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XBMC team gave us more information about porting its glorious software to the Sigma processors. The first proof-of-concept is based on SMP8670 and run XBMC. It was demonstrated at CES 2011. Sure it’s far from production – GUI is choppy and playback is still not working. But that fact didn’t prevent a significant amount of iinterest from CES attendees.

The Sigma Designs developers are going to work directly with XBMC developers. Also the company takes the GPL seriously. So, the partnerships between XBMC and Sigma Designs will bring not just XBMC to the Sigma-based media players. But also should improve XBMC itself a lot. However, a huge job should be done. That’s why we don’t expect to see a Sigma-based XBMC solution on shelves in the next few months. But when it’ll happen there will be two possibilities to run XBMC – as main user interface or as a application. A decision will be done by manufactures.

Sigma Designs started port of popular opensource HTPC software XBMC to bring it to their system-on-a-chip devices (i. e. SMP8670). The Sigma is a base for many many media players such Popcorn Hour or WDTV. They expect to have a initial port first-hand at CES this week.

Well, what benefits can we get from that port as users? First of all nice looking, handy and clever user interface which is much much better then any existing one on the media players. Secondly, it’s a possibility to extend core functionality by plugins and customize GUI using different skins. And, of course, this will give a powerful incentive to XBMC development.