12-27-2015, 05:19 PM
The Orange Pi PC can be found at Xunlong's store: http://aliexpress.com/item/Orange-Pi-PC-...Title=true
If you want to encode video in Linux forget about everything else than Raspberry Pi. We still use the RPi B+ for this purpose since it's the only platform where you can encode a video stream on the VPU in Linux (even when the RPi is downclocked to 200 MHz -- it doesn't matter since all the encoding happens on the VPU and not the ARM CPU core). We're using the RPi B+ powered over Ethernet (passive PoE) and let the VPU limit the video stream's bandwidth to approx. 2 MB/s so we're able to use an A20 (older Allwinner SoC superiour to A64 since it features SATA) equipped SBC to store the videos from up to 8 RPi simultaneously.
The problem with Banana Pi M2/M3 is that the manufacturer now faces a different situation compared to when they started with the very first Banana Pi (based on the A20 like a few other devices before). When they started everything was already existent (both software and a community). But this applies only to Allwinner's A20 SoC and to none of the SoCs used later. Now they face the problem that their hardware lacks software and support and people start to realise that this makes the difference between an SBC and an expensive paperweight. And the vendor's only strategy seems to provide another crappy OS image every few days to trick people into believing the products receive software support instead of focusing on one image that really works.
If you want to encode video in Linux forget about everything else than Raspberry Pi. We still use the RPi B+ for this purpose since it's the only platform where you can encode a video stream on the VPU in Linux (even when the RPi is downclocked to 200 MHz -- it doesn't matter since all the encoding happens on the VPU and not the ARM CPU core). We're using the RPi B+ powered over Ethernet (passive PoE) and let the VPU limit the video stream's bandwidth to approx. 2 MB/s so we're able to use an A20 (older Allwinner SoC superiour to A64 since it features SATA) equipped SBC to store the videos from up to 8 RPi simultaneously.
The problem with Banana Pi M2/M3 is that the manufacturer now faces a different situation compared to when they started with the very first Banana Pi (based on the A20 like a few other devices before). When they started everything was already existent (both software and a community). But this applies only to Allwinner's A20 SoC and to none of the SoCs used later. Now they face the problem that their hardware lacks software and support and people start to realise that this makes the difference between an SBC and an expensive paperweight. And the vendor's only strategy seems to provide another crappy OS image every few days to trick people into believing the products receive software support instead of focusing on one image that really works.