Kodi Community Forum

Hi,

I managed to install XBMC on an EEE Box running Ubuntu 8.10.
This does not seem to be a great deal ... but I ran into a few bumps
along the way so i thought i give some feedback for the next user who
wants to run xbmc on this box.

First off to the hardware.
System: Asus EEE Box b202
Remote: Huppauge MCE Remote kit (mce2 clone)
Display: Samsung 42" Plasma via DVI

The Hardware is running pretty nice out of the Box.
Suspend-to-Ram is working great.
Running the Plasma in native Res(848x480) is no problem
The Remote works and it even wakes up the Box from suspend
(this one requires enabling it in /proc/acpi/wakeup)

The only REAL problem which cost me a week of my life i will
never get back is: The screen will go black (sometimes brown
blue or green) during video playback and the only thing to resolve this
is putting the following into your xorg.conf device section :

one other things that needed some tweaking:

after Suspend the remote was gone since the module was loaded
again after resume and was not recognised as /dev/lirc0 bit /dev/lirc1.

solution: a little script in /etc/pm/sleep.d/ which unloads the module
properly which will free the /dev/lirc0 device and then reloads the
module which will recreate /dev/lirc0 and then start lircd.

Here are some minor things i was not able to figure out yet:

Video Tearing : even with the neew 2.5.0 Intel drivers i get
a bit of tearing, hoping it will be fixed n 2.5.1 since its on
the devs todo list.

Black Flickering: when xbmc is running iget some flickering
(not during video playback) its a minor problem but never the
less a problem

Reboot/poweroff: Is working as expected until i suspend/resume the
machine. After the first resume the box is diplaying Restarting System or
Powering down ... suspect its an acpi problem

Idle Timeout: Setting the Idle Timout in XBMC has no effect, the box
keeps running. Havent seen anything in the logs ..

As soon as I figure out solutions for this I will post them.

The new XBMC on linux is an impressive and as far as i can say a
very stable piece of software.

Thank you very much to the dev team

Thanks, I'm considerung buying one of these as a replacement for my xbox.

Maybe you could answer some questions:

1.) Have you tried xbmc live with the eee box?
2.) Do you use fanart, animations, "fancy" skins etc.? How do they perform?

Thanks in advance.

Everything works perfect on the EEE box. Just dont expect to run HD content using only CPU as XBMC does at the moment.

I don't expect that at all. I'm just looking for a simple hardware solution that is not too costly, works out of the box and looks neat to fit in the living room.

DarkHelmet Wrote:I don't expect that at all. I'm just looking for a simple hardware solution that is not too costly, works out of the box and looks neat to fit in the living room.

I'm curious, why are you looking to replace your xbox with something that can't do HD? Seems like that's the only reason, outside of your xbox dying and can't get a replacement. I have a Popcorn hour that displays HD well (interface sucks), but if the content is SD, i still resort to using hte xbox since it the interface works better.

calvinandh0bbes Wrote:I'm curious, why are you looking to replace your xbox with something that can't do HD? Seems like that's the only reason, outside of your xbox dying and can't get a replacement. I have a Popcorn hour that displays HD well (interface sucks), but if the content is SD, i still resort to using hte xbox since it the interface works better.

It can do HD, just not through XBMC. If you use CoreAVC or VLC plays fine.

calvinandh0bbes Wrote:I'm curious, why are you looking to replace your xbox with something that can't do HD? Seems like that's the only reason, outside of your xbox dying and can't get a replacement. I have a Popcorn hour that displays HD well (interface sucks), but if the content is SD, i still resort to using hte xbox since it the interface works better.

Mainly, because it's noisy and my gf has to explain to her friends constantly why we have a gaming console in our living room. I like the interface of xbmc too much to switch to something else.

Yeah I know, I'm a disgrace to all men.

DarkHelmet Wrote:Mainly, because it's noisy and my gf has to explain to her friends constantly why we have a gaming console in our living room. I like the interface of xbmc too much to switch to something else.

Yeah I know, I'm a disgrace to all men.

at least noise is a valid reason.

I'm hoping that the advent of hardware decoding in linux will allow something similar to an EEE (quiet, compact, somewhat inexpensive) to be a great prepackaged xbox replacement capable of 1080p.

martink2 Wrote:after Suspend the remote was gone since the module was loaded
again after resume and was not recognised as /dev/lirc0 bit /dev/lirc1.

solution: a little script in /etc/pm/sleep.d/ which unloads the module
properly which will free the /dev/lirc0 device and then reloads the
module which will recreate /dev/lirc0 and then start lircd.

Do you think you could provide more detail on this (ie a listing of the script you put in /etc/pm/sleep.d), or point me to another location where I can get the info? I have the same problem - after awakening from a sleep, my PC also switches /dev/lirc0 to /dev/lirc1 until I reboot.

martink2 Wrote:Thank you very much to the dev team

Hear hear!

Have you managed to get 5.1ch sound out of the spdif connector?

I can get sound out but it only plays the front left & right speakers. Amp says it is receiving a valid dolby digital signal. Alsamixer shows good volume on all speakers (surround, center,lfe) & IEC958 switches set. Not using pulseaudio. alsabase has option snd-hda-intel model=3stack-6ch-dig
Playing mp4 files with AC3-PassThru option set.

Run out of ideas now, seems strange that the pass-thru audio on the way to the amp is getting surround channels knocked out.