[shihan]

I've got a small intel core i5 box (mini-itx) with an nvidia graphics card in it.

Its running ubuntu natty (11.10) and i've got the xbmc from the unstable ppa installed (v11), xmbc is up and running and life seems pretty good, but i have a few questions.

I've noticed it apparently supports vaapi as well as vdpau which is good cause I wouldn't mind getting rid of the nvidia card and switching to vaapi. Unfortunately, the only thing i can find with any detail about vaapi on intel/linux is http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=86581 and a couple of pages on the wiki that are listed as out of date.

If im using ubuntu 11.10, xbmc 11, is vaapi a viable alternative? Or, is the thread above still accurate (he ultimately compiles xbmc, which i'd like to avoid doing if possible)

Secondly, the amd e350 mini-itx boards (brazos/zacate) are quite nice boards as well with vaapi support (though, looking at the forums again, the zacate vaapi thread http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=99154 seems to end in a xbmc compile), but on a 11.10/11 platform, are these already there and functional currently?

[alanwww1]

Hi !

There is an updated version of my guide which should work on your CPU. No xbmc compile needed.

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=114368

What I am not quite sure about, is the deinterlacing capability of your CPU if by any chance you need deinterlacing.

[shihan]

Wow, thanks so much for the pointers and the forum link. Its very impressive with intel's vaapi. Its actually better then the nvidia card its replacing (very smooth), i was not expecting that.

Think im going to have a go at getting the amd brazos one working as well, but the intel i5 is just stunningly impressive.

[wsnipex]

For AMD you definitely don't want vaapi, look here instead: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=116996

[shihan]

doh, i just finished getting it running on the little zacate cpu, side by side it was hard to actually tell between the i5 and zacate, cept the zacate seemed to be tearing now and then a little and the menu interface on the xbmc itself felt a little laggy.

I'll have to have a run thru with xvba as well now cause if its better then vaapi, it should be quite impressive.

Thanks for the thread link!

One question tho, the amd one doesnt have mpeg2, i assume thats actually a problem considering i'd probably be using it for tv as well (hd dvb?)

[fritsch]

The cpu should be fast enough for low mpeg-2 resolutions.

But AMD does currently not support mpeg-2 bitstream under linux. We will integrate this support as soon as the amdxvba.h supports it.

For now only: VC-1 and H264 are accelerated.

[shihan]

Unfortunately, it'll probably end up connecting to my myth backend for dvb tv (which i believe is mpeg2 mostly), given alot of thats is full hd, i'd imagine its not going to keep up with that.

Thats actually quite ok for me, the i5 box was an old myth frontend that i no longer need. The attraction of the zacate (originally) was that in comparison to the i5 with its nvidia card the power draw was tiny. Dropping the nvidia card has made the i5 not so bad in terms of power and in reality i probably wouldnt do much else with it.

The e350 on the other hand has proven to be quite an invaluable little box when it comes to experimenting with just about anything, but I was interested in seeing what it was capable of cause in future it could be a nice little xbmc box if I ever feel the need to build another (i cant exactly say why, but the e350 has always made me feel "this is what i wish my atom was").