False advertising ?

[diofantos]

So i've been thinking about getting one of these Pine64 2gb version .. Looking at Pine64.com they say "PINE64: WORLD’S FIRST $15" - "Supercomputer" , "Gaming machine" etc.. 
Everything looked great since I'm just looking for a SBC to run a mediacenter (basicly just run Kodi), specs tells us Pine64 is more than capable, so i started researching user experiences with Pine64, and there is where everything goes to crap , so to speak .. 
Seems to me like the problem is all software related, like no drivers for the GPU so it's pretty useless as a mediacenter, specially if you want to go 4k.. 
Another problem seems to be with shipping, there seems there are ALOT of customers unhappy with shipping.. 

So from what i can gather is that by ordering a Pine64, i will get a great useless hardware that will be delivered way too late ;

So should their claims be considered False Advertising, cause it's basicly useless as a gaming machine, it's surtenly not a supercomputer, neither is it a mediaplayer ? (YET)

I add the "yet" part, cause with propper dev attention this board could be awesome.. 

Personally after a bit of research, i dont have much faith in the project right now ( and i really really really hate late shipping ) so I think i will go with a Pi 3, and revisit the Pine64 idea late fall or something to see if it's still just a useless hardware, or if they will have solved some of the current issues and sorted out their shipping department..

[MarkHaysHarris777]

What do you think you're going to use the PI 3B for, that you can't use the PineA64 for... inquiring minds want to know?

... The PI has only 1Gb of memory, its not a media center either, it doesn't do Android at all, it has no Euler bus, its blue tooth and serial uart (at this point) are crap, it has no power management IC, its composite video stereo audio plug is useless mostly (the audio is really bad, and the video is ancient history), the boot-up sequence is dumb (and proprietary), and the hardware is a closed PITA.  So, you can run Raspbian with 1Gb of memory... and you plan to do what with it, exactly?

So, if the PineA64 is worthless hardware, the PI 3B is mostly less than worthless hardware with half the memory...

I'm nearing the end of my third full week of using the PineA64 (on three different operatings systems, albeit same kernel) as my full desktop PC (using it right now)... I have used all buses, all ports, tested bluetooth, wifi, and serial, and I've even run it headless...  so me and this worthless hardware are doing pretty well together/

Are you on the board at the Raspberry PI Foundation?

As far as false advertising goes, the most one might be able to say with some fairness is that they met up with the classic marketing bait and switch ... clearly, this is NOT a $15 computer board. In reality the Raspberry PI Foundation did the same thing ...  their boards is also clearly NOT a $35 computer board. By the time you add power, SD card, heatsink and fan, case, usb receiver and peripheral stuff like a Sparkfun breakout board, well, its closer to $100 dollars too ! So far I've spent about $150 bucks on my PineA64 computer -- and that includes multiple SD cards. I'm not including peripheral stuff I already had for the PI.  

On the other hand, did the Pine64 team produce a $15 board ?  Yes, they did. Has the Raspberry PI Foundation produced a $5 dollar board ? Yes, they did.  Try to find either one of them on the open market today !! 

Just saying.

[dkryder]

my biggest problem with the pine64 is allwinner. i just do not see much of a future with this company in the open source area, so i think if pine64 is to grow as a company they will have to go in another direction. as far as misleading advertising, yeah , i agree. but almost every company i am aware of does it. raspberry pi has a lot of support and development and they basically build good hardware. most of it is compatible between models. but, as a side point, somebody has to be a glutton for punishment to use this pine64 as a desktop, either that or they really never have much to do very quickly.

[bonterra]

What do you think you're going to use the PI 3B for, that you can't use the PineA64 for... inquiring minds want to know?

He already told you, a media player. Kodi, Plex and OSMC works perfectly well on RPi3.

... The PI has only 1Gb of memory, its not a media center either, it doesn't do Android at all, it has no Euler bus, its blue tooth and serial uart (at this point) are crap, it has no power management IC, its composite video stereo audio plug is useless mostly (the audio is really bad, and the video is ancient history), the boot-up sequence is dumb (and proprietary), and the hardware is a closed PITA.  So, you can run Raspbian with 1Gb of memory... and you plan to do what with it, exactly?

What do you need Android, Euler buses or a serial uart for on a media player? You need a working graphics driver, a HDMI port and software support, both of which are available for the RPi.

And open source hardware and boot sequence, come on, are you going to start producing your own boards?

So, if the PineA64 is worthless hardware, the PI 3B is mostly less than worthless hardware with half the memory...

And a number of fully working OS's. If Raspbian doesn't float your boat, how about Arch? Or Fedora? Or W10 IoT?

I'm nearing the end of my third full week of using the PineA64 (on three different operatings systems, albeit same kernel) as my full desktop PC (using it right now)... I have used all buses, all ports, tested bluetooth, wifi, and serial, and I've even run it headless...  so me and this worthless hardware are doing pretty well together/

Yeah, we know that by now, considering the number of forum posts you've made so far raising this boards to the sky and trying to convince sceptics that they're all wrong, just because they're disappointed.

Are you on the board at the Raspberry PI Foundation?

Probably, as are all other Pine sceptics (it's a pretty big board by now!)

The Pine guys must love your enthusiasm.

As far as false advertising goes, the most one might be able to say with some fairness is that they met up with the classic marketing bait and switch ... clearly, this is NOT a $15 computer board. In reality the Raspberry PI Foundation did the same thing ...  their boards is also clearly NOT a $35 computer board. By the time you add power, SD card, heatsink and fan, case, usb receiver and peripheral stuff like a Sparkfun breakout board, well, its closer to $100 dollars too ! So far I've spent about $150 bucks on my PineA64 computer -- and that includes multiple SD cards. I'm not including peripheral stuff I already had for the PI.  

I think this is the only point where you and I agree, although the only accessories absolutely necessary are the power and sd card (you shouldn't have to spend more than $20-25 on those).

On the other hand, did the Pine64 team produce a $15 board ?  Yes, they did. Has the Raspberry PI Foundation produced a $5 dollar board ? Yes, they did.  Try to find either one of them on the open market today !! 

Just saying.

As far as I could tell, both Pimoroni and The Pi Hut had Zeroes in stock at 7 AM this morning (GMT). Bare boards sold at £4 that is, not only kits.

Just saying.

[Ghost]

my biggest problem with the pine64 is allwinner. i just do not see much of a future with this company in the open source area, so i think if pine64 is to grow as a company they will have to go in another direction. as far as misleading advertising, yeah , i agree. but almost every company i am aware of does it. raspberry pi has a lot of support and development and they basically build good hardware. most of it is compatible between models. but, as a side point, somebody has to be a glutton for punishment to use this pine64 as a desktop, either that or they really never have much to do very quickly.

AllWinner do seem to be like a dinosaur living in the past. Having said that, they have just opened up the Mali driver, so the possibility of 3D hardware acceleration is now that much more achievable.

See:
http://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Mali_Driver

[MarkHaysHarris777]

... The PI has only 1Gb of memory, its not a media center either, it doesn't do Android at all, it has no Euler bus, its blue tooth and serial uart (at this point) are crap, it has no power management IC, its composite video stereo audio plug is useless mostly (the audio is really bad, and the video is ancient history), the boot-up sequence is dumb (and proprietary), and the hardware is a closed PITA.  So, you can run Raspbian with 1Gb of memory... and you plan to do what with it, exactly?

What do you need Android, Euler buses or a serial uart for on a media player? You need a working graphics driver, a HDMI port and software support, both of which are available for the RPi.

If you have EVER tried to use the PI as a media station, you know that it doesn't work up to expectations either... because of its memory constraint.  The PI 3B finally has the speed, but not the memory; so its glitchy. 

Allwinner has released the hdmi driver.  We are going to have to see what happens now... I suspect that the PineA64 is going to be a great media station... very soon.

[ssvb]

my biggest problem with the pine64 is allwinner. i just do not see much of a future with this company in the open source area,

Allwinner provides both the hardware manuals and their somewhat wacky kernel source code. Then the open source hobbyists are adding proper support to the mainline Linux kernel, fixing Allwinner bugs in the process. This model works and is sustainable. And there are surely much worse hardware vendors around.

Of course some people are impatient and want the mainline kernel support here and now. This is perfectly understandable. I think that they probably should buy some other hardware (and pay a premium price for it).

so i think if pine64 is to grow as a company they will have to go in another direction.

The grass is always greener on the other side. Do you have a suggestion of a better SoC?

[MarkHaysHarris777]

... The PI has only 1Gb of memory, ... and the hardware is a closed PITA. 

And open source hardware and boot sequence, come on, are you going to start producing your own boards?

No, of course not. That's not the point. Folks are wanting to fix the boot-up on the PI (they can't). Some folks are trying to do bare-metal stuff on the PI (they can't). Most of us just want to view all of the Broadcom specs so that we can leverage the full hardware potential from the board (with our own open software) and you guessed it (we can't). You get the PI their way, or you don't get it at all (our way, or the highway).

The openness of the PineA64 is refreshing ! I can look into the specs myself ( I don't have to wait for experts to pipe up and answer our questions piece-meal sometimes with opinions, I can just go and look ).

Open hardware is NOT about building my own board, its about leveraging PineA64's board for my purposes and be relatively sure I know what I'm doing before I blow the board; open hardware is JUST as important as open software IMHO.

The PineA64 wiki page is fantastic ! --upfront, open, informative, relevant, engineering beauty !

(thank you)

[diofantos]

@MarkHaysHarris777 , hehe you seem to have misunderstood what i ment by "great worthless hardware" .. By that im talking about the lack of working drivers and such .. For example , let's say that you buy the new Nvidia Gforce GTX 1080 , which is an AWESOME graphics card for desktops, it would not be of any use if it had no drivers would it ? Same thing here, the hardware is good hardware, but without good drivers, it's still just useless hardware, cause you cant utilize it's power with suck ass or no drivers (u may notice if you are a Nvidia desktop user, that it prompts you with an update nearly every week or so)

And what you said about Rasp Pi and the "35$ computer" , i totally agree.. You need probably at least another 30-40$ worth of addons to make it usable (power adapter, memory card, case, cables etc) and when i first looked at the Pine64 store, i figured it was going to cost me about 110$ + international shipping (for a case, power adapter, memory card and the little screen they offer) so the price point is not a problem in any way .. Im not looking at this like "hey let's buy an Pine64 instead of Rasp 3 cause i could save 5$"

As u mentioned , Rasp Pi only has 1gig of ram, and when i first read about Pine64, there was talk about 4gb ram version, and that was kinda what drew me in, then i say they just had the 2gb version so i tough that at least that's 1gb more .. But i've seen few videos of Pi3 running Kodi, and does is pretty well.. I would like to have 4gb ram, but i already ordered Pi3 few hours ago.. But when i find something bigger and better (with working drivers and such) i will buy that one and try it.. 

As for being on the Rasp Pi board, unfortunatly no, then they would have gone all out on specs with the Pi 3 , at least made a "premium model" or something featuring some real power , cause not everybody are looking just at the price.. I would not mind paying 60-90$ for 64bit 4core cpu with good GPU and 4gb ram.. 

You mentioned that PI3 does not run android at all, i had not looked into that, but why would you wanna run android when you can get a real linux distro ? Also if I find that Pi3 does not run Kodi as smoothly as i want it too, I could always just turn it into a lamp or mean stack for dev purposes ..

[daveculp]

Right now, the problem with 64bit ARM is that it is not well supported software and driver wise in Linux. Things are coming along but just is not quite there yet. If you are looking for an "it works out of the box" experience then the Pine A64 might not be the best choice and you should choose something along the lines if a Pi.