[esdubu]

And for anyone who isn't fluent in Brit-speak, "dogs bollocks" is (are?) a good thing.

ha ha ha yes! It's like saying the bees knees only in less polite company

[pantherman007]

It's a bit strange that Americans have been satisfied with NTSC long after the end of the 20th century and now all of a sudden 1280 x 720 isn't good enough.

The xbox has no problem rendering a 1280 x 720 divx movie and those movies are only 2.5 GB which is 1/3 of many SD DVD's. I recently bought a spare xbox for € 40,- No way to beat that with a PC

If it's strange that Americans have lived with NTSC for a long time, why is it strange that they embrace 1080p now that it's available to them? Duncan's designing his skin for the resolution and performance he wants, which happen to be beyond what the classic Xbox can handle. No one is saying you can't continue to use an Xbox, just don't expect designers aiming for the high-end to downgrade their products to the Xbox's lower capabilities.

I for one am looking forward to Stark showing off 1080p in all its glory.

[mrt2]

Does this mean that I won't be able to use this skin since my TV is only 1080i?

[thesuffering]

Does this mean that I won't be able to use this skin since my TV is only 1080i?

not at all...its designed for 1080p, but you can still use it in 1080i/720p it just wont look as nice as 1080p

[smcnally75]

whats the point of an hd skin if you can't watch hd content? I guess its alright if you are just using it for music, but video?

I don't know about you, but I would much rather have 300-400 movies in 480p than 30 movies in HD. A dvd rip takes from 3GB to 7GB depending on the rip, convert it to DiVX and now you're down under 1GB with still very acceptable quality. A BluRay rip takes a minimum of 20GB per movie. For me, at this point, it isn't worth all the extra money needed for storage alone to build an HD movie library. But, long story short, Duncan is building this skin free of charge so he can do it however he wants.

[bluemonq]

I suppose this is straying off a little bit, but there seemed to be a few people who are concerned about this: for those who are worried that their to-be-Aeon-enhanced XBMC PCs will be pushed to the limit playing HD content and have video cards that support hardware decoding of h.264 (such as the recent ATI HD 48x0 series) or have CoreAVC installed might want to look at this thread:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=40136
It's an unofficial workaround to allow XBMC launch an external player that supports hardware acceleration/that lets you choose a different filter. If you watch your videos fullscreen, you wouldn't even tell the difference since the UI of the other player won't be seen (unless you move your mouse around).

[K-FleX]

I don't know about you, but I would much rather have 300-400 movies in 480p than 30 movies in HD. A dvd rip takes from 3GB to 7GB depending on the rip, convert it to DiVX and now you're down under 1GB with still very acceptable quality. A BluRay rip takes a minimum of 20GB per movie. For me, at this point, it isn't worth all the extra money needed for storage alone to build an HD movie library. But, long story short, Duncan is building this skin free of charge so he can do it however he wants.

Yes, uncompressed they are in that range (I have seen some down below 15 gig before) but compressed you can have as low as a 1.4 gig Micro-HD MKV rip and notice significant quality improvements compared to a 2 CD DivX rip of the same size. So you can have higher quality without actually increasing your capacity needs dramatically.

I have XBMC on my XBOX and MediaPC and use both all the time. I don't see the need for my Xbox to have a high-def / fandangled skin though. If all your vids are low-qual/low-def then why would you need your skin to be high-def? I think the time spent on optimizing skins for the xbox would be better spent on improving skin features etc.

Keep up the good work djh, hanging for the release.

[BritneysPAIRS]

the reson why aeon one hangs mostly on the xbox is an over active xml saving code

I posted a ticket for this as it servely slows down an xbox using alot of skin settings
http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/5206
that is all that slowed down aeon it also had a few mem issues when using large fanart but the speed is fine....I removed the xml issue from the source and it speeds it up at least 3 times for window entry and exit

[djh_]

That's interesting. Not sure if you're talking about Aeon's code or XBMC's, but the "Stark" version has been rebuilt from scratch with much cleaner and more precise code.

[extinct]

Are the Media Flags working in Stark?

[pletopia]

media flags need to be implemented into xbmc first .. only then can aeon (and every other skin) utilize them

[onesojourner]

I don't know about you, but I would much rather have 300-400 movies in 480p than 30 movies in HD. A dvd rip takes from 3GB to 7GB depending on the rip, convert it to DiVX and now you're down under 1GB with still very acceptable quality. A BluRay rip takes a minimum of 20GB per movie. For me, at this point, it isn't worth all the extra money needed for storage alone to build an HD movie library. But, long story short, Duncan is building this skin free of charge so he can do it however he wants.

I would totally agree with you if it were 2 years ago. but hhd prices have literally crashed over the last 6 months. 1t drives can be had for less than 100 bucks. I have seen them as low as 85 (thats shipped) and 1.5t drives have been as low as 120 bucks. I will agree a 700mb divx rip is acceptable on a SD tv, but aeon is unusable on a SD tv all the fonts are to small and its designed for widescreen. I upgraded mine about a month ago and divx movies are not acceptable any more. A 480p mkv is watchable. The xbox even after I tried tweaking it could not play those. Those files run about 2.5 gigs. a 720p encode is about 4.5 and 1080p encodes are around 7 for animated films and 12 for a great rip of a normal movie. The difference between an sd encode and a hd encode is incredible.

[smcnally75]

I would totally agree with you if it were 2 years ago. but hhd prices have literally crashed over the last 6 months. 1t drives can be had for less than 100 bucks. I have seen them as low as 85 (thats shipped) and 1.5t drives have been as low as 120 bucks. I will agree a 700mb divx rip is acceptable on a SD tv, but aeon is unusable on a SD tv all the fonts are to small and its designed for widescreen. I upgraded mine about a month ago and divx movies are not acceptable any more. A 480p mkv is watchable. The xbox even after I tried tweaking it could not play those. Those files run about 2.5 gigs. a 720p encode is about 4.5 and 1080p encodes are around 7 for animated films and 12 for a great rip of a normal movie. The difference between an sd encode and a hd encode is incredible.

You guys seem to have forgot that the xbox can handle a 720p skin just fine. I've run Aeon and MediaStream on my xbox and they both look great.

[pletopia]

its not about running the skin in HD (720 or 1080) .. its about running the skin in HD AND being able to play HD rips

if all you want is to keep watching SD rips .. then yes ... an xbox running aeon at 720p is fine however if you'd like to watch better quality rips (movies and tv) then a xbox doesn't cut it anymore

[smcnally75]

its not about running the skin in HD (720 or 1080) .. its about running the skin in HD AND being able to play HD rips

if all you want is to keep watching SD rips .. then yes ... an xbox running aeon at 720p is fine however if you'd like to watch better quality rips (movies and tv) then a xbox doesn't cut it anymore

I've known that. What I'm talking about though is about how this skin (Stark) may not work on a standard xbox even at 720p. At least that is what I've come to understand from what Duncan has said.