Well, I actually went and did some additional digging (fairly lightly ATM, thinking of ordering one of these and/or the amlogic-m3 "smart tv box"), and the only current "solution" appears to be to use the nightly NEON builds or setup xbmc to handoff video playback to what I would guess to be a Rockchip supplied video playback app or some sort of "licensed" playback app.
ATM I can't find the instructions, oval elephants forums are spammed to all hell (something like 4000+ posts have appeared in the week or so since I last checked, ALL SPAM) and most of j1nx's forum messages & blog comments seem to have disappeared since he switched software/servers. Might still be in the Amlogic meson-m3/"smart tv box" posts but IIRC it was actually in a comment...
[EDIT]
Oops, meant the mk802/"oval elephant minipc"/smallart Uhost posts as it's another one w/o VPU support ATM.
[/EDIT]