"Allwinner is also not that bad at releasing code/datasheets. They release a lot of code. The issue is that it is designed for old kernels (3.4, 3.10) so it's not directly usable/easily portable to newer kernels. But still it is helpful and community is actively working on mainlining the support for various SoC parts."
Allwinner does NOT cooperate with the linux-sunxi community. At all.
Video decoding acceleration does work on A10/A20/H3 with the legacy 3.4 kernel out of the box. I believe that you can even find some ready made SD card images. And you can track the mainlining effort at https://linux-sunxi.org/Sunxi-cedrus
"AllWinner is a GPL violator"
You are just cherry-picking statements and severely exaggerating them. Every major hardware vendor has its own skeletons in a closet. Maybe you can remember Linus Torvald's middle finger to NVIDIA and things like this. Allwinner is definitely not a saint, but is still far from the worst. If you want to vent out your hatred, then I can give you some better targets.
"Allwinner does NOT cooperate with the linux-sunxi community. At all."
This is not exactly true. They are at least providing the documentation and also their open source code drops. Some people (mainly the devboard manufacturers) have contacts with Allwinner.
Patches to get HDMI and audio? More work needed I think.
"Video decoding is also progressing as someone noted in other comments."
So it doesn't work out of the box then?
"SoC on Orange PI PC is also very nice for people who care about not having binary blobs running show on some hidden internal processor."
AllWinner is a GPL violator: http://linux-sunxi.org/GPL_Violations
"Allwinner is also not that bad at releasing code/datasheets. They release a lot of code. The issue is that it is designed for old kernels (3.4, 3.10) so it's not directly usable/easily portable to newer kernels. But still it is helpful and community is actively working on mainlining the support for various SoC parts."
Allwinner does NOT cooperate with the linux-sunxi community. At all.
"The only annoying thing I find is Mali GPU."
That's just the final peanut on the turd I think.