After Archos GamePad, more gaming news today, as Nvidia announced Unreal Engine 3 port to Windows RT. The company showcased Epic Citadel demo on Nvidia Tegra 3 based Asus Vivo Tab RT (previously known as Tablet 600) at a press conference held at IFA 2012, in Berlin. The demo above is the full PC implementation running on ARM hardware and renders graphics at 35 to 40fps. The Unreal Engine 3 “Epic Citadel” demo implements the full DirectX 9 pipeline, with shaders and materials. Nvidia also announced that UE3 Windows RT code is available to licensees from Epic now. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011. www.cnx-software.com
$86 ZAP-A10 Android 4.0 Set-Top Box Powered by AMLogic AML8726-M3
You may already know that XBMC has been working on the Pivox XIOS DS set-top box based on AMLogic AML8726-M3. Pivosgroup has sponsored the development of XBMC for Android and Linux on their new media player, and it costs about $115 on sites like Amazon, but it’s not available worldwide right now. If you’re looking for an alternative AMLogic AML8726-M3 device, and are a bit adventurous, you may have a look at the ZAP-A10, an Android 4.0 networked media player featuring AML8726-M3 Cortex A9 processor, with 1GB RAM and 4 GB Flash. Here are the specs of this set-top box: SoC – Single core Cortex A9 @ 1GHz (AML8726-M3) with Mali-400 GPU System Memory – 1 GB RAM Storage – 4GB Flash & SD card slot Connectivity 10/100M Ethernet Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n USB – 4x USB Host port Video Output – HDMI and component (YPbPr) Video Containers – M2TS / […]
MPEG2 and VC-1 Codecs, H.264 Encode and HDMI CEC Are Now Available for the Raspberry Pi
Many people appear to have bought the Raspberry Pi in order to use it as a cheap media player by installing distributions such as Raspbmc or OpenElec. The only problem is that this low cost board was primarily designed as an educational platform, so the Raspberry Pi foundation only paid for H.264 licensing, which means you could only playback H.264 videos, and all other video codecs could not be played (by hardware) making it a rather poor media player. But things have improved, as the good people at the Raspberry Pi foundation have worked out a deal with the licensing organizations and now offer support for 2 new codecs: MPEG2 license key – 2.4 GBP (~3.8 USD) VC-1 license key – 1.2 GBP (~1.9 USD) Once those 2 codecs are enabled you should be able to play your DVD rips and most HD wmv files smoothly. The way it work […]
Nikon Announces Coolpix S800c Android 2.3 Camera
Nikon announced the first Android camera to hit the market. The Coolpix S800c is a 16 MP Wi-Fi camera powered by an unnamed ARM Cortex A9 processor with 512 MB RAM running Android 2.3.3 that will sell for $349. The S800c is basically a smartphone without the voice network capabilities, but with a proper camera capable of shooting clear pictures and videos, and a 10x optical zoom. Nikon also included a GPS to add localization info to pictures. Nikon lists the primary features of their Android camera as follows: Android 2.3 and Wi-Fi Simple setup and connection Browse and post to social networking sites (SNS) such as Google+, Facebook and Twitter. Support for Google Play and built-in Google apps Simple image transfer to other smart devices via “Upload to Smart Device” app. Better shooting performance and images quality and definition (compared to a smartphone). 10x optical zoom, NIKKOR lens and […]
Archos Unveils 101 XS Tablet Powered by TI OMAP4470
After teasing us last March, Archos officially launched their new Gen10 XS tablet line, and specifically announced the Archos 101 XS, a 10.1-inch Android 4.0.3 tablet powered by Texas Instruments OMAP4470 (Dual core Cortex A9) @ 1.5 GHz that features a detachable magnetic keyboard called the CoverBoard which also serves as a protective cover when not in use. Here are the specs for this new tablet: Processor Texas Instruments OMAP4470 @ 1.5GHz with SGX544 GPU Storage 16 GB Flash Memory + microSD Slot (up to 128GB) System Memory 1GB RAM Video codecs and containers • H.264 HD ([email protected], up to 1080p@30 fps and 1080i/720p@60 fps) • MPEG-42 HD (SP/ASP@L6, up to 1080p@30 fps) • With optional plug-in: MPEG2 HD (MP/HL, 1080p@30 fps) • With the above codecs, the device can play video files with the following extensions: AVI, MP4, MOV, 3GP, MPG, PS, TS, VOB, MKV, FLV, RM, RMVB, ASF […]
XBMC for Android With Hardware Video Decoding on Telechips TCC8925 Processor
Taehyun Kim, a developer working for Inisoft (Korea), has been working on video hardware acceleration on Diceplayer for Telechips TCC8925 processor (The one used in CX-01 and Zero Devices Z900) and call this player from XBMC. He has uploaded a video to demo his progress and that’s pretty impressive. You can try it yourself by downloading and installing the following apps: xbmckor-armeabi-v7a-20120821.apk (Korean version). [Update: Kim has also uploaded the English version]. Diceplayer – Free app via Google Play You’ll also need to create a file called playercorefactory.xml in /sdcard/Android/data/org.xbmc.xbmc/files/.xbmc/userdata directory with the following content: <playercorefactory> <players> <player name=”MPC-HC” type=”ExternalPlayer” audio=”false” video=”true”> <filename>com.inisoft.mediaplayer.a</filename> <hidexbmc>true</hidexbmc> </player> </players> <rules action=”prepend”> <rule video=”true” player=”MPC-HC”/> </rules> </playercorefactory> I’ve tried it in Zero Devices Z900. The default language is Korean, but you should manage if you’re familiar with XBMC interface. When you play videos, you lose the usual XBMC interface, as those are played in […]
Firefox OS Running on the Raspberry Pi
Oleg Romashin, a Nokia engineer, has been working on porting Firefox OS (previously known as Boot 2 Gecko) to the Raspberry Pi, and has uploaded a YouTube video showing a Firefox OS running on the device, including a WebGL teapot demo running at 60 fps. This Firefox OS build is based on Debian Squeezy, with plain EGL rendering, no Widget Toolkit backends and no X11. Some parts do not look very smooth yet, but this demo looks promising. If you want to try it yourself, you can download the WebGL teapot build. Mozilla patches with LinuxGL widget backend are also available at http://hg.mozilla.org/users/romaxa_gmail.com/embedipc_queue/file/linuxglpure. If you have the N9 smartphone or Beagleboard, it looks like you can also try this. Check files in http://romaxa.info/b2g/. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and […]
XBMC For Android Nightly Builds
Last month, XBMC developers announced they were working on XBMC for Android. The app is still being developed, and is not available on Google Play store yet, but the source code is available, so you can try it out by building it yourself, or try one of the apk available. The goods news is that you don’t need to build it yourself anymore (unless really want to change the source yourself), as kemonine96, Xda-developers forum member, has setup nightly builds for XBMC for Android. XBMC for Android can be installed on devices with Android 2.3 and greater and 2 versions are currently available: “NEON” devices “non-NEON devices” – Mainly those based on Tegra 2 processor This will work on many different devices such as smartphones, tablet, mini-PC, set-top boxes, etc…, although this type of apps works best on large screens. Bear in mind this is mainly for evaluation for now, […]