2008-10-31, 10:56
First of all I'd like to thank all the guys, who put so much effort into XBMC - Your work IS appreciated!!!
I do use XBMC since a few years on my good old modded Xbox.
The main reasons:
- Slick and sexy GUI
- No Codec hassle
- Plugins
- Open
You can belive me I went through many of the commercial boxes, such as ShowCenter, Rhapsody N-35, Kiss (Linksys) ...
And not a single one came even close to the XBM functionality and look & feal, mainly due to the limitations of frequently used SigmaDesign chip - compared to open software. Lots of codec nightmars, not being able to fast forward just to mention some issues.
I like Apple hardware, but I never considered ATV as a reasonable option, becasue of the recuirements of transcoding all stuff.
(My VCR is a MythTV PC with 2 x PVR 350, which create "standard" MPEG2 files)
Obviosely there are drawbacks of the Xbox:
- LOUD
- No Remote Power on
- CPU Limitation
So the combination of XBMC and ATV makes just sense for my...even if the ATV also is not the fastes device on earth, but what I understood 720p is fine.
After installing XBMC on my brand new AppleTV box, I went through several stages of - cool - ok - this sucks
Video glitches are my main concern, I found these with my 10MBit MPEG2 720x576 recordings on fast camera movements. The overall picture quality was good though, but considering my 2002 XBOX could cope with that and not even HQ upscaling was used.
Having all this said - I assume much of the video quality issues can be optimized with useing the right settings.
Would it make sensde to create a best practices documents on:
- What's the best Resolution for XBMC on ATV
- (1080 didn't worked for me - looked windowed...)
- What's the best Resolution for non HD video sources
- 720x576, 640x480, ??
- What's the best codec to be used (belive XBMC leverages memcoder, which may prefere some codes?!?)
- Xvid, MPEG, mp4, h.264
- Profiles, bandwith?
How much code optimization in regards to video performance can we expect with the current ATV hardware, considering the actual version is beta?
Lot's of questions, big expectations *gg*
I'm willing ot add value to this community with testing and publishing results - Don't let me write code, I can bat it's terrible ;-)
Keep up the good work and let XBMC win all the OpenSource prices - You got all my votes!
Cheers, netwho
I do use XBMC since a few years on my good old modded Xbox.
The main reasons:
- Slick and sexy GUI
- No Codec hassle
- Plugins
- Open
You can belive me I went through many of the commercial boxes, such as ShowCenter, Rhapsody N-35, Kiss (Linksys) ...
And not a single one came even close to the XBM functionality and look & feal, mainly due to the limitations of frequently used SigmaDesign chip - compared to open software. Lots of codec nightmars, not being able to fast forward just to mention some issues.
I like Apple hardware, but I never considered ATV as a reasonable option, becasue of the recuirements of transcoding all stuff.
(My VCR is a MythTV PC with 2 x PVR 350, which create "standard" MPEG2 files)
Obviosely there are drawbacks of the Xbox:
- LOUD
- No Remote Power on
- CPU Limitation
So the combination of XBMC and ATV makes just sense for my...even if the ATV also is not the fastes device on earth, but what I understood 720p is fine.
After installing XBMC on my brand new AppleTV box, I went through several stages of - cool - ok - this sucks
Video glitches are my main concern, I found these with my 10MBit MPEG2 720x576 recordings on fast camera movements. The overall picture quality was good though, but considering my 2002 XBOX could cope with that and not even HQ upscaling was used.
Having all this said - I assume much of the video quality issues can be optimized with useing the right settings.
Would it make sensde to create a best practices documents on:
- What's the best Resolution for XBMC on ATV
- (1080 didn't worked for me - looked windowed...)
- What's the best Resolution for non HD video sources
- 720x576, 640x480, ??
- What's the best codec to be used (belive XBMC leverages memcoder, which may prefere some codes?!?)
- Xvid, MPEG, mp4, h.264
- Profiles, bandwith?
How much code optimization in regards to video performance can we expect with the current ATV hardware, considering the actual version is beta?
Lot's of questions, big expectations *gg*
I'm willing ot add value to this community with testing and publishing results - Don't let me write code, I can bat it's terrible ;-)
Keep up the good work and let XBMC win all the OpenSource prices - You got all my votes!
Cheers, netwho