[Nook Color General] aludal:
It is optimized for a given ARM v# -level, hardly for any specific CPU implementation, and completely left out for OEMs to tackle a particular HW overlay/HW Stagefright. The whole "HW Stagefright" concept was the TI idea to engage SGX hardware even on the fallback, "software" decoding. Somehow (or by majority vote of 20+ other CM7 devices) the whole Stagefright concept was eradicated/broken/tweaked not in favour of CM7. Sure, at the Google Android camp there were serious troubles back then -- when planning the XOOM Google tablet, the problem was so severe that nVidia has erdicated NEON framework support from its Tegra 2 completely. Now NEON support will be stopped for Android 3.0.x and Android 2.4 -- if it didn't stop already.

So, IMHO there's two-three ways out of this mess: continue to improve NEON beyond the point where Google abandoned it and switched to Renderscript, or replace "free" codecs with better "commercial" codecs fully supporting SGX hardware, or get VisualOn's VOME code somehow.

Personally I'm still under an impression that there's a bug, an error, or something missing in our video processing pipeline, and a "magic" tweak eliminating these will render 720p, 10-12 Mb/sec for non-streaming, non-HTML5 video perfectly smooth. dalingrin has found a "missing" audio buffer size as the culprit, and all the CM7 video has suddenly started to work -- on the Froyo/Eclair level, though, it worked fine before that. There should be something more to tweak if there's a tweakable solution. For a streaming/inline/Flash video to stop stuttering "hardware" Flash 10.3 or 10.4 gives some hope, sure. Backporting of Android 3.0 stock browser which supposedly is HTML5-capable is another approach. Plus, some OMAP3x phones based on Android 2.2 have no problem with high-bitrate Flash video since Flash 10.1, the solution was a special TI OMAP-tuned Adobe Flash plugin we obviously don't use in our CM7. The reasoning for this is kinda slim to non-existent.

I was supervising software development since 1984 for mission critical deployments, and I could be the first to argue that newer versions of a very buggy, initially faulty software packages can bring in more failures than bugfixes. Here's your Adobe Flash 10.3's autopsy, LOL. It's a blasphemy to mention here, but I can easily side with Mr. Jobs in his hate of Adobe Flash's the further-the buggier approach.

Special thanks to Mrs. a.fenderson and dalingrin for their continuing interest in NC video problems. I do not believe in NC turning into a great gaming tablet, but the work on 2D (UI)/3D/video hardware acceleration is a very noble effort to make the NC the best 7" tablet in the below $300 range.

I also hope that B&N would eventually understand why they're still afloat and decide to make a NookColor2 based on TI OMAP4440 -- just to beat the RIM BB Playbook, LOL. Sure everything here is OT already, so please disregard everything below. I just like my NC, that's all. And I'm sure it will survive 2012 and even beyond -- when they will have quad-core, double-GPU tablets. And believe me, it's not just a nostalgic thought -- I do believe that the 3-year old TI OMAP3621 SoC was and still is a revolutionary chip. What else could beat XOOM on the Android 3.0 in Quadrant scores contest back then in March?

However, today's Engadget's hands-on review of that Playbook hints a lot that the (Open)QNX coders will be a very treasured commodity very soon. If somebody will try to scratch his/her scull what's the whole fuzz about -- a QNX against that Green Dude -- I would say all embedded Linux including its very poor phone-centric implementation called Android has absolutely nothing to put against Neutrino QNX RTOS. To put it in some other words, it goes like this: when you turn the QNX system completely off, you have your Chernobyl, Fukushima, you might have ICS and all the world's fighters and spaceships falling from the skies or dying on Mars and everywhere.

Going back to our video issues, Playbook has no problems in encoding-decoding 1080p video when on less than 4 simultaneous graphic-intensive tasks. It also has a good 2D UI hardware acceleration -- or maybe TI OMAP4430's CPU was just powerful enough to even bother with engaging its GPU. I do believe our TI OMAP3621 is a very fine chip too, it's just B&N/Inventec's are not exactly your first choice of coders to fully develop its potential in both a decent 720p-capable GPU and DSP.

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