Android hardware

For most high-definition videos (1080p or higher resolution), hardware video decoding is necessary for smooth video playback on Android devices. And this article contains a list of SoC chipset hardware, (SoC stands for "System on a Chip" which contain the CPU plus GPU and VPU circuits combination, and is also known as a "chipset"), as on Android platforms this SoC chipset is what can playback common video codecs smoothly using Kodi/XBMC.

The fact is, while some devices might be able to smoothly decode standard-definition videos and even some 720p or higher resolution videos using only software video decoding with raw CPU compute power, offloading a large part of video decoding tasks to an integrated VPU (Video Processor Unit) that is optimized specifically for this job is considered essential for most Android devices to be able to smoothly playback high definition videos.

How do I know what chipset I have?
There are so many out there so it can something be difficult to find out, but these are some good websites for looking up the SoC (System on a Chip) chipset used in your Android hardware device:


 * http://www.iboum.com - Digital media players
 * http://gsmarena.com - Phones
 * Comparison of Android devices
 * http://www.androidcentral.com/devices

Also as a reference you can compare different SoC (System on a Chip) chipset specifications on system-on-a-chip.findthebest.com as well as in http://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GT7I4P8MDlfYvRaL9Wv0NplQJryl54pO_6-9P3g7Fvk/

Compatible chipsets
These specific mass-market hardware SoC chipsets listed below should be capable at least partial hardware accelerated video decoding support for the more popular video codecs in the latest official Kodi builds for Android. However understand that for some devices you might first need to upgrade the hardware firmware image on the device to achieve smooth playback at 1080p or higher resolution. Please contact your hardware manufacturer support for an updated system update firmware and apply that upgrade image before installing Kodi.

Common codecs currently without hardware decoding in Kodi
Videos encoded with these codecs can only be played back in Kodi using software video decoding using CPU, meaning no decoding tasks are offloaded to optimized VPU or GPU hardware. Many videos may still play back just fine at standard definition resolutions, while others might have severe issues with playback.

As platforms with faster CPUs come out for Android software video decoding using CPU will get better, but do not expect miracles from the average Android box. It still all can depend on how demanding the decoding of that particular video encoding is or how high resolution it uses, and how powerful the CPU is.


 * H.264 Hi10P - No hardware decoders for Hi10P (High 10 Profile, also known 10-bit H.264) currently exist for any ARM hardware. Most H.264 Hi10P videos will not play smoothly as most ARM CPUs are just not powerful enough to software decode it fast enough.
 * H.264 MVC - No open source software decoder or hardware decoding for MVC (Multiview Video Coding) stereoscopic 3D video decoding currently exist for Kodi on any platform. Kodi relies on FFmpeg for software demuxing and decoding, so Kodi have to wait for FFmpeg to first add software decoding support of MVC for H.264, and for hardware decoding Kodi relies on the SoC chipset hardware manufacturer to add support for this to their SDK (Software Developer Kits) and for the media player box manufacturers to implement that into their firmware images.
 * H.265 MVC (HEVC MVC) - No open source software decoder or hardware decoding for MVC (Multiview Video Coding) stereoscopic 3D video decoding currently exist for Kodi on any platform. Kodi relies on FFmpeg for software demuxing and decoding, so Kodi have to wait for FFmpeg to first add software decoding support of MVC for H.265 (HEVC), and for hardware decoding Kodi relies on the SoC chipset hardware manufacturer to add support for this to their SDK (Software Developer Kits) and for the media player box manufacturers to implement that into their firmware images.
 * RealVideo/RMVB (RV 8/9/10) - There is currently no support in Kodi for RealVideo hardware video decoding, though software decoding of RMVB videos is possible via FFmpeg but can struggle with high definition sources on older or low-end hardware.
 * VP8 (WebM v1 video) and VP9 (WebM v2 video) - There is currently no support in Kodi for VP8 hardware video decoding, though software decoding of VP8 videos is possible via FFmpeg but can struggle with high definition sources on older or low-end hardware. Most hardware manufacturers have not even implemented API support for VP8 decoding in the firmware images of Android for their devices, and this is despite the fact that the WebM project licenses VP8 hardware accelerators (RTL IP) to semiconductor companies for 1080p encoding and decoding at zero cost. Nvidia and Rockchip and a few other less known companies does however provide hardware decoding of VP8 in their SoCs, for Tegra 4 and RK29xx respectivly. ARM, Broadcom, Texas Instruments, and Qualcomm as well as ZiiLABS, ST-Ericsson, and Huawei have all announced upcoming support for hardware acceleration of the WebM format and VP8/VP9 codecs. Intel have also let its intention known that they will add hardware-based acceleration for WebM and VP8/VP9 codecs in its future Atom-based chips if the format gains popularity.
 * VP9 does not appear to have hardware decoding support for most Android ARM SoCs.

Device specific info
Here are a few device-specific guides/help areas that the community has provided.

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