[CaptainRewind]

Have you tried context-menu "play using dvdplayer" ?

No, I read a post by you, popcornmix, that said something like "DivX 3 will never play on the Pi" so just wrote it off. I'll try it and report back.

Sounds like the Prometheus dream sequence, which much like the "birds" sample has a bitrate spike that goes through the roof.

I take it I'm not the first to report issues with bitrate spikes on specific content. 'Nuff said on the exact title in that case.

I'm guessing you mean the "Birds" sample here? That won't even play all the way through in VLC on Windows 7 Ultimate on my laptop (which isn't exactly optimized for video playback)
http://cybernetnews.com/xbmc-high-bitrat...le-videos/

I suppose I can try Overclock of "Super" but the cache buffer issue is still a concern. The only way I can get it to even come close to playing that scene (still with some very brief skips) is to copy the file to the SDHC card and play with caching disabled.

Unfortunately this is a new "feature", not a bug. I did try to resist it, but it came in here:
https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/3963

Basically half the cache is unused for mkv and mp4 files.

You did try, I see that. Some days I wish the Pi had 1 GB of RAM but then it wouldn't be $35. At least now I know why this is happening, though I agree it might be more of a sacrifice than benefit. I only hope an advancedsettings.xml option is added to disable this.

You don´t need to do that anymore as the firmware files are included in the builds from now on.
You can still do it if you want to update firmware only though.

I just followed your commands, and it was dead simple. I just meant that I'm used to the term "update firmware" meaning something akin to updating BIOS on a PC, or radio firmware on Android phones. Simply putting 2 files where they are needed on the SD card makes this far less "worrisome" I suppose. If I'm understanding this right, a bad firmware flash (but no damage or corruption of the SD card) simply means all you need to do is reboot if the power goes out (as opposed to having a brick).