[mickeh]

During playback of HD materials I've encountered some issues.

1) Low frame rate, how is that easiest resolved? I.e enable hardware acceleration but not losing subtitles...
2) A dark scene with fog will not show a smooth dark background with grey tones. It will show clearly visible fields of different grey colours.

I would be very happy if anyone had any solutions on the problems above!

[joshuass]

1) Low frame rate, how is that easiest resolved? I.e enable hardware acceleration but not losing subtitles...

Currently, XBMC does not support hardware-accelerated video decoding. There is work being done on a player that can use hardware acceleration, however. And you can always use an external player in lieu of XBMC's internal player.

2) A dark scene with fog will not show a smooth dark background with grey tones. It will show clearly visible fields of different grey colours.

Could be from a number of issues. First, make sure that its only happening in XBMC, since I have a hunch that it may be due to how many colors your TV can display (assuming this is plugged into a TV), and what pixel format you are using. In general, most TV's can display only a smaller set of colors than typical monitors. You end up losing color in the darker areas of the spectrum (dark grays become black, etc.). There may be nothing you can do about this one.

Check the wiki about how to setup the external player, or search for posts in the forum on the dsplayer by Tiben20.

Check your pixel format settings in your graphics hardware setttings, and confirm if the gray problem is specific to XBMC.

[mickeh]

Thanks for your answer!
The colour problem is not specific to XBMC... I verified this by showing (not in XBMC) a hires picture made in photoshop with a dark foggy scene. I got the same problem. So, what it looks like... I must buy a new TV. My wife would really like that :-) But I must say it's strange, because the TV is a HD-ready LCD from Samsung that is only 3 years old.

Regarding the HW acceleration I will try to get MPC-HC to be my external player so I still will get my subtitles to show.

[joshuass]

Did you check out the pixel settings? I have the same problem as you with dark colors unless I tell my GFX card to use a studio RGB (16-255) pixel format. You should really take a look at your GFX card settings for pixel format options first!

[athloni]

Did you check out the pixel settings? I have the same problem as you with dark colors unless I tell my GFX card to use a studio RGB (16-255) pixel format. You should really take a look at your GFX card settings for pixel format options first!

How do you tell the Asrock ION grafics card in Linux (Live CD) to use Studio RGB?