Windows, XBMC, Core i3, BluRay
#1
I'm contemplating upgrading my HTPC to a core i3 with support for bitstreaming so i can finally play blurays properly.

At the moment im using a cheap AMD system with geforce 8100 onboard with vdpau which is great but doesnt do everything.

So im just trying to get some kind of idea if Windows 7, XBMC, xvda decoding, bluray playback with other software probably powerdvd. But also i might just rip the m2ts files and play them directly in xbmc, if xbmc will bitstream truehd and dtshd.

Anyway any information would be great as the system would be very cheap to setup, $100 motherboard, $120 cpu, $50 ram and im set. Otherwise i might just get a radeon 5450 but i would rather not have to add more hot components to the HTPC.
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#2
XBMC will not bit-stream truehd and dts-ma yet. Last I heard, support for that in ffmpeg was not there fully.
Windows 7 x64 Home Premium
Gigabyte MA78GM-U2SH Mainboard
ATI HD3200 Onboard
AMD 7750BE Dual-Core 4.00GB RAM
ATI HD3200 HDMI Sound
HTPC HMDI -> ONKYO TX-SR605 -> Panasonic TH-46PZ85U Plasma
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#3
If you want bitstreaming then you have a couple of choices:

TMT3 with Asus HDAV (I've just replaced this card as the drivers suck and the hidef support isn't total). Note that when playing .m2ts it downmixes (this could be bcos I no longer have the HDAV in my system)
PDVD with ATI 5xxx or
PDVD with Auzentech Xfi Home Theatre HD (this is what I replaced the HDAV with)

or

ffdshow tryout (beta 7 I think), splitter etc and an ATI 5xxxx card. With DSPlayer I believe this will let you filter your HD audio via ffd and give you .m2ts with HD audio from inside XBMC (DSPlayer obviously). My understanding from the forum is that the DSPlayer wonder boys are implementing the splitter etc so it should simply be a matter of sorting the filter. My 2 cents on this (as of yesterday with 4 nights trying) is that at least with x64 W7 I've not managed to make the ffdshow filter work for HD Audio in any application (MPC/DS Player etc)

If you're just in it for movies then my suggestion is an ATI 5xxxx card. I have the 5770 Vapor X edition and it's even quieter than my 4xxxx with a hacked voltage adjusted fan.

This has full HDCP support and I can confirm it bitstreams with PDVD 10 Ultra. Likewise I can confirm the Auzentech does the same. If you like your music then the Auzentech has nice Op-amps hence why I have both the 5770 and the soundcard.

Hope this helps.
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#4
I have both HD audio formats playing within XBMC, it has been possible for at least a couple months now.

I have the Xonar 1.3 slim. You have to install the TMT3 from the asus site with the key you get with the xonar card. you then have to register the arcsoft audio encoder and enable it in the dsplayer settings in (obviously) the dsplayer xbmc builds.

The way I have mine running is using MPC as my video filter and ffdshow for my audio filter. Took my about 2 weeks to get it running right, but all my pretty HD audio lights light up on my marantz receiver.
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#5
So it looks as though i can get it to work now, but i will need to fiddle with filters and dsplayer to have bluray rips (m2ts) bitstream under xbmc. And no one actually has a core i3 cpu/gpu yet and has tried it but i know it does work with intels powerdvd i just asume it would work just like the xonar or radeon with dsplayer.

anyway thanks for your help
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#6
in this guide it says it works with the i3 http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2010/02/...pc-part-i/

Hardware Requirements:

* PC running Windows (preferably Windows 7) with either an AMD 5xxx GPU, Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale CPU, or HD Bitstream capable Sound Card
* A Receiver that can decode the DTS(MA) and TrueHD

so probably best option is with the dsplayer build of xbmc.
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#7
Thank you very much, I'm going to go set this all up tonight, although my 8100 onboard can only do lpcm i can at least see how to set it all up for when i can afford my new HTPC.

Again thanks alot.
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#8
baxtermedic Wrote:I have both HD audio formats playing within XBMC, it has been possible for at least a couple months now.

I have the Xonar 1.3 slim. You have to install the TMT3 from the asus site with the key you get with the xonar card. you then have to register the arcsoft audio encoder and enable it in the dsplayer settings in (obviously) the dsplayer xbmc builds.

The way I have mine running is using MPC as my video filter and ffdshow for my audio filter. Took my about 2 weeks to get it running right, but all my pretty HD audio lights light up on my marantz receiver.

hello , is there any way that You can simple post Your filter settings ?

i also have big war ...and switched from mac not long ago , so its hard .

i have Auzentech card and have no problem watching HD audio with powerdvd 10 , but i will live to add this to XBMC ...
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#9
I'm halfway through setting this up, damn i wish it was as easy as xbmc live.

Since ive got an OpenSolaris server with 6TB current storage space ive decided i will rip all blurays to bd25 using bd rebuilder, works great but best quality settings take forever even on 3.5ghz core2.

Anyway ive set it up to start xbmc at startup, everything works but i cant passthrough ac3 or dts through the hdmi... so ive got that disabled and it just uncompresses the audio in mkv/avi's and outputs it to multi channel lpcm which is fine i guess but i would prefer my rather expensive receiver do any decoding...

I have my bluray iso's set to open an external app (TMT) and hide xbmc, then go back to xbmc after playback and that works great.

I havent yet setup the remote properly, i'll need to install event ghost and screw around with that but im worried that after i do that when it opens a bluray in TMT that the remote will not work with it properly, maybe eventghost can be setup for that too.

And i have one more major issue, xbmc will crash after the pc is put to sleep, so im going to try an app to fix this and map a button to kill/start xbmc.

Anyway this is so much more difficult then it should be, but if anyone could help me with the dts/ac3 passthrough with hdmi, the sleep/wake crash issues it would be much apreciated.
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Windows, XBMC, Core i3, BluRay0