Smart Home Blog

Leader of the project GeeXboX which offers a Linux-based media distribution, Benjamin Zores wrote in the his blog about new strategy of the GeeXboX. It’ll focus most of its efforts to support ARM devices. Especially OMAP3-based ones. That choice is conditioned by its rich media features – OpenGL compatible GPU and a 720p H.264 hardware capable decoding DSP, mature of SoC and big community.

Current development tree of GeeXboX is running fine on OMAP3 hardware. But there is a lot of improvements should be done to offer a full-features software for that platform. Moreover, it’s planning to design GeeXboX oriented board (based on ARM SoC, of course) and have a support of OMAP4 with architecture with 1080p-capable DSP.

Priority of GeeXboX to support of ARM architecture is a smart decision in my opinion. It’ll allow to build compact, quiet and inexpensive HTPC with 1080p compatibility using open platform and open source software.