[HH] NeTV: open source Google TV hardware?

[Thomas Sohmers]

It's actually a lot different from the current Google TV hardware... the
released GTVs have 1.6ghz Intel Atom (x86) processors, and are heavily
locked down... It took 15 months to root the Sony GTV, and Sony issued a
patch a week later, while Logitech has pretty much abandoned their GTV, and
is rootable... you need to have an unpatched device, and you have to solder
a UART port to the motherboard.

The new Google TV devices announced at CES are now ARM based, and are 1ghz
dual core, so this is a lot less powerful... I also have a jailbroken Gen2
AppleTV that we can experiment with if you want.

Thomas Sohmers
Hacker, Inventor, Programmer
http://www.trsohmers.com



On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 3:45 PM, Kurt Keville <kkeville at mit.edu> wrote:

> Looks like it has a half-way decent ARM processor and a SPARTAN 3 FPGA...
> which would make it a good buy for $120 (if you wanted to use it for
> something else)... hmm... I know AppleTVs have been clusterized, don't know
> about GoogleTVs...
>
> http://www.mnm-team.org/**projects/ATV2CLUSTER/<http://www.mnm-team.org/projects/ATV2CLUSTER/>
>
> At 02:47 AM 3/8/2012, Drew Van Zandt wrote:
>
>> "Kits" don't have to pass FCC part 15 certification tests.
>>
>> Drew Van Zandt
>> Artisan's Asylum Craft Lead, Electronics & Robotics
>> Cam # US2010035593 (M:Liam Hopkins R: Bastian Rotgeld)
>> Domain Coordinator, MA-003-D.  Masquerade aVST
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 2:39 AM, Tom Metro <<mailto:tmetro%2Bhhacking@**
>> gmail.com <tmetro%252Bhhacking at gmail.com>>tmetro+hhacking@**gmail.com<tmetro%2Bhhacking at gmail.com>>
>> wrote:
>> adafruit is selling NeTV, a $119 kit (you put the board into the
>> supplied plastic case - not sure why they bothered making it a "kit"),
>> that has hardware similar to a Google TV, which lets you pass HDMI
>> signals through it and overlay graphics.
>>
>> It is open source hardware created by "the lead hardware engineer of the
>> chumby internet alarm clock."
>>
>> <http://www.adafruit.com/**products/609<http://www.adafruit.com/products/609>
>> >http://www.**adafruit.com/products/609<http://www.adafruit.com/products/609>
>>
>> I'm not sure what CPU it uses. The HDMI overlay is accomplished with a
>> Xilinx FPGA. "The FPGA is managed using a convenient set of built-in
>> command-line tools. You can modify the NeTV's video processing
>> capability using Xilinx's free Webkit development environment. Or, you
>> can repurpose the FPGA for entirely new functionality; the sky's the
>> limit!"
>>
>> It runs "Angstrom linux...running Webkit that features chroma-key video
>> compositing. Out of the box, the reference firmware enables the overlay
>> of Facebook and Twitter feeds, and SMSes from Android phones. The UI is
>> written in Javascript/HTML, making it easy and fast to develop your
>> custom application."
>>
>> Also has a WiFi radio and a cheesy IR remote.
>>
>> Not clear if it is actually any good at video decoding, or if it only
>> has enough horsepower to show relatively static overlays. No mention of
>> video decompression hardware.
>>
>> Hmmm...if it ran XBMC or Android it would be more interesting.
>>
>> I think I'd rather start with a platform capable of being an HD
>> streaming video player and run open enough software that permits adding
>> custom overlay data, rather than bother with a device dedicated to
>> displaying custom overlay data.
>>
>>  -Tom
>>
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