roku, AppleTV, GoogleTV, Netgear's unit... that purport to fall into the class of "Media TV Interface systems"?

Thanks in advance for anyone's contributions on this thread.

[gcmartin]

Pemasu's Exprimo has many features which seemingly makes it easy to adapt for a "Media TV system with a remote controller". Maybe there are others...

Here to help

[lwill]

From what I have read it is powered by an Allwinner A10 so you should be able to do anything with it that you can with a Mele a1000/a2000.
No need to jail break, just boot from image on SD card. Just like the Mele (and all a10 devices), it is un-brickable.
Lots of info on http://rhombus-tech.net/allwinner_a10/h ... ele_a1000/ or their mailing list.
One big problem is the lack (so far) of good video driver. The one in android is a closed source blob for the Mali. There is work being done to reverse engineer it or to get it open sourced.
I am currently playing with a Mele to use to remotely control some USB hardware. When I get done with that I am going to play with the media bits, and by then hoping the video driver is sorted.
(I flashed it to use ICS and going to take it to the parents over the 4th with stuff on an SD recorded from MythTv since they don't have cable! Plays mpg's fine.)
I may get a MiniX or MK802 or Oval Elephant in the future as well, but I like the fact the Mele has VGA and A/V out. (I don't own a TV with HDMI)
The other problem that I see for streaming content (under linux) is that you can't use it with Netflix or any other service that uses closed source DRM that will only work on windows. Be a cold day before they release that under GPL!
(BUT, I think netflix is available under Android, not sure)