2013-01-24, 20:50
Hi,
I want to make a jump from a popcornhour to XBMC HTPC, but before i go ahead and spend hundred of $ on a HTPC I'm trying to make sure XBMC does everything i want it to do. I've installed Frodo on my desktop PC to get a feel of what it's like and WAUW, I really LOVE it. It's sooo much better than my PCH, and I also dig the idea of having a PC play my media because I'm much more familiar with the hardware involved.
A few things i couldn't quite figure out for myself...
- AAC 5.1 transcoding: I want to make sure the XBMC can convert my AAC 5.1 tracks to AC3 5.1 tracks as my receiver can't read raw AAC streams. My PCH converts AAC 5.1 to AC3 2.0 which is unfortunate, I'd like to keep the full 5.1 channels. Is this possible?
- Subtitle scraper: XBMC does a really good job of scraping subs for my movies, but sometimes there's no synced subs available and i have to edit them manually. So my question is whether or not there is a subtitle scraper for XBMC which can batch scrape subs.
- Playback quality: I've noticed that the playback quality on XBMC seems to be noticeably lower than the playback quality in VLC. The playback quality on my PCH is even better than VLC. So in essence I'm a little spoiled perhaps? I'm wondering though if it's simply a fluke or if the playback quality is generally lower than VLC? Essentially the issues that bother me are seemingly oversaturation, blurriness, deinterlacing gizmos, and the odd pixelation issues. This only occurs on the lower bitrate video files I have, essentially those that would require more postprocessing to smoothen out. My PCH does a wonderful job of displaying these on my plasma though.
I think that's about all the questions i have right now, might have some more later, but thanks in advance!
I want to make a jump from a popcornhour to XBMC HTPC, but before i go ahead and spend hundred of $ on a HTPC I'm trying to make sure XBMC does everything i want it to do. I've installed Frodo on my desktop PC to get a feel of what it's like and WAUW, I really LOVE it. It's sooo much better than my PCH, and I also dig the idea of having a PC play my media because I'm much more familiar with the hardware involved.
A few things i couldn't quite figure out for myself...
- AAC 5.1 transcoding: I want to make sure the XBMC can convert my AAC 5.1 tracks to AC3 5.1 tracks as my receiver can't read raw AAC streams. My PCH converts AAC 5.1 to AC3 2.0 which is unfortunate, I'd like to keep the full 5.1 channels. Is this possible?
- Subtitle scraper: XBMC does a really good job of scraping subs for my movies, but sometimes there's no synced subs available and i have to edit them manually. So my question is whether or not there is a subtitle scraper for XBMC which can batch scrape subs.
- Playback quality: I've noticed that the playback quality on XBMC seems to be noticeably lower than the playback quality in VLC. The playback quality on my PCH is even better than VLC. So in essence I'm a little spoiled perhaps? I'm wondering though if it's simply a fluke or if the playback quality is generally lower than VLC? Essentially the issues that bother me are seemingly oversaturation, blurriness, deinterlacing gizmos, and the odd pixelation issues. This only occurs on the lower bitrate video files I have, essentially those that would require more postprocessing to smoothen out. My PCH does a wonderful job of displaying these on my plasma though.
I think that's about all the questions i have right now, might have some more later, but thanks in advance!
