[Arm-netbook] Help, ARM with video composite input ?

[Pedro]

On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 5:09 AM, Roman Mamedov <rm at romanrm.ru> wrote:
> On Tue, 19 Feb 2013 03:46:08 +0100
> Pedro <pederindi at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'm looking for a single-board [1] that can make:
>> * input / output of composite video (analog)
>> * input / output of analog audio
>> (doesn't matter if only one jack or two, i.e. could be a input/output connector)
>>
>> The capabilities of the CPU & GPU would be to encode and decode at
>> real time ~MPEG2 (DVD quality)
>>
>> input / output of analog audio it's easy (a lot of single boards have it)
>> the difficult feature is the input at composite video (analog) !
>>
>> I only found this:
>> http://www.empowertechnologies.com/sbc644x.html
>> but it's really expensive (~700$)
>>
>> For solve this problem i'm thinking to search for "capture video card"
>> cheap and compatible with GNU/Linux, but this is difficult also :(
>>
>> I see that single boards (or single board + capture video card) cost
>> between ~50$ to ~300$
>
> You can use an USB "EasyCAP" adapter with any ARM board that has USB for input.
> http://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Easycap
> It costs $10 on Dealextreme, perhaps $7 or so on Aliexpress.
> However in my limited testing the video quality was not too great.

I can't loose video quality : /

> Alternatively you can use some USB TV tuner from a "brand" name like Aver or
> Pinacle, probably will have a better video quality; but google around to check
> the state of their GNU/Linux support beforehand.

We will see...

> For output you can use a board that has composite video output natively, such
> as an A10 board or the Raspberry Pi.

With this, I have another problem... only I know the case of Raspberry Pi:
It have a nice GPU, but only accessible with an API, and this make
limitations for final user, they can only make it run with omxplayer
[1]
This is a problem, I want this processing for receive streaming via
internet (IPTV). But perhaps could work [2]
What is sure about it, is that I have to get the MPEG-2 license.

In other place, we have A10's GPU (thanks for share @Roman, I didn't
know). It seems to be more easy to manage, as is ¿"more opensource"?
[3] [4] (Mali 400 graphics). But I remark my intention to use for
MPEG-2 (not 3D rendering).

[1] http://elinux.org/Omxplayer
[2] http://raspi.tv/2012/watch-encrypted-dvd-on-raspberry-pi-by-streaming-to-omxplayer
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali_%28GPU%29#The_Lima_FOSS_driver
[4] https://fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/operating_systems_open_arm_gpu/