[Fennec]

Hi all, new to the forums...

I have a few questions about XBMC

1.) I own an Alienware M11x notebook connected to 2x 3TB Western Digital External HD's - which house all my media (Movies/TV shows) mainly .AVI MP4, MKV formats.
The notebook is connected via HDMI to my Samsung UN46D6420 LED TV. Will this set-up work well with XBMC?

2.) I currently use Zappiti with this rig, but I'm looking for something a bit more flashy I suppose. Has anyone here used both, and what do you think from a comparison stand point?

Thanks in advance..

[PatK]

Welcome to the forums..

1) should work fine, your laptop is classed as a gaming rig.. so the gfx shouldn't be an issue and your external drives should be seen as system drives (caution with windows O/S as drive letters might get swapped around, might be better manually assigning drive letters down the alphabet) and and HDMI output is all good with that panel.

2) XBMC is a real class act, haven't seen anything yet that surpasses it for eye candy. If you don't like what you see try another skin, you can flip them on the fly. I will say that I'm unfamiliar with Zappiti.

[blacklist]

XBMC and free and very easy to install. Why not just download it and give it a try?

That being said, you should have no problem with the set up you describe. There are quite a few skins, give a few a try to see what fits your system. Unlike a lot of media centers, XBMC skins are much more than just a cosmetic change, so try a few to find the functionality that works for you.

Also, I would suggest that a remote control will greatly enhance your experience in general.

[Fennec]

Thanks for the responses.

Do I need to set my PC BIOS to boot directly to XBMC via USB thumb drive or CD/DVD?

Or can I just launch it from my desktop?

Yah, I've been looking at XBMC for a while on and off and I definitely think it looks very sleek and sexy.

How much does a remote control cost and what do I need to do to get one working?

[RandomNinjaAtk]

XBMC is a program that can be run on various platforms such as windows. Just download and install the program onto your computer. You can add it to your startup folder if you want your computer to autostart into xbmc upon loading windows.

If you are running windows (I use windows) this remote: http://www.amazon.com/HP-Infrared-Receiv...347&sr=8-3
has worked great for me. You simply plug in the USB attachment and then use the MCE Remote Addon to apply the configurations to your computer to use it with XBMC. And it works with pretty much no changes at all. You can always use the keyboard to navigate XBMC also, which is probalby the best way to learn the ins and outs.

[Gr8rtek]

If you have a smartphone, you might also look at the various XBMC remotes for iOS and Android. They both work pretty good, are easy to set up, and most are FREE! I use XBMC Remote for Android and Constellation on my iPad. These are both great options because they don't require line-of-sight to work properly, and they display a lot of information about your music, movies and tv shows on the mobile device.

[Fennec]

Hmm I have a question - probably not the appropriate place to post it...

I'm trying to run XBMC on my Alienware M11x notebook connected to a 3TB External HD. The notebook is plugged into the TV via HDMI cable.
The Alienware outputs a max of 1366 x 768 @ 60hz. I just hit projector mode and it tries to match the TV.
Video files are 23.976 FPS.

I notice in some scenes where the camera moves in a sweeping or constant motion there can be some jerking in the image. It's very subtle but still somewhat noticeable.

It was explained to me that 60Hz isn't a multiple of 24 so when it's played some video frames/images will stay on the screen for a lightly longer time than others causing this jerky motion.

Yet when I play the same movies on my computer (not connected to the TV via HDMI) I see no frame jerking. Any idea if there's a way around this? I was really hoping to use this set up on my TV without the need for a media player. How do HTPC's address this issue?

[PatK]

You can see where the issue is with the keyboard 'o' command while a video is playing... should tell you if your swamping your gfx or cpu or a bandwidth/media issue. Usually this kind of thing can be patched with a setting, smooth videos etc.. you'll have to to around a bit to optimize.

[Fennec]

After doing some reading - under "Settings/Video" "Adjust display refresh rate to match video"

Does anyone NOT use this? It seems like something you would want to have enabled all the time yet It's not set by default. Why?

[spiff]

Because it can cause issues.

[Fennec]

Ok, care to elaborate on the "issues" it can cause? I'd be interested to know as I'm going to play around with that option this weekend.

[DDDamian]

Easy to play with so go for it. Issues can include fighting the desktop resolution and unsupported resolutions from your TV/GPU.

[Ned Scott]

Various combinations of hardware with GPUs and displays can cause craziness. Sometimes it just works, and sometimes it makes the screen all wonky.

[Fennec]

I'm wondering how you change movie set thumbnails.
I'm able to open a menu and select "set movieset thumbnail"
But when I select "Set movieset thumb" or "Set movieset fanart" there's no thumbs or fanart available. I can only "browse" So I'm left with a random movie thumbnail from a movie in the series.

Any ideas?

[PatK]

I'm wondering how you change movie set thumbnails.
I'm able to open a menu and select "set movieset thumbnail"
But when I select "Set movieset thumb" or "Set movieset fanart" there's no thumbs or fanart available. I can only "browse" So I'm left with a random movie thumbnail from a movie in the series.

The Browser at that point in the choosing allows you to locate the image of your choice. At this time there is no central repository for movie set artwork that can be scraped. XBMC picks the first folder set artwork as default. The easiest solution I've found is to include the set artwork in the sets folder with any name.