Kodi Community Forum

Forgive me if this has already been addressed elsewhere, but I could not find anything on this specific question.

I was playing with both MediaPortal and Plex recently and both of them warned me about having Aero turned off on my Windows 7 box (I prefer a non-Aero high contrast view for my media PC as it gives better visibility across the room when I must mess around in Windows). Both MP and Plex said something about I should enable Aero to avoid tearing, low framerates, global warming, and other horrible things.

So my question is simply this: Does Aero on or off matter in any way for XBMC? If not, what is different about how XBMC does things that makes it not matter?

It's true that you could get tearing, so leave Aero off, turn on vsync, and you should be fine.

CrystalP Wrote:It's true that you could get tearing, so leave Aero off, turn on vsync, and you should be fine.

Thanks for the reply, Crystal. But the folks at MediaPortal and Plex are saying you need to turn Aero ON to avoid tearing.

So I am just wondering what is different about the way XBMC plays media versus MP and Plex that would result in exactly opposite recomendations regarding Aero. I wonder partly because I want to have the best possible setup and partly just because I am curious about the technical aspects of this.

I'm sure I've seen posts in this forum claiming you need Aero on, though I forget the details. I use XBMC with Win7 on a Revo 3610 and I have Aero off. That seems to work fine. I wouldn't worry about it. If the picture looks OK just enjoy it :-)

JR

Aero handles vsync so you never get tearing. On the other hand, it can introduce stuttering, glitches.
XBMC can handle vsync on its own, just turn on the option in the settings.

If you run XBMC fullscreen (I'm assuming a single-monitor or a multiple-monitor-cloning setup), aero will be disabled by Windows in any case, it will be unloaded as soon as a fullscreen-application comes across and demands the fullscreen-space
On a sidenote: Windows will not shut down aero from itself if you run in "Use fullscreen-window rather than true fullscreen"-mode.

Is that true? I think that my XBMC Eden doesn't disable Aero at FullScreen, because without Aero I get "tearing", and I don't have tearing in XBMC.