[lunkhound]

I'm trying to use the FTV with XBMC as a headless music streamer. I want to use the optical audio output into an older (non-HDMI) receiver. Only I've hit a snag...

To set it up I first hooked it up to my TV/new receiver via HDMI so I could see what I'm doing.
I was able to side-load XBMC 13.1 along with AutoPilot. I used AutoPilot to automatically start XBMC on boot. I configured XBMC so that it could find my music files on the network, and enabled the ability to control XBMC remotely via smartphone.
All this is working fine.

The problem comes when I boot the FTV with nothing connected to the HDMI port. I can tell that XBMC is starting up on the FTV because the XBMC Remote app on my phone starts working and I'm able to browse my music library and queue up tracks. However it doesn't actually play them--it stalls at the beginning of the first track.
Also I discovered that when it is stalled like this, if I connect the HDMI cable to it, the queued up tracks begin playing immediately. I can then disconnect the HDMI and the playing continues fine (listening on the optical output).

So it seems that XBMC will not play audio on the SPDIF (optical) output until the HDMI output is connected to something at least once after bootup. That makes it pretty much useless as a headless music streamer unless you've got some HDMI device you can hook it up to.
I suspect that this is caused by something in the FTV's OS rather than XBMC.

Anyone know of a way around this? I can't think of anything else to try.

I can't help you but why don't you leave the hdmi cable connected? Do you need that hdmi input for something else?

Alas, the room where I want to use it has only an older receiver with no HDMI inputs. In the room where I've been testing it out I've got plenty of HDMI inputs, but I've also got a dedicated HTPC which does everything the FTV can and more.

I looked through the XBMC logs but didn't see anything useful looking. I did find something in the Android logs though. When the FTV has booted without an HDMI connection and XBMC is attempting to play a song, the Android log is spammed with stuff like this:

Code:

W/AudioTrack( 2210): obtainBuffer timed out (is the CPU pegged?) 0x5b990420 name=0user=0001d400, server=0001c800
W/AudioTrack( 2210): obtainBuffer timed out (is the CPU pegged?) 0x5b990420 name=0user=0001d400, server=0001c800
W/AudioTrack( 2210): obtainBuffer timed out (is the CPU pegged?) 0x5b990420 name=0user=0001d400, server=0001c800
E/AudioHardwareALSA(  277): error pcm_write returned -5
E/AudioStreamOutALSA(  277): pcm_write returned n < 0
W/AudioFlinger(  277): write blocked for 40004 msecs, 120 delayed writes, thread 0x419ba5f0

Actually those first 3 lines are repeated a lot! The last 3 only appear every so often, maybe once every 10 or 20 seconds or so. The moment the HDMI output is connected, those log messages stop appearing, and the music starts playing.
I did some googling with keywords from that log, but didn't manage to find anything helpful.