XBMC in Odroid U3 (cont'd)

I think I owe an update on the Odroid U3 topic I started months ago.

First, I should say I quickly abandoned the Android image: for the reasons described in the previous post. I moved to some "Game Station Turbo" image, linux-based, that I have used for months. Performance was decent, but it was limited to 720p and even playing videos in this resolution was not totally smooth. Some videos would hang, also (video freezing, but audio continuing -- workaround was to press Stop, then play again the video resuming from the position I just stopped it). I never used the gaming features of that image, by the way -- they did not work for me (I only tried some ROMs but was not that much interested in doing further research). Asking in the forums, they said the 720p limitation was a problem in the drivers, that should "get solved in a few months". So I waited.

More recently I went to the forums again looking for updates. I tried a couple of different images, until I found this one, based on Ubuntu 13.10 and LXDE. Driver problems are fixed, or replaced by some other drivers... and the image boots from install in 1080, and plays 720p videos absolutely smoothly! And 1080p seemed smooth at the first try, though I need to play an entire movie to be sure.

(For some technical note: Installing is similar as other images: "xz -cd ((image name.xz)) | pv > /dev/mmcblk0", and then extend the last partition to the end of the SD card space).

Seems they are still doing updates on the drivers, so instructions to re-download, compile and install them are in that forum thread. The image still uses XBMC 12.3, but a v13 will come soon (when there is a final release; now xbmc 13 is still beta). I can't wait! EDIT: mdrjr confirms one should not need to update drivers -- they are part of the image already.

I am very thankful to memeka, mdrjr and the other folks from Odroid community who are working on this. This is a major update for those using Odroid as XBMC media center, as I do, and now it makes the Odroid absolutely worth every cent!