I stepped back from building my HTPC just now. A few reasons really, mainly to use the money on the server instead - money is a little tighter than expected after moving house and I'm not going to credit card it.
However I'm thinking that perhaps Ivy Bridge might be the way it ends up going. At the moment Sandy Bridge (and the pentiums based on it) are quite good choices for HTPC apart from a couple of things. The GPUs aren't quite as powerful as one might like, but more importantly they don't seem to be able to do 24hz just right, while discrete graphics cards can.
Is it something that we're likely to see in Ivy Bridge components when they arrive next year or is it going to be a problem for the considerable future?
I believe that Intel has committed to fixing it in Ivy Bridge. From what I gather, it's a hardware problem...
That pretty much settles it then. Thanks Kirky. I'll wait on Ivy Bridge arriving and build an HTPC around that... I suspect it'll be a year before they come out with the lower end stuff if Sandy Bridge is anything to go by, and going by Sandy Bridge it would seem that the lower end stuff is where I'd want to go.
GPUs that can do what most people need for HTPC can be had for around $20, is there something different that you need more for?
Nah, the elegance of having it all integrated into the CPU appeals to me.
The 24hz bug is totally overblown. I am doing 1080p/24 from my i3-2100 and am not getting any dropped frames.
The HTPC, with the latest firmware and Intel drivers outputs 1080p/23.978 and my TV is expecting to clock in at 23.976. With the XBMC "sync to display" option, XBMC reclocks the signal to 1080p/23.976 and the audio and video is working just fine. HD audio even worked when I briefly tried that with a nightly build of pre-Eden.
So, I don't know why everyone insists it's broken, it works fine.
Now a complete purist might be offended that re-clocking is happening. It's worth noting though that at an average (reported by XBMC) of .01% speed up means that a two hour film will end up being .7 seconds or so shorter, probably not detectable to mortals.
I think some people don't mind it at all and some people do. I'm one of those people who do mind it and since I can wait until I buy an HTPC I'll wait until Ivy Bridge comes along and decide then. By that time a lot more things will have slotted into place.
I'm thinking in a year from now there may be an custom chip solution, AMD might come up with something good too along the lines of their E-350 and Ivy Bridge looks to be just right too. Plus as I said I've less money than I had expected so I'll continue to use the main PC for XBMC for the time being. I have an HDMI and USB cable going from the bedroom to the living room and it works very well. Ideally an HTPC would be one step better but there's no rush.
if your willing to wait for Ivy Bridge, i think its a good idea
Quartermass Wrote:I think some people don't mind it at all and some people do. I'm one of those people who do mind it and since I can wait until I buy an HTPC I'll wait until Ivy Bridge comes along and decide then. By that time a lot more things will have slotted into place.
I'm thinking in a year from now there may be an custom chip solution, AMD might come up with something good too along the lines of their E-350 and Ivy Bridge looks to be just right too. Plus as I said I've less money than I had expected so I'll continue to use the main PC for XBMC for the time being. I have an HDMI and USB cable going from the bedroom to the living room and it works very well. Ideally an HTPC would be one step better but there's no rush.
When you say you "mind it" what is it that you are seeing that is causing a problem? There are no frame drops and the slight increase in the playback speed using XBMC options is undetectable. If you're going to tell me that you can detect that a 2 hour movie is 2 hours + .7 seconds then you must have superhuman powers.
Sorry, mind it is probably a Scottish colloquialism
Object to is more correct.
I see frame drops with my present setup which a slight irritation. I certainly could not detect a 2 hour movie is 0.7 seconds too long, although I did feel some were about 45 minutes too long...
I didn't realise it was even possible to get it so that there were no frame drops, does that happen automatically with the current nightly build if I tell it to do something?
Quartermass Wrote:Sorry, mind it is probably a Scottish colloquialism
Object to is more correct.
I see frame drops with my present setup which a slight irritation. I certainly could not detect a 2 hour movie is 0.7 seconds too long, although I did feel some were about 45 minutes too long...
I didn't realise it was even possible to get it so that there were no frame drops, does that happen automatically with the current nightly build if I tell it to do something?
I am not testing the nightly builds (and really don't understand why so many people use nightly builds instead of stable builds that have been working for months).
I am just using 10.1
The key options is to select, in the XBMC playback options both "Adjust display refresh rate to match video"
and (this is important) sync playback to display.
What this does is cause XBMC to look at the output refresh rate (in the case of the i3, with the latest drivers it is about 23.978) and look at the EDID information from the display, which tells it that the display is 23.976. It then adjusts the sync of the playback and re-samples the audio (all on the fly and in software, the i3 has more than enough horsepower for this) so that the playback is properly synced up with the display.
If the display and output are only slightly off (as is the case with Sandy Bridge) then the playback (in my experience) is seamless.
No frame drops.
No duplicated frames.
No audio glitches or hiccups.
It works very very well and has left me puzzled as to what exactly (other than 3D) causes people to so strongly argue against using the i3 onboard graphics and instead getting an off board video card.
Thanks for a very good explanation. I'm going to shuffle over to that I think. I had picked up from the talk about 24hz that it wasn't worth trying for because of the problems.
I'm using the nightly because I had to to get hardware to work up until about a week or so ago I'd just been using the standard edition. I do find the nightly has much less artefacts and problems with funny files though.
Good luck. I have had very good results win the inboard i3 graphics. Of course now I am lusting after a higher end enclosure but I am a bit of a nut with this stuff.
voip-ninja Wrote:The 24hz bug is totally overblown. I am doing 1080p/24 from my i3-2100 and am not getting any dropped frames.
The HTPC, with the latest firmware and Intel drivers outputs 1080p/23.978 and my TV is expecting to clock in at 23.976. With the XBMC "sync to display" option, XBMC reclocks the signal to 1080p/23.976 and the audio and video is working just fine. HD audio even worked when I briefly tried that with a nightly build of pre-Eden.
So, I don't know why everyone insists it's broken, it works fine.
Now a complete purist might be offended that re-clocking is happening. It's worth noting though that at an average (reported by XBMC) of .01% speed up means that a two hour film will end up being .7 seconds or so shorter, probably not detectable to mortals.
Hi voip-ninja,
Just finishing up on my HTPC build using the onboard i3-2100 graphics - Just wanted to check with you what some of your video settings are. Playing around at the moment i get a few frame drops.
What options are you using for the following?
- Allow Hardware Acceleration
- Adjust refresh rate to match video
- Sync playback to display
- AV sync method (are you using "Video - resample audio?")
- Allowed error in aspect ratio
- Video post proccessing - disabled?
Cheers!
Kapz786 Wrote:Hi voip-ninja,
Just finishing up on my HTPC build using the onboard i3-2100 graphics - Just wanted to check with you what some of your video settings are. Playing around at the moment i get a few frame drops.
What options are you using for the following?
- Allow Hardware Acceleration
- Adjust refresh rate to match video
- Sync playback to display
- AV sync method (are you using "Video - resample audio?")
- Allowed error in aspect ratio
- Video post proccessing - disabled?
Cheers!
I have hardware acceleration disabled.
Adjust refresh rate to match video - YES
Sync playback to display - Yes.
AV Sync method - Resample audio.
I don't even remember "allowed error in aspect ratio" and I believe I never turned on video post processing.
It is connected via HDMI to my Yamaha RXV-1800 and then on to my Panasonic 65VT30.
Are you seeing the frame drop count go up when you pull up the stats window during playback or do you believe that you are seeing frame drops even though they might not be incrementing there?