False advertising ?

[ssvb]

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),

Just forget about the official Kodi support. Kodi developers have some sort of grudge against Allwinner and are effectively sabotaging it. But unofficial Kodi ports exist for Allwinner H3, which just demonstrates that there are no fundamental technical problems.

Still if you don't want to get dragged into political games, then it's best to consider some other media player application for video playback. Or if you are strictly interested in the Kodi application and nothing else, then this is a good reason to use some other board.

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.. 

Not sure about 4K, but hardware accelerated decoding of 1080p H.264/HEVC works on the Pine64 board with fully open source drivers - http://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=424
For comparison, this stuff (H.264 only, without HEVC) is handled by a proprietary blob in the Raspberry Pi 3. But if you don't care about having open source drivers, then just get the Raspberry Pi 3 and be happy.

[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,

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?

yeah, intel. they are still doing industrial type atom like designs. much better. but cost more also. which is why allwinner popular. cheap.

[ssvb]

yeah, intel. they are still doing industrial type atom like designs. much better. but cost more also. which is why allwinner popular. cheap.

Well, Olimex has already tried to evaluate this idea: https://olimex.wordpress.com/2015/11/19/...olinuxino/
You can also read the comments in their blog.

TL;DR; Contrary to popular myths, the software support is not a strong point of Intel Atom hardware. And there are way too many proprietary blobs.

[dkryder]

i use a turbot. i know the issues with the blobs. but, following recent discussion on email list, intel looking at ways to go beyond 4GB as the mention as max, soon, maybe not. but, if you think intel support not strong then in relation to that allwinner/pine64 is non-existent intel does frequent firmware updates. there is access to intel engineers via a mailing list which is great.

[ssvb]

It is good to know that you have first hand experience with this Intel Atom hardware. Maybe things have improved somewhat in the last half a year since the Olimex blog post.

The fundamental difference is that Allwinner at least does not get in the way and provides us with everything that is needed to reimplement/fix the firmware (which is open source, except for some minor bits). While in the case of Intel, you have no choice other than begging for their support and hope that the next firmware update resolves some issues without introducing new ones.

Pine64 may have a bit rocky start, but I think that it has a much better future in the long run. By the way, Intel is laying off a lot of workers nowadays, I wonder if this is going to affect their Atom chips support? It would be really bad to be stuck with a buggy discontinued proprietary firmware.

[MarkHaysHarris777]

Intel actually has backed off from the Atom processor ! I don't know what its going to mean for the Edison boards, or surface phones, &c.

[dkryder]

Intel actually has backed off from the Atom processor ! I don't know what its going to mean for the Edison boards, or surface phones, &c.

that information is 2 months old and incorrect at this time because what it fails to do is differentiate between mobile and industrial applications of the atom chip. it has all be cleared up by intel and ADI in the time since the first of may but people who toss around old mainstream media links usually miss it. do the research.

---

It is good to know that you have first hand experience with this Intel Atom hardware. Maybe things have improved somewhat in the last half a year since the Olimex blog post.

The fundamental difference is that Allwinner at least does not get in the way and provides us with everything that is needed to reimplement/fix the firmware (which is open source, except for some minor bits). While in the case of Intel, you have no choice other than begging for their support and hope that the next firmware update resolves some issues without introducing new ones.

Pine64 may have a bit rocky start, but I think that it has a much better future in the long run. By the way, Intel is laying off a lot of workers nowadays, I wonder if this is going to affect their Atom chips support? It would be really bad to be stuck with a buggy discontinued proprietary firmware.

there are several posts in the forum by knowledgeable people that indicate allwinner is not as you portray them, read around.

[diofantos]

Well , even though im a intel fan when it comes to desktops and laptops, i dont want a intel sbc.. Besides Pi3, im also looking at a Firefly-RK3288 (which I think im going to go with, cause they offer 4gb ram model) and it runs Ubuntu and quad core Cortex-A17 and Mali-T760 which has around 5x the power of Mali 400 so it should be quite good as a media center :
I know the A17 is 32bit and the A53 is 64bit, but the A17 still "out benches" the A53, so it's not going to matter in any way  
But it's not perfect either, this Firefly company seem to focus just on the board and dont seem to sell any enclosures or addons for it, but Seeedstudio at least have some plate you can mount it on, but there are no sides so its not a box, just top and bottom.. So i will probably just print a box but it will not look as nice as the nice boxes you can get for many of the sbcs. 
 
This will be my first SBC , but im pretty sure it will not be the last, cause i come from the arduino world, and i just needed 1 arduino, but for some reason I have pretty much all available versions, everything from the cheapest 3$ micro chinese micro version to the awesome looking Taurino Power.. So I kinda expect that if I like these SBCs they will start stacking up on my desk before i know it

---

Maybe the Kodi guys dont like Allwinner cause of the "rootmydevice" issue they had

[ssvb]

there are several posts in the forum by knowledgeable people that indicate allwinner is not as you portray them, read around.

Feel free to invite these knowledgeable people to this thread and I will explain them why they are wrong.

---

Maybe the Kodi guys dont like Allwinner cause of the "rootmydevice" issue they had

Nope, this happened much earlier. XBMC (Kodi) developers tried to cooperate with Allwinner back in 2012, but Allwinner managed to piss them off pretty badly: http://web.archive.org/web/2012112402562...te-5-last/

Nowadays the Allwinner's VPU has been fully reverse engineered and we can use it to do hardware accelerated video playback with 100% open source code. But Kodi people are still deliberately sabotaging Allwinner hardware and claim that it will be never supported in Kodi.

[NexusDude]

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..

Away from the slap fight and back to the OP...

The "Supercomputer" claim is clearly hyperbole. The Pine64 -- a single one, by itself -- has zero potential to be a modern supercomputer. Everyone knows that, or should have. It might beat a Cray-1 from the mid-1970s. Definitely the Pine64 CPU would beat earlier supercomputers. And the Mali GPU would require another comparison.

As for the mediacenter and other claims, I'd give Pine64 a pass, for now. The Pine64 version 1.0 just came out, as a Kickstarter. It was expected to be a work in progress. Anyone familiar with technology knows that it's going to take awhile for various kinds of support to develop, including driver support. Anyone who grew angrily impatient was being irrational and/or unaware. That's putting it nicely.

Now, if the Pine64 team gives up on Linux & Android development, including Mali and bug-fixing, then yeah, the claim of false advertising would become true. Neither should the Pine64 team rely exclusively on Pine customers to do all the lifting. (I'm referring to longsleep & Lenny Raposo, who are customers, I believe.)

On a Pine 64+ 2GB without a heat sink:
On Linux (any distro, image), Kodi is abominably slow and unusable. The Ubuntu image was difficult for me to use, but I'm a Linux noob, still. I should probably try it again. Debian XFCE was clearly usable. Debian Mate was OK. Each was missing some essential components that the other had, but XFCE made it easier to fix without the terminal. Neither included any help for GPIO use, IDEs, etc., nor did I find any Pine64-specific guides to do so. Everything I found was about the RPi.

Android / RemixOS have annoying glitches. CPU/GPU heat may be part of some of those glitches. On Lenny Raposo's Pine64.pro site, I've posted a number of Android bugs that I'd been sitting on to confirm. Most of those apply to RemixOS, also.