2015-09-18, 01:38
After successfully running XBMC 12 on Debian Wheezy on an older HTPC (quad core AMD 9350e, on-board ATI RS780 (Radeon HD 3200)), I recently upgraded to Debian Jessie and Kodi 14.2.
Suffice it to say, I had quite a shock. While most media played well on Kodi, an m2ts from a blu-ray I have did not - it had abysmal framerate and tearing. It was completely unwatchable.
I dug into the problem to figure out what was going on, and discovered http://kodi.wiki/view/Supported_hardware .
If that page on the wiki is correct, my RS780 is no longer supported by Kodi (despite that page also mentioning most hw from within the past 10 years should be supported - this machine dates back to 2008 or 2009, which is most definitely younger than 10 years!). I also note, with some bemusement, that Kodi still supports Radeon hw far older than this on Windows, which I am not, and will not be, running.
So, what happened?
It appears that Kodi switched to vdpau to support hw decoding of video. Debian Wheezy did not have vdpau support for ATI hardware, and as such, XBMC 12 did not appear to require it (can anyone shed some light on how the aforementioned m2ts played fine on this hw under XBMC 12?). By discarding the old hw decoding methods in favor of vdpau, I became subject to the hw limitations that vdpau exposed - namely, a lack of H264 decoding support in vdpau on the RS780.
A screenshot of 'o' while playing the m2ts on Wheezy w/ XBMC 12:
http://pinkfreud.mirkwood.net/kodi/wheez...enshot.png
A screenshot of 'o' while playing the m2ts on jessie w/ Kodi 14.2:
http://pinkfreud.mirkwood.net/kodi/jessi...enshot.png
Is my situation hopeless? Do I have to throw out perfectly working hardware which *used* to play back BR content just fine, all because Kodi no longer supports it? Or, is there something I can do to convince Kodi to use the older, *working* method of video decoding that my hw supports?
[Edit: img tags were not working - replaced those with links instead]
Suffice it to say, I had quite a shock. While most media played well on Kodi, an m2ts from a blu-ray I have did not - it had abysmal framerate and tearing. It was completely unwatchable.
I dug into the problem to figure out what was going on, and discovered http://kodi.wiki/view/Supported_hardware .
If that page on the wiki is correct, my RS780 is no longer supported by Kodi (despite that page also mentioning most hw from within the past 10 years should be supported - this machine dates back to 2008 or 2009, which is most definitely younger than 10 years!). I also note, with some bemusement, that Kodi still supports Radeon hw far older than this on Windows, which I am not, and will not be, running.
So, what happened?
It appears that Kodi switched to vdpau to support hw decoding of video. Debian Wheezy did not have vdpau support for ATI hardware, and as such, XBMC 12 did not appear to require it (can anyone shed some light on how the aforementioned m2ts played fine on this hw under XBMC 12?). By discarding the old hw decoding methods in favor of vdpau, I became subject to the hw limitations that vdpau exposed - namely, a lack of H264 decoding support in vdpau on the RS780.
A screenshot of 'o' while playing the m2ts on Wheezy w/ XBMC 12:
http://pinkfreud.mirkwood.net/kodi/wheez...enshot.png
A screenshot of 'o' while playing the m2ts on jessie w/ Kodi 14.2:
http://pinkfreud.mirkwood.net/kodi/jessi...enshot.png
Is my situation hopeless? Do I have to throw out perfectly working hardware which *used* to play back BR content just fine, all because Kodi no longer supports it? Or, is there something I can do to convince Kodi to use the older, *working* method of video decoding that my hw supports?
[Edit: img tags were not working - replaced those with links instead]