the vortex86 cpu is going to expanded into other pc's also, they already have a ipad clone version that uses it also, plus the edubook.
When I made up the VLC package in 4.0, The resources were way lower than Mplayer and Gxine. I built it as i386, where as Barry was building as i486. Don't forget the vlc had sdl and wxgtk , Here's a couple of user quotes from the VLC 8.6h page
I'm not too sure about your statement "Some areas where a higher architecture would be acceptable are encoders/decoders" The above is proof supporting the lower i386. Also The vlc package is double the Gxine size but takes way less resources, actually there were a few post that some people could play dvd's on there low spec pc's where they couldn't on Gxine because gxine was choppy.Playing 'Lonesome Day Blues' from MP3 file on the hard disk. This notepad is a Toshiba Portege 3110CT with 128mb ram and a 300mhz processor (a PII).
Did comparison of gzine (with visualisation turned off) and VLC:
Gxine came out at 124% mem use and 38% CPU
VLC looked very good with 86% mem and 3% (sometimes 2%!) CPU usage. Unbelievable?
with some mpg video off a hard drive gxine 130%mem 98%cpu and VLC 112%mem and 89%cpu - but have to say the display at that point from VLC was roughly 3 times the size which makes a difference. plus not jerky like gxine.
VLC looks much better too Smile
ttuuxxx