2012-11-16, 03:01
I installed XBMC for the first time yesterday and so far I haven't been happy with my results. Let me start with a little background information.
I've been using the D-Link Boxee Box for over a year now and have been happy with it for the most part. They were releasing updates every three months until this summer, when support seems to have suddenly stopped. Anyway, I decided to get a new HTPC and give XBMC a try. I ended up getting a Zotac ZBOX ID61 and 4 GB of RAM. Based on specs, the Zotac box is supposed to be noticeably more powerful than my aging Boxee Box, yet this doesn't seem to be the case. (See bottom of post for Boxee Box and Zotac ID61 specs.)
I looked into ways I can install XBMC on my new box. OpenELEC seemed like the obvious choice, because it's small, boots fast, and it's tailored specifically for XBMC. Unfortunately OpenELEC has a nasty bug where you randomly get a black screen at boot up and you have to power cycle several times (or SSH into the box and reboot that way) to get XBMC working. More info here => http://openelec.tv/forum/64-installation...ith-cursor
I did get OpenELEC to boot properly a few times and during playback of 1080p content I saw video jerkiness/stuttering and a lot of dropped frames. I also noticed that CPU load was always around 20-25% even when no video was playing. I don't know if this load was caused by XBMC or by something else relating to the underlying Linux system. During HD playback CPU load would spike to 80-100% on one core and 20-30% on the other, depending on the video. At any rate, I decided to move on to my next option.
I installed XBMCbuntu next, hoping for better results. Unfortunately I ended up with similar issues. CPU usage is still sitting at around 20% all the time (this seems very high for an idle system), even when I'm doing nothing except looking at the CPU usage on the system details page. When I play HD content, CPU usage spikes to 100% on one core, 20-40% on the other and lots of frames would get dropped. This would especially be noticeable on high bitrate videos. Black Swan for example has a grainy effect (similar to what you would see on 300) which causes bitrates to go above 20Mbps in certain scenes. When the bitrate goes above 20Mbps, the video becomes so jerky it's almost unwatchable.
Even movies without the grainy effect experience video stuttering and lots of dropped frames during fast scenes. I've tried every settings combination imaginable in XBMC (enable all h/w acceleration, disable all h/w acceleration, various combinations of those two, various rendering settings, etc) but the result is always the same.
The same video plays perfectly on my Boxee Box. Even though it has lower specs than the Zotac ID61, it plays all 1080p content flawlessly, without stuttering or dropped frames. Another thing I noticed with both OpenELEC and XBMCbuntu is that all my videos seem darker compared to Boxee and videos seem "softer" and not ask sharp/crisp as on my Boxee Box. I'm using the same TV and HDMI cable for both Boxee and the Zotac ID61.
The only thing left I can think of is to install Windows 7 on the Zotac ID61 and try XBMC there. I don't want to waste all that time though, because I have a feeling my results will be the same. My question is, does anyone know if running XBMC on Windows 7 would make a difference at all? Or perhaps shed some light on what I may be doing wrong here? Is anyone else having these same issues on similar hardware? I tried to be detailed in my post, but if anyone needs more info, feel free to ask. Any help with this would be greatly appreciated!
Boxee Box specs:
- Intel Atom CPU CE4110 running at 1.20GHz
- 1GB RAM (can't find exact specs)
- 512 KB Cache
- 1GB internal SD storage
Zbox ID61 specs:
- Intel Celeron 867 at 1.3 GHz (dual core and based on Sandy Bridge)
- Intel HM65 Express Chipset
- Intel HD Graphics
- 4 GB DDR3 at 1333 Mhz
I've been using the D-Link Boxee Box for over a year now and have been happy with it for the most part. They were releasing updates every three months until this summer, when support seems to have suddenly stopped. Anyway, I decided to get a new HTPC and give XBMC a try. I ended up getting a Zotac ZBOX ID61 and 4 GB of RAM. Based on specs, the Zotac box is supposed to be noticeably more powerful than my aging Boxee Box, yet this doesn't seem to be the case. (See bottom of post for Boxee Box and Zotac ID61 specs.)
I looked into ways I can install XBMC on my new box. OpenELEC seemed like the obvious choice, because it's small, boots fast, and it's tailored specifically for XBMC. Unfortunately OpenELEC has a nasty bug where you randomly get a black screen at boot up and you have to power cycle several times (or SSH into the box and reboot that way) to get XBMC working. More info here => http://openelec.tv/forum/64-installation...ith-cursor
I did get OpenELEC to boot properly a few times and during playback of 1080p content I saw video jerkiness/stuttering and a lot of dropped frames. I also noticed that CPU load was always around 20-25% even when no video was playing. I don't know if this load was caused by XBMC or by something else relating to the underlying Linux system. During HD playback CPU load would spike to 80-100% on one core and 20-30% on the other, depending on the video. At any rate, I decided to move on to my next option.
I installed XBMCbuntu next, hoping for better results. Unfortunately I ended up with similar issues. CPU usage is still sitting at around 20% all the time (this seems very high for an idle system), even when I'm doing nothing except looking at the CPU usage on the system details page. When I play HD content, CPU usage spikes to 100% on one core, 20-40% on the other and lots of frames would get dropped. This would especially be noticeable on high bitrate videos. Black Swan for example has a grainy effect (similar to what you would see on 300) which causes bitrates to go above 20Mbps in certain scenes. When the bitrate goes above 20Mbps, the video becomes so jerky it's almost unwatchable.
Even movies without the grainy effect experience video stuttering and lots of dropped frames during fast scenes. I've tried every settings combination imaginable in XBMC (enable all h/w acceleration, disable all h/w acceleration, various combinations of those two, various rendering settings, etc) but the result is always the same.
The same video plays perfectly on my Boxee Box. Even though it has lower specs than the Zotac ID61, it plays all 1080p content flawlessly, without stuttering or dropped frames. Another thing I noticed with both OpenELEC and XBMCbuntu is that all my videos seem darker compared to Boxee and videos seem "softer" and not ask sharp/crisp as on my Boxee Box. I'm using the same TV and HDMI cable for both Boxee and the Zotac ID61.
The only thing left I can think of is to install Windows 7 on the Zotac ID61 and try XBMC there. I don't want to waste all that time though, because I have a feeling my results will be the same. My question is, does anyone know if running XBMC on Windows 7 would make a difference at all? Or perhaps shed some light on what I may be doing wrong here? Is anyone else having these same issues on similar hardware? I tried to be detailed in my post, but if anyone needs more info, feel free to ask. Any help with this would be greatly appreciated!
Boxee Box specs:
- Intel Atom CPU CE4110 running at 1.20GHz
- 1GB RAM (can't find exact specs)
- 512 KB Cache
- 1GB internal SD storage
Zbox ID61 specs:
- Intel Celeron 867 at 1.3 GHz (dual core and based on Sandy Bridge)
- Intel HM65 Express Chipset
- Intel HD Graphics
- 4 GB DDR3 at 1333 Mhz
