KDE’s upcoming Plasma Bigscreen project lets you use open source technologies to turn your regular TV into a smart one.
It’s a Linux OS but optimized for TV, almost like AndroidTV but fully open-source and privacy focused so no Google spying or data collection, it’s fully Linux, no Android.
There is also voice support and HDMI CEC support so you can use a tv remote easily.
It should also work well with an airmouse remote.
There is already Mali Panfrost/Bitfrost open-source GPU drivers for S922x, RK3399 so that can perhaps be developed further and provide good acceleration.
We just need H265, VP9 video playback mainline Linux support for Edge-V, not sure about Vim 3.
Panfrost does not yet support the Mali G31/52 chips used in the S905D3/A311D chips that Khadas are using. It is being worked on, but will take some time. VIM3/3L have upstream H264/VP9 with Linux 5.7, HEVC is still in development.
They won’t be working on any other device as of now, they’re focusing on making it stable first on only one device for preview. Once it matures then it will be posible to port to any other device.
Manjaro ARM team works closely with Kde plasma mobile team which is the same devs as bigscreen.
At manjaro we will add this to our de list soon. The only issue is widevine. As google have not yet made widevine for aarch64 so we have to wait for them.
Regarding panfrost on rk3399 it works very smoothly as we have released Manjaro ARM kde-plasma and xfce images for pinebookpro and it works quiet well but there is still space for improvement. I tested the same on khadas egde-v and I loved the performance. Regarding the video playback the cpu can handle 1080p without any issue.
I will try and see what we need to get plasma bigscreen packages as we already have plasma mobile packages and its going well. Next thing we need to understand is how stable is panfrost with wayland.
For Khadas Edge-V RK3399
It already has Panfrost which works well, but more optimisations are needed perhaps.
Mpeg2, Mpeg4, H264, VP8 already is hardware decoded.
H265, VP9 has no hardware support yet, but the CPU can decode up to 1080p in most cases.
For Vim 3
Panfrost driver for the GPU still needs to be developed which might take a long time.
H265 hardware decoding still in development, same as Edge-V, other video codecs should work in Linux 5.7
Maybe something like what they do for LibreELEC, using ChromeOS Widevine files can make some streaming services work?
Some users are already using ChromeOS Widevine files in Chromium ARM 32-bit browser on the Raspberry Pi 4. https://blog.vpetkov.net/2019/07/12/netflix-and-spotify-on-a-raspberry-pi-4-with-latest-default-chromium/
But this might be something users will need to do manually and can’t be pre-included for some reasons.
I really like projects like this and hopefully after several months KDE BigScreen OS will be compatible with more ARM devices and more video codec drivers will be supported in mainline for Rockchip and Amlogic chipsets.
Quick update.
I was able to package bigscreen for Manjaro aarch64 and it launches but not complete yet.
Some dependencies are missing so hopefully should have it sometime soon.
I’m already impatient for the next Edge V2 with the RK3588 (hopefully in the end of 2020). Amlogic GPUs are poorly supported, Rockchip does a much better job
Hi bro, any way i can run any test version of plasma big screen on my vim 3? I have setup manjaro, do i need to erase it or can plasma big screen run as an application like kodi over manjaro
as we already have plasma mobile packages and its going well. Next thing we need to understand is how stable is panfrost with wayland.