Updated: More About Sigma
Update: There was a typo in Sigma’s press release and our resulting post. Their XBMC port was done on the SMP 8656 which supports Open GL ES. GLES will also be supported on Sigma’s recently announced SMP 8910, so this may be a potential target for XBMC as well.
For those asking “Will a potential XBMC port be possible for my xyz Sigma-based device?”, it is only a possibility if GLES 2.0 is supported.
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For those who may have missed the previous post, Sigma Designs announced last week that they have begun work on porting XBMC to run on their next-generation SOCs, and showed off their nascent project at the 2011 CES. After meeting with a few Sigma employees, I wanted to give more detail into what is going on.
Sigma hired a 3rd party company to do their initial port, which is shown in the picture below. A proof-of-concept is up and running on their SMP8656, and while the GUI is choppy and playback is still not working, it is an impressive effort so far. There was a significant amount of interest in the port from CES attendees, who quickly appreciated XBMC’s rich experience compared to the user interfaces usually found on Sigma-based hardware.
Sigma has also expressed an interest in working directly with XBMC developers rather than using an outside company. This leads to the possibility of full-time XBMC devs, which would be a win for everyone involved. We are looking into our options. If the collaboration succeeds, it is quite possible that some turn-key XBMC solutions could be in the works in the not-so-distant future.
This is getting interesting!
To answer a few questions:
- The collaboration has just begun, the above is subject to change.
- Don’t expect to see a Sigma-based XBMC solution on shelves in the next few months. These things take time.
- The capabilities will depend on the SOC used, nothing is set in stone yet.
- Sigma takes the GPL seriously, as do we. We do not foresee any problems.
- XBMC may be launched as an application, or run as the main front-end, depending on what the vendor wants.
This is great news and a great opportunity for any of the current XBMC devs currently out of a job.
If they demoed something at CES, I bet it is X11 based, but do anyone knows if they plan to port XBMC to engines like DirectFB + DirectFBGL?
Hell yes this is fantastic, can’t wait to see what comes next.
I just read on the MPC Club Community Board forum that Sigma Designs plans to make XBMC their default reference media player and that it will be included in thier SDK as the standard UI for media player feature for all their chips, is this true?
Everyone at MPC Club sound very impressed by the new SMP8910 chip because of the intergrated VxD professional grade scaler that can enhance video playback on the fly, so I will wait until someone releases an XBMC box with that chip instead of the SMP8670 without VxD.
That is a simple reason why the foundation needs to be open: 3rd party companies are doing development work. This will eventually lead to conflict of interests unless this Foundation is setup to be trustworthy.
Is great to hear this! LG has announced TVs with plex software, Haier has it’s WMC7 in theirs, Boxee, Apple and Google with its appliances, so perhaps, the root of everything could be implemented also, and who knows if in TVs directly in the future, its a matter of time, less clutter in the rack = happy wife! Bravo!
If the OS is more open than boxee’s I’ll be really already interested!
Ha … I came into this page expecting bulkzooi to have made a comment like that, and he didn’t disappoint!
This is great news, guys. I’ve always been a fan of your work. It’s been interesting to see how far you have come without any commercial backing, and the fact that XBMC is even much more advanced than most commercial offerings has certainly managed to perk up some ears in the industry. It has been interesting to see it start as an underground project on a console and work its way onto more capable systems. The ability to run this software on dedicated hardware will be a plus for those who do not want to spend hours tinkering with custom HW/SW solutions. I only hope that you continue your independent efforts to eventually integrate traditional television/DVR sources or make them obsolete somehow (your UI already has done so in spades).
Man oh man, this is some great news. In a year or so, we’ll be able to get all the goodness of XBMC in a sub-$200 plug-and-play box. No more wrestling with large, pricey HTPCs or outdated ATVs. Thanks, Sigma!
Amazing. I always dream with a WD Live Tv with XBMC.
I want to see fully maxed out media player. Addable Blu-ray reader, addable pvr + mythbuntu, a nice remote, and a slick case.
That would be awesome.
@bulkzooi
It is because we dont want conflict of interest that you use third party, I.e not foundation. Third party could be team xbmc developer or not. Please don’t spread misinformation.
Well done to every1 invovled :) it just show how outsiders view all the work and progress made here. Maybe its time to award all the people who made xbmc what it is!!!!
This is fantastic! I always hated how all these companies went off to make their own media player software (eg: WDTV). Why not partner with XBMC which is the best stuff around, and open source to top it off! Make an awesome set top box, heck, they can even make some proprietary extensions for it (I believe without violating the GPL if done correctly), but let’s use the base of XBMC and improve it. This is a win for Sigma since they get to use an awesome starting point, and a win for XBMC community since it should mean more contribution to the project!
I hope this leads to everything good that it sounds like it can! <3 XBMC!
@topfs2
You are disinforming: 3rd party devs are also the copyrightowners of xbmc. Guess who? The Foundation members. So yes, a conflict of interest.
If we don’t end up XBMC supporting only SIGMA hardware, everything is fine with me. Congrats – and hooray for XBMP… oh… XBMC! :-)
@bulkzooi
Please review the source code, at the top of all files is a copyright assignment. That assignment determines the copyright owner and not some personal interpretation of GPL or copyright/copyleft wording.
You are constantly in the forums under a different nick after you were banned by me. You are about to get banned again if you don’t stop pursuing your silly agenda. Do what you want on your own website but we and forum users are getting tired of your useless spewing about issues that you clearly do not understand.
Interesting!
..so at least sigma is exerting hugh influence in the future of xbmc.
If there will be paid full time coders, they will have big effect on xbmc according to the amount of work they provide and of course they will be employes involved in work contracts with sigma.
Hope this will end well.
I was banned since there were some topics you didn’t like; not because I did something wrong. I know the copyright notice (it says teamXBMC) but what is it worth if the Foundation is not open for already 2 years? As you might understand, current XBMC Foundation is just setup in favor of some unnamed 3rd party companies instead of the community it is supposed to serve. I don’t mind you making money but I don’t like the way it is done. Simple. This is something I do understand by the way…
Look at the Boxee case, you might as well stop using a license and a foundation. And that is just one example; I can name many. Combine that with your attitude towards the subject and things will never be better.
So my cause will remain the same. But I am tired of pushing my message so I will step back for a while to regain some energy.
This sounds like excellent news, but I agree with some earlier posters: PLEASE ensure that XBMC stays open and available to multiple platforms, no matter what. I don’t want to see the scenario I’ve seen with so many other open-source projects, where a company buys it, forks off a closed-source version, and then essentially abandons the open-source version.
Absolutely!! I will buy ANY box that can run XBMC.
@bulkzooi
You don’t understand anything you are talking about, please remove yourself from this website and stop trolling and wasting everyones time. The foundation is set up carefully to NOT allow it to be “bought” by companies and the foundations sole purpose is to serve the community. It works much like any other foundation backing bigger open source communities as for example FSF and Mozilla Foundation. The foundation has nothing to do with sigma hiring third party developers and saying it has shows that you clearly do not know what you are talking about. You have been warned, if you do not stop trolling you will get banned again.
@bulkzooi
Who are you to talk about openess at anyrate, you constantly remove and filter comments from your website. We could but do not do so, so stop spreading outright lies.
Congrats, it’s great to see recognition that you deserve.
@bulkzooi
Regardless of your beliefs or good intentions, your actions clearly are not making an impact on people here at xbmc so I would suggest moving on because further efforts would probably be seen by most as “trolling” as some have already worded it. I am not trying to insult or judge you, I am just saying that your criticism is no longer constructive at this point so it would be in everybody’s best interest if we all just left this behind us.
as long as their contributions or affect on the development of xmbc is fully opensource FLOSS, this would be awesome.
Oh, and i dont want 37 ads on the xbmc website asking me to buy equipment from sigma either.
@Anonymous
I second that. XBMC FTW!
Wow, I’m really excited about this. I currently already have an AsRock ION that I really enjoy, but to get something built specifically that I can throw in any room like an applicance is a HUGE win for XBMC.
I can say I’ve tried brand X and I ended up returning it simply because it did not keep up with the expectations I’ve had with XBMC over the past few years.
Will this Sigma version XBMC also works on current chipset like Sigma 8642?
THANKS!
Like BigRay I am also curious if this would work on my current hardware, the WDTV live that runs on the Sigma 8655 chip. Cheers
I was wondering the same thing but the 8655 doesn’t seem to have 3d acceleration like the 8656 :(