2009-12-30, 05:12
Hi all,
Haven't used XBMC since the early Xbox days (XBMP then XBMC) and I amazed at how far the solution has come and how many platforms it runs on.
I traditionally run MediaPortal on WinXP but thought I would give the new Live CD a run after it was mentioned in my RSS feed. Here are my findings and questions.
I run an AMD 4850e 2.5GHz CPU on a Gigabyte board with integrated ATI HD 3200 video with HDMI out. It is connected to a Toshiba 46" Regza via HDMI through my Yamaha receiver. After a short while I had the basics up and running with video and audio working including 5.1 surround/DTS tracks.
The machine successfully sleeps and wakes from sleep using my Microsoft IR receiver and Harmony remote tuned to Media Center controls. I have installed the XBMC Live cd to a formatted hard drive and assigned it all the space.
1) The only video renderers that work are Software and Basic. The VDPAU and others result in no video when playing back, or I should say, flashes of solid colour covering the whole screen only. The colour seems to match the bulk colour of the picture i.e. if it is a daylight shot then the screen goes blue/white, if it is night then it is black.
2) Under the two working renderers I get video tearing, mainly on 720p (or higher) MKV files. I have tried turning the frame rate to refresh rate synch on but it does not affect the tearing (though it does make for smoother playback, so is now left on).
3) All the picture options available on my TV (Exact scan, Wide, Cinema, PC, etc) result in underscan of at least an inch. Under Windows using the Catalyst manager I can fix this by sliding a 'zoom' bar up a few notches. In XBMC the calibration settings do not let me exceed the boundaries of the underscan. How can I fix this?
4) With refresh rate set to change on video playback I get a 6-10 second delay - with audio playing - before the video changes. The video then tries to catch up to the position in the file at a fast rate. I don't get this problem in Media Portal with refresh rate on.
5) 1080p video that works fine under XP/MediaPortal, even with hardware decoding disabled, drops frames badly under XBMC. Is this expected with my hardware and Linux XBMC?
6) I configured a video source from UPnP from my Synology DS508 NAS which worked instantly. However when I set folders within the share to a media type like Movies or TV and perform a scan nothing happens. I very quickly get a 'Compressing database' message and that is all. I have set the option to scan subfolders when required and set the correct scraper (IMDB for movies (my files are named to IMDB titles), thetvdb.com for TV) to no avail.
7) I have found one collection of Xvid AVI that play back at double speed, complete with chipmunks audio. They work fine on MediaPortal and my Popcorn Hour. VideoSpec (on my Mac) identifies the files as MPEG4 XviD 1.1.0, 25.0fps video with an MP3 64Kbps/24Khz audio track.
That is all so far. I am sure some of these questions if not all have been asked before. However I have absolutely NO knowledge of Linux nor how to even get to it from XBMC itself, so if there are things outside XBMC I need to configure (the old Xbox XBMC I used to FTP in to and alter .xml files) I will need a helping hand! Can I FTP into the install?
In the mean time I will take a look through your wiki/manual and see what I can find.
Thanks all,
Simon
Haven't used XBMC since the early Xbox days (XBMP then XBMC) and I amazed at how far the solution has come and how many platforms it runs on.
I traditionally run MediaPortal on WinXP but thought I would give the new Live CD a run after it was mentioned in my RSS feed. Here are my findings and questions.
I run an AMD 4850e 2.5GHz CPU on a Gigabyte board with integrated ATI HD 3200 video with HDMI out. It is connected to a Toshiba 46" Regza via HDMI through my Yamaha receiver. After a short while I had the basics up and running with video and audio working including 5.1 surround/DTS tracks.
The machine successfully sleeps and wakes from sleep using my Microsoft IR receiver and Harmony remote tuned to Media Center controls. I have installed the XBMC Live cd to a formatted hard drive and assigned it all the space.
1) The only video renderers that work are Software and Basic. The VDPAU and others result in no video when playing back, or I should say, flashes of solid colour covering the whole screen only. The colour seems to match the bulk colour of the picture i.e. if it is a daylight shot then the screen goes blue/white, if it is night then it is black.
2) Under the two working renderers I get video tearing, mainly on 720p (or higher) MKV files. I have tried turning the frame rate to refresh rate synch on but it does not affect the tearing (though it does make for smoother playback, so is now left on).
3) All the picture options available on my TV (Exact scan, Wide, Cinema, PC, etc) result in underscan of at least an inch. Under Windows using the Catalyst manager I can fix this by sliding a 'zoom' bar up a few notches. In XBMC the calibration settings do not let me exceed the boundaries of the underscan. How can I fix this?
4) With refresh rate set to change on video playback I get a 6-10 second delay - with audio playing - before the video changes. The video then tries to catch up to the position in the file at a fast rate. I don't get this problem in Media Portal with refresh rate on.
5) 1080p video that works fine under XP/MediaPortal, even with hardware decoding disabled, drops frames badly under XBMC. Is this expected with my hardware and Linux XBMC?
6) I configured a video source from UPnP from my Synology DS508 NAS which worked instantly. However when I set folders within the share to a media type like Movies or TV and perform a scan nothing happens. I very quickly get a 'Compressing database' message and that is all. I have set the option to scan subfolders when required and set the correct scraper (IMDB for movies (my files are named to IMDB titles), thetvdb.com for TV) to no avail.
7) I have found one collection of Xvid AVI that play back at double speed, complete with chipmunks audio. They work fine on MediaPortal and my Popcorn Hour. VideoSpec (on my Mac) identifies the files as MPEG4 XviD 1.1.0, 25.0fps video with an MP3 64Kbps/24Khz audio track.
That is all so far. I am sure some of these questions if not all have been asked before. However I have absolutely NO knowledge of Linux nor how to even get to it from XBMC itself, so if there are things outside XBMC I need to configure (the old Xbox XBMC I used to FTP in to and alter .xml files) I will need a helping hand! Can I FTP into the install?
In the mean time I will take a look through your wiki/manual and see what I can find.
Thanks all,
Simon
