Kodi Community Forum

I have a Zotac box hooked up through a Pioneer surround sound displaying on 1080p Philips 42" TV. As per many posts, in order to have playback as smooth as possible I've enabled the setting under the Video - Playback menu to 'Adjust the display refresh rate to match video'.

When playing SD and 720p encoded movie files the TV will be switched to 1080i mode - it's still full screen (no borders suddenly appear). Is this the expected behaviour?

Previously I had a PS3 hooked up and simply delivered movie files through PS3mediaserver or mediatomb, and this didn't require changing the TV display format. I realise this is probably completely unrelated as there is a lot more going on with xbmc, but my knowledge of all things display related and movie file encoding (e.g. fps) is pretty slim.

Some advice would be appreciated.

As another question, with an nVidia GPU, it is obviously recommended to enable VDPAU, however, should VAAPI also be enabled in the Video - Paayback section?

Also, under System - Video Output, what is LCD/VFD?

I expect I'm demonstrating my general multimedia ignorance with the above though

Thanks.

Vaapi is for Intel not Nvidia.

Yeah, that's what I thought ... for Intel (and the AMD cards as well possibly?)

VDPAU can also be used through VAAPI, but it's better to use VDPAU directly.

Going back to my first point ... when the 'Adjust Display refresh rate to match video' option is set this is _sometimes_ altering the TV display to use 1080i, but not _always_.

An avi file with the following properties:
AVI, 624 x 352, 29.97 fps, video: XviD, audio: MPEG-1 Layer 3

do get bounced to 1080i

Whereas mp4 file with the following properties:
Codec: H264, Resolution 720 x 404, 23.976 fps

It seems reasonable then that it's the fps that is probably causing the display format change. The TV is a Philips 42PFL5403/98 (very descriptive model number ...), which according to the manual:
http://download.p4c.philips.com/files/4/...ss_aen.pdf

This can support 1080p at 24, 25, and 30 Hz, and also 1080p at 50 and 60 Hz. The AMD amdcccle control panel also has these resolutions listed as supported formats, so I'm a bit puzzled as to why XBMC goes for 1080i for some movie files. [XBMC is Eden RC2 via XBMCbuntu]

I've never liked X configuration ....

OK, a frustrating couple of days ... I really don't enjoy piling through Xorg logs. The default Xorg startup is convinced that 1280 x 768 is the preferred resolution - possibly the TV telling the computer that this is it's preferred resolution for PCs ... which I guess XBMC is really. However, I am connecting via HDMI, so would like to push 1080p as my preferred output.

Looking through Xorg.0.log I see the following:
Modeline "1920x1080"x60.0 74.25 1920 2008 2052 2200 1080 1085 1095 1125 interlace +hsync +vsync (33.8 kHz)
[ 9.204] (II) fglrx(0): Modeline "1920x1080"x50.0 74.25 1920 2448 2492 2640 1080 1085 1095 1125 interlace +hsync +vsync (28.1 kHz)
[ 9.204] (II) fglrx(0): Modeline "1920x1080"x30.0 74.25 1920 2008 2052 2200 1080 1084 1089 1125 +hsync +vsync (33.8 kHz)
[ 9.204] (II) fglrx(0): Modeline "1920x1080"x25.0 74.25 1920 2448 2492 2640 1080 1084 1089 1125 +hsync +vsync (28.1 kHz)
[ 9.204] (II) fglrx(0): Modeline "1920x1080"x24.0 74.25 1920 2558 2602 2750 1080 1084 1089 1125 +hsync +vsync (27.0 kHz)
[ 9.204] (II) fglrx(0): Modeline "1920x1080"x59.9 74.18 1920 2008 2052 2200 1080 1085 1095 1125 interlace +hsync +vsync (33.7 kHz)
[ 9.204] (II) fglrx(0): Modeline "1920x1080"x30.0 74.18 1920 2008 2052 2200 1080 1084 1089 1125 +hsync +vsync (33.7 kHz)
[ 9.204] (II) fglrx(0): Modeline "1920x1080"x24.0 74.18 1920 2558 2602 2750 1080 1084 1089 1125 +hsync +vsync (27.0 kHz)

This looks like 1080i is available at 50 and 60Hz, but that 1080p is available at 24, 25, 30Hz. As far as I am aware this then should be possible to push through xorg.conf. I'll be testing setting modelines via cvt and the output from Xorg.0.log to see if it can be hardcoded in xorg.conf.

Eugh ...