[johnmerrick]

I have a brand new Samsung curved 55" and a win 64 (nvidia) xbmc connected via hdmi over cat 5.

unfortunately i'm getting occasional judder, usually at the beginning of each scene (but then intermittently continues during fast scenes) and the audio (optical) is also slightly out (behind)

the following didn't work: Fullscreen rather than a true fullscreen (and vice versa) and the adapt display refresh rate one (can't remember exact wording!)

Also is there a way to get the graphics card to switch resolution depending on which display it outputs to? I have tv's of different age (all hdmi) all over the house.

I don't get this with my bluray or apple tv connected via the same way.

Any hints or tips on how to remove it or similar experiences? Help greatly appreciated.

thanks

[PatK]

You have synthesized a lot of questions into a fairly succinct message that isn't easy to conjure up simple solutions, and not helping matters is that your other hardware seems to work perfectly. Your judder can be caused by multiple single issues or a tsunami of more than one. Best to activate OSD while watching a movie using the keyboard 'o' command, this will show how taxed your system is and show you any bottle necks. Off hand xbmc connected via hdmi over cat 5. brings a few questions, and maybe the ultimate source of your issue, look for fetch issues and dropped frames.

Optical brings more issues than it helps, set your receiver for audio through HDMI, I've also have this issue and just dropped optical. The source of this issue can be the gfx card, receiver or the display, and might explain why the other hardware seems to work fine.

Your questions regarding gfx card res on different displays really comes back to the gfx card and drivers, and how they handle multiple screens etc. With my AMD gfx card I don't seem to have an issue with multiple screens and different resolutions. I find that setting up each display as the primary boot display allows me to set-up for each separately, then it's just a matter of either setting up a script, or hot-key to switch between. I'm unsure if you're cloning the display or using extended or just using the display switch command to move your display most of this becomes a hardware specific fix and highly dependant on the graphic card and it's software. Windowed mode should allow you to move the window from screen to screen, at this point some gfx card solutions allow for full screen with the \ toggle.

Once you've set up XBMC/Kodi for one screen, it remembers those settings and auto opens in those parms. So you can't flip the display around to different res panels without issues (unless the panel is the same size/res) . Best to designate a script to open XBMC/Kodi to that panel and exit to another setting. If your gfx card allows to switch primary display with secondary, you might have your solution. The issue for most displays, is that there is handshaking between the PC and display device which sends EIDE code to tell the gfx card the display properties, then of course your gfx card sends appropriate res/sizing to the panel... your TV boxes get this and using the HDCP copy protection scheme the data is resent a number of times (almost continuously) and you will not see the issues you describe to your PC (note I didn't say the software Kodi). There are fixes for the EIDE issue, involving the masking of pin 19 on the HDMI which you could investigate. http://kodi.wiki/view/Displays I may have inadvertently flooded you with too much info, which I apologize. Perhaps telling us a bit more about the HDMI trhough cat5, the distance, receiver or not, and whihc displays are on/off and how you switch between if it all.

http://www.extron.com/company/article.aspx?id=uedid

How do you like that curve?

[johnmerrick]

First of all don't apologize, because it's a brilliant answer. Thank you very much. It's given me plenty to work with.

Before i continue, this is in my brothers house and i'm setting it up for him. I have a similar set up in my house except i stream (wired) to client pc's in each room and have no judder issues whatsoever and i have latest samsungs and tv's of varying ages. (all default xbmc display related settings). So i'm thinking his issue maybe linked to his optical now and where the hdmi handshakes. correct me if i'm wrong at any point.

So he has one TV in each room. One media center pc in the loft which connects via hdmi to cat 5 and is then distributed over the gigabit network switch and router. its all high end equipment. Some of the tv's are 1st gen plasma's or lcd's so don't receive a signal when connected to this pc. The person who set this up said those displays won't recieve the signal because their resolution is too low. I then immediately knew i would have to connect the media pc to each of those displays (i then had networking problems trying to access the pc via a bt home hub to do this but that's another story which i'm hoping is now solved) and let the nvidia software read each displays resolution and then store it. (i assume it does this) I have since upgraded to Kodi on his media pc and updated the graphics driver although i've been unable to test it as yet.

I know the nvidia card allows multiple displays but what i'm trying to achieve is for the card to store each tv's information and then switch to that when it's connected to it.

Then back to the judder. I obviously need to try and get the sound over hdmi. The person who installed it said this may not have been possible but i'll double check that with them. This would be disappointing considering how much has been spent! However, i do have a tv that's on my set up that's hdmi with optical audio with no judder or sync issues (not streaming either).

How easy it to set up a script to switch between displays? Do any exist already?

i like the curve!
thanks again

[PatK]

I know the nvidia card allows multiple displays but what i'm trying to achieve is for the card to store each tv's information and then switch to that when it's connected to it.

I suspect you are ascribing too much to the Nvidia software and will end up with some sort of configuration switching.

How easy it to set up a script to switch between displays? Do any exist already?

Should be a few examples in this forum, basically they use the displayswitch command. But you may get lucky with some nvidia hot key configuration switching, then it's just a matter implementation of the hotkey. here's a bit more reading martial

http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=84235
http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=147159
http://www.avsforum.com/forum/26-home-th...-xbmc.html

If you've already had sucess locally with the judder, then the culprit points at the communication distance, you can go up to about 60' with HDMI (and there are cable amps to push this further) using the cat5 is were you lose the audio. I'm pretty much at a loss when it comes to audio optical, a lot of people have issues with sound sync and levels, I prefer audio through HDMI if possible. At least at this point you're appraised of the issues, and can determine the future course of action, your older panels still sound eminently usable.

[johnmerrick]

That explains why the installer insisted on optical audio. Distance.

Thanks for the links

[johnmerrick]

If i was to put the media pc into suspend when not in use, would this mean that each time it was accessed and it was woken up, would xbmc look for a display and then adjust it's resolution depending on what it was connected to?

that could solve my multiple screen issue if true because only one person (or TV) would usually be using it at a time.

[PatK]

No when your PC wakes up, Kodi holds the same video parms, there is no auto adjustments after launch Kodi delivers the same signal, that may not be the case on the panel end. I don't recommend sleep mode for Kodi, best to quit and re-start.

This conversation is pretty heavy hardware, and I certainly don't have your kind of set-up so my experience is limited to a base system. I suggest that there are people in the hardware forum who have what you want and probably have dealt with and solved these issues. The trick is to catch their attention, the windows forum is more or less limited to the windows specific software operation of Kodi and this is about as far as I can take you here.

http://forum.kodi.tv/forumdisplay.php?fid=112

[johnmerrick]

ok no worries thanks.