Sigma XBMC When?

Most likely will have to wait till IFA in berlin comes up August 29th to see if anyone shows one off.

Will the new Sigma chip play full-res 3D Blu-Ray?

Yes it should, in a sort of lite mode.

Manufacturers have yet to announced a device with the Sigma XBMC.

Sigma has released the chip, that's all. Although they have announced that a turnkey XBMC would be available for the chip, I would bet that that step is a ways away. And maybe then some manufacturers will release a XBMC box. I suspect it will be a year.

Sigma already made a demo to the xbmc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtTwK3hl5_A&feature=youtube_gdata_player

From the demo at the XBMC conference it sounds like they are a little further away from coming to market, they are a version behind current XBMC but most of the difficult work is out of the way. Maybe next year perhaps unless they can push something out for December.

There is already an XBMC box on the market the Pivos XIOS which while in flux is maturing rapidly and has XBMC developer Davilla working on it.

The primary advantage of the Sigma XBMC platform is that it can do legit DVD/BD disc playback & they have more robust hardware decoders that cover more formats though the newer M3 chip used on XIOS replacing the M1 models may erase that.

There is already an "XBMC box". It's called Raspberry Pi. Some assembly required . And the price is right.

Alan

you forgot to mention the limitation of the Audio with the PI no HD audio at all is a major flaw for most, Still makes a great unit if that is not needed though.

Yeah, that's one of the disadvantages. The others are that you have to add an IR receiver and an on/off switch. That said it really is an amazing little box. It plays everything just as well as my Neo 550 with a much better interface.

Alan

I'm so looking forward to a Sigma based box with XBMC. I've played with XBMC on Intel hardware before, but in my experience nvidia and ATI video do not compare to a dedicated SoC. It truly would be the best of both worlds to get a Dune/PCH device with XBMC goodness.

Are you sure about this? I thought my ntv550 was the only player bar a few dunes/pchs that can play any bd structure including java/menus/seemless branching and whatnot including bitstreaming of all hd lossless/lossy formats. Compared to a standalone blu-ray player the only thing it cannot do is 3d as that was ahead of its time.