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I am having big issues with HD content on my new HTPC. It's built with the current fad (GA-E7AUM-DS2H and E5200) but I can't get any HD content to be playable at all. I have a 720p H.264 encoded MKV that I am trying to play (over a wired network) in XBMC under XP. The content just plays a few frames and then seems lock up. I thought it was an issue in XBMC (still could be), so I fired up XBMC on my MacBook Pro and managed to stream the same content over wireless with the same 9400m smooth as silk. The hardware difference isn't that drastic, so I don't understand what is wrong. From what I understand, XBMC is rolled with the same decoders for all platforms, so I won't expect a massive difference between platforms either. Any ideas?
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Apr 11, 2009 07:26
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Jook posted:Does anyone use Laptops for HTPCs? I know some Laptops have HDMI out and should be powerful enough to do full HD decoding but I never hear of anyone really making use of them as an HTPC. I figure that for a couple hundred dollar premium I could have an HTPC that doubles as a portable computer -- am I right? If so does anyone have any recommendations? It works fine. I know some people that do it. The biggest issues is that most people want their media PC's to be static elements, like a set top box. You can build a solid minITX based system for 300 or so dollars so unless you need that functionality it is a big premium.
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Apr 11, 2009 11:50
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TheDingo posted:I am having big issues with HD content on my new HTPC. It's built with the current fad (GA-E7AUM-DS2H and E5200) but I can't get any HD content to be playable at all. I have a 720p H.264 encoded MKV that I am trying to play (over a wired network) in XBMC under XP. The content just plays a few frames and then seems lock up. I thought it was an issue in XBMC (still could be), so I fired up XBMC on my MacBook Pro and managed to stream the same content over wireless with the same 9400m smooth as silk. The hardware difference isn't that drastic, so I don't understand what is wrong. From what I understand, XBMC is rolled with the same decoders for all platforms, so I won't expect a massive difference between platforms either. Any ideas? If everything plays fine in MPC-HC you can set it up to be your external player in XBMC, so you get the pretty interface of xbmc and good performance.
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Apr 11, 2009 14:22
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TheDingo posted:I am having big issues with HD content on my new HTPC. It's built with the current fad (GA-E7AUM-DS2H and E5200) but I can't get any HD content to be playable at all. I have a 720p H.264 encoded MKV that I am trying to play (over a wired network) in XBMC under XP. The content just plays a few frames and then seems lock up. I thought it was an issue in XBMC (still could be), so I fired up XBMC on my MacBook Pro and managed to stream the same content over wireless with the same 9400m smooth as silk. The hardware difference isn't that drastic, so I don't understand what is wrong. From what I understand, XBMC is rolled with the same decoders for all platforms, so I won't expect a massive difference between platforms either. Any ideas? Exactly which build number of XBMC are you using?
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Apr 11, 2009 16:43
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my xbox is about to die so I think I should start building a HTPC. Im not looking for anything amazing, I doubt Ill need it to be a PVR, I hardly watch TV so Im sure I can make due with some cheap tv tuner. What I need are the minimum specs for building something that can smoothly play HD content from my server (Ill be using a gigabit network) and play blueray discs. Id prefer something very small, and was hoping that the dell studio hybrids would do the job. Im checking out the AVSforums right now, but I have some catching up to do.
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Apr 11, 2009 23:45
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edit: never mind
WhiskeyJuvenile fucked around with this message at 00:33 on Apr 12, 2009 |
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Apr 12, 2009 00:26
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Actually, can someone help me find a dvi/vga/hdmi (i.e., any one of the three) to YPbPr analog component dongle on newegg? edit: or do those not exist if the video card doesn't specifically support it? edit 2: I found this, but I don't know if it will work with this. WhiskeyJuvenile fucked around with this message at 01:44 on Apr 12, 2009 |
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Apr 12, 2009 01:25
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weaaddar posted:If everything plays fine in MPC-HC you can set it up to be your external player in XBMC, so you get the pretty interface of xbmc and good performance. Runs super smooth in MPC, so looks like XBMC is the culprit. I guess I need to set up the external stuff (I saw the walkthrough on the forums, but was hoping to avoid having to set it up). evilalien posted:Exactly which build number of XBMC are you using? Version 8.10 (compiled 11/13/08). The build number is blank. EDIT: Installed the new PRE-9.04 build and it fixed the video, but now there is no audio in those files (and it pops up a message saying it failed to initialize the audio). Sound on everything else still works fine though. The audio in these files are AC3 5.1. Lifespan fucked around with this message at 02:01 on Apr 12, 2009 |
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Apr 12, 2009 01:42
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Ok, fixed the problem by turning off Dolby Digital support in the audio hardware settings. The problem is that my receiver definitely supports DD (that's what I use with my external Blu-Ray player), so I'm left wondering if something isn't set up right. Is there something I need to enable for the HDMI audio output to send AC3 streams?
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Apr 12, 2009 02:09
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no ussually theres a setting in filters to do ac3/dts spdif passthrough which works even through hdmi.
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Apr 12, 2009 04:14
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I'm still a bit worried about ordering a 5200 and the gigabyte 9400 board. I am going to be using a pinnacle 800i pchd tuner to record OTA broadcasts. I will probably add another tuner later. Will the 5200 have enough power to record two shows at once and play another show back or stream to an xbox 360 at the same time? Would upgrading to a wolfdale 7400 make any difference?
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Apr 12, 2009 14:35
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How high end of components do you need to play back 1080p video? If it's only $100-$150 more in parts to play 1080p rather than 720p, I may go for it, but if it is $250 more in parts I likely wont.
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Apr 13, 2009 15:07
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Regnevelc posted:How high end of components do you need to play back 1080p video? If it's only $100-$150 more in parts to play 1080p rather than 720p, I may go for it, but if it is $250 more in parts I likely wont. Depends on the source material and player. XBMC does not support video hardware acceleration, so all of the heavy lifting is left to the CPU. I've heard that the threshold for 1080p H.264 decoding is a 2.2Ghz Core 2 Duo or higher. If you have a less strenous codec or a player that will let the video hardware handle some of the work, it will drop. Lifespan fucked around with this message at 17:34 on Apr 13, 2009 |
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Apr 13, 2009 17:20
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http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115018 + 3-4 gigs of RAM. So, something like this should be more than enough to run 1080p video while running utorrent and SABnzbd. or should I go with http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115036 and take the extra ghz for the price. Regnevelc fucked around with this message at 17:29 on Apr 13, 2009 |
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Apr 13, 2009 17:26
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uTorrent and SABnzbd will have almost no impact on any modern machine. Get the E8500. There are very few applications that can really take advantage of four cores and decoders in free media players are not one of them.
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Apr 13, 2009 17:41
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Ok, from what I've read thus far I have a pretty good idea of what I need but I need to iron out a few questions. My HTPC is going to be used for probably only 3 things, streaming music, streaming xvid 700mb and 720p/1080p content from my server, and playing emulations. Watching TV is not on my list as I havent really watched TV in 5 years now. I'll be using a front end because I want it to be easy to use for other people, but from what Ive read so far that makes getting a video card to handle all decoding useless because the software wont offload the work to the GPU. And AMDs stutter when decoding 1080p so Ive got to go with a C2D right? Ive just got to make sure that the CPU can handle high bitrate streaming content and Ill be good. So I guess I need a recommendation for a CPU and motherboard (with HDMI and maybe spdif). Can frontends make the most out of soundcards tho? Im actually kind of waiting for those Nvidia Ion boards (esp with the new Atom) to start coming out. But if frontends cant offload to GPUs at all then its kind of useless to right? rugbert fucked around with this message at 17:45 on Apr 13, 2009 |
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Apr 13, 2009 17:42
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TheDingo posted:uTorrent and SABnzbd will have almost no impact on any modern machine. Thanks for the information!
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Apr 13, 2009 17:44
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rugbert posted:I'll be using a front end because I want it to be easy to use for other people, but from what Ive read so far that makes getting a video card to handle all decoding useless because the software wont offload the work to the GPU. And AMDs stutter when decoding 1080p so Ive got to go with a C2D right? Ive just got to make sure that the CPU can handle high bitrate streaming content and Ill be good. So I guess I need a recommendation for a CPU and motherboard (with HDMI and maybe spdif). Can frontends make the most out of soundcards tho? AMDs don't stutter when decoding 1080p as long as you get a fast enough AMD CPU. Intel CPUs are often mentioned as they usually run cooler (and hense quieter) and are pretty similar in price. If you are building something HTPC specific right now, a few Intel CPUs are what will be suggested. It's true that video hardware is less of an issue when doing high def playback. You just need to make sure you have something good enough to handle realiable 2D output at a 1080p resolution (which is pretty much anything new) and also meet the requirements of the front end. XBMC uses OpenGL and requires a semi-recent GPU (though nothing high end) to smoothly handle animation and transitions in menus. The hot motherboard right now is the Gigabyte GA-E7AUM-DS2H which has a GeForce 9400m on board (plenty for handling HTPC needs), HDMI with audio and HDCP, optical, eSATA, and more in the smaller Micro ATX size. Pair it with a decent CPU (E5200 is popular for price/performance/heat, but something a little faster wouldn't be bad), a match pair of RAM, and some drives and you are set. The Ion looks interesting, but details on it and real world tests (outside of trade shows) are slim. The Atom is weak, so I wouldn't get my hopes up of it running popular media players flawlessly. You can build a great HTPC in a pretty small size (but not Dreamcast size) right now for about the same price as they have been hinting with Ion.
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Apr 13, 2009 18:05
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Which kind of video card should I be looking at for the 1080p playback? I see most do not have HDMI, but that can be solved easily with an DVI to HDMI cable. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130339 Something like this? Edit: Optical cannot do 7.1 correct? Since I have a 6.1 system with only an optical input I should be looking at 5.1 sound cards. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829118105 This looks like the one that fits my needs. Regnevelc fucked around with this message at 18:47 on Apr 13, 2009 |
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Apr 13, 2009 18:22
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Regnevelc posted:Which kind of video card should I be looking at for the 1080p playback? I see most do not have HDMI, but that can be solved easily with an DVI to HDMI cable. If you are just using this machine as an HTPC/Torrent machine, that card is way overkill and will have a good ammount of fan noise. DVI->HDMI will work, though going that route loses you the ability of passing audio over HDMI and you cannot support HDCP. I would really just suggest using the Gigabyte GA-E7AUM-DS2H motherboard mentioned in every other post as it includes a GPU that can handle anything you need, includes HDMI with audio and HDCP, and is fanless. And yes, optical can handle 7.1. Lifespan fucked around with this message at 19:49 on Apr 13, 2009 |
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Apr 13, 2009 18:51
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Woah, I didn't realize a motherboard like this existed! I am very surprised that you do not need a high end card for high-def video. Thanks!
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Apr 13, 2009 19:44
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TheDingo posted:I would really just suggest using the Gigabyte GA-E7AUM-DS2H motherboard mentioned in every other post as it includes a GPU that can handle anything you need, includes HDMI with audio and HDCP, and is fanless. Since XBMC, I'm assuming, will soon introduce GPU decoding to the Windows client (as it is already present in Linux builds), would this motherboard be able to handle 1080p easily? Just add a cheap(ish) processor, some RAM and a HDD at it, and it's good to go?
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Apr 13, 2009 19:53
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Boris the Blade posted:I have a quick question about this. It can handle 1080p right now without GPU decoding and a cheapish CPU (E5200), but GPU offloading should reduce CPU load. The 9400m does support hardware h.264 decoding. Here is a little note about the Macbook Pro showing the CPU load dropping in half when the 9400m takes over h.264 decoding: http://appleaddiction.net/?p=802 "With full hardware acceleration of Blu-Ray 1.1, H.264 and MPEG-2, the GeForce Series 9 can handle HD video without requiring a high-end CPU." Lifespan fucked around with this message at 20:04 on Apr 13, 2009 |
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Apr 13, 2009 20:02
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TheDingo posted:The Ion looks interesting, but details on it and real world tests (outside of trade shows) are slim. The Atom is weak, so I wouldn't get my hopes up of it running popular media players flawlessly.
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Apr 13, 2009 20:29
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I'm having issues with 1080p. No tearing or anything, but the occasional video freeze-up, video turning black, or the audio and video drift apart requiring me to restart the player. 720p is amazing and perfect. System: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000 Brisbane 2.6GHz GIGABYTE GA-MA78GM-S2H 2 gigs RAM Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 Here is my theory: My hard drive is a piece of poo poo. It clicks and grinds like it's 100 years old. Maybe it isn't supplying the necessary data rates for 1080p. I've ordered a Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS which should be a lot better by a lot. Other theory: Maybe I need a video card. The motherboard's video chipset, ATI Radeon HD 3200, is supposed to support 1080p, but maybe I need a little more power. Any thoughts?
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Apr 13, 2009 20:57
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FogHelmut posted:Any thoughts? What software are you using to playback? How is the file encoded?
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Apr 13, 2009 21:08
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Boris the Blade posted:I have a quick question about this. Note for all, the latest release (9.0.4 beta) supports NVIDIA GPU acceleration out of the box for windows. link: http://xbmc.org/blog/2009/04/05/xbmc-904-babylon-alpha-1-released/ if you're still running 8.10 you really owe yourself this upgrade, at LEAST so you can use Aeon STARK as your skin. 
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Apr 13, 2009 22:56
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BotchedLobotomy posted:Note for all, the latest release (9.0.4 beta) supports NVIDIA GPU acceleration out of the box for windows. You mean it supports Nvidia GPU acceleration out of the box for Linux. Not Windows. Aeon STARK is amazing. evilalien fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Apr 13, 2009 |
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Apr 13, 2009 23:01
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Dobermaniac posted:I'm still a bit worried about ordering a 5200 and the gigabyte 9400 board. I am going to be using a pinnacle 800i pchd tuner to record OTA broadcasts. I will probably add another tuner later. Will the 5200 have enough power to record two shows at once and play another show back or stream to an xbox 360 at the same time? Would upgrading to a wolfdale 7400 make any difference? If you are in the US, the OTA broadcasts will be encoded as MPEG2, so the amount of processing power you need to decode is about the same as DVD. When capturing, you are just writing the bitstream to disk so for your described use case (recording two while playing back a third) is going to be more likely i/o limited by disk or network than by CPU. TheDingo posted:And yes, optical can handle 7.1. Uh, no. S/PDIF (optical or coax) maxes out at 5.1 bitstream (DD/DTS) or 2.0 PCM evilalien posted:Aeon STARK is amazing. I started playing with it a bit the other night. When you downloaded it, did it include any of the backdrops or did you have to grab those separately? I was running it on my myth box which is running Ubuntu 8.10 (Ibex) vanilla slimfast fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Apr 13, 2009 |
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Apr 13, 2009 23:06
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vanilla slimfast posted:Uh, no. S/PDIF (optical or coax) maxes out at 5.1 bitstream (DD/DTS) or 2.0 PCM My bad, you are correct. I grabbed Aeon the other day when I updated to 9.04 and it is really sharp. It does only come with the generic background (except for weather, which looks really nice). I was hoping someone would release a nice generic background pack to match it so I don't have to go searching around the web for good 1080p source images, but I have not seen anything yet.
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Apr 13, 2009 23:17
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vanilla slimfast posted:I started playing with it a bit the other night. When you downloaded it, did it include any of the backdrops or did you have to grab those separately? I was running it on my myth box which is running Ubuntu 8.10 (Ibex) djh had to take them off the Aeon main site due to bandwidth concerns. You can find them here though: http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=48697
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Apr 13, 2009 23:31
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Edit: I'm dumb
Stuntman Mike fucked around with this message at 00:17 on Apr 14, 2009 |
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Apr 14, 2009 00:03
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What plugin do I need to do GPU decoding with media player classic?
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Apr 14, 2009 01:06
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Alright, I've had this thread bookmarked and have checked it daily pretty much since its inception. It has gotten to the point that nearly every page asks a question which has been answered at least once on the previous 2 pages. I'm dropping this one from my thread bookmarks. I consider myself pretty knowledgeable on this topic, but I've tired of repeating the same advice again and again for people who can't be bothered to read back a few pages. Good luck everyone. Maybe one of you will be kinda enough to PM me when we have a new thread with all the FAQs pinned in the first page. BTW: there was someone a few days ago who erroneously said that the arcsoft totalmedia 3.5 directshow filters couldn't be called from external programs. They can, I've recently switched from the powerdvd filters to the arcsoft ones when I realized that the latest OEM software for my hdhomerun includes an oem license for arcsoft totalmedia 3.5. For what it's worth the arcsoft filters seem to be a bit more configurable than the cyberlink ones from powerdvd AND they included a sweet deinterlacing filter which is seperate from the main decoder filters.
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Apr 14, 2009 01:15
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TheDingo posted:What software are you using to playback? How is the file encoded? Mostly with WinDVD9 for .iso's mounted in Daemon Tools or MagicISO. Although I do sometimes have trouble with the larger .mkv and .wmv files in Windows Media Player, Media Player Classic Homecinema, and VLC media player. Encoded h.264.
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Apr 14, 2009 01:17
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Is there a reason more people arent going for this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813500022 It's got more or less the same specs as the GA-E7AUM-DS2H but its much smaller. Unless I cant get flawless 1080p playback from this Ill probably go with it so I can throw it into a NES case or something. I just want a small HTPC is all.
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Apr 14, 2009 03:47
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rugbert posted:Is there a reason more people arent going for this: Well, it's mini ITX not Micro ATX so you'd need a special case for it. Also, it's from a MUCH less reliable company. Gigabyte is one of the most reliable, and I've never heard of Zotac. And the reviews don't help with that matter much.* *Take the reviews, and my assumptions about them, with a grain of salt. There's only 7, and I usually base my assumptions of the reviews off the negative ones more then positive ones. But that could be just me. I'm also looking to update my HTPC a bit so if these really are amazing let me hear it! Wood for Sheep fucked around with this message at 04:03 on Apr 14, 2009 |
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Apr 14, 2009 03:50
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Wood for Sheep posted:Well, it's mini ITX not Micro ATX so you'd need a special case for it. Also, it's from a MUCH less reliable company. Gigabyte is one of the most reliable, and I've never heard of Zotac. And the reviews don't help with that matter much. The reviews for the Zotac 9300 Mini-ITX are actually pretty solid. I'm getting one for a mini gaming box in a few weeks. The real challenge is just finding a case that can fit all the poo poo you want in it.
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Apr 14, 2009 03:55
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There's supposedly a Zotac 9300 with wifi built in floating around somewhere
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Apr 14, 2009 05:31
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Baruch Obamawitz posted:There's supposedly a Zotac 9300 with wifi built in floating around somewhere That's the one we're talking about. The Zotac 9300 Mini-ITX Wifi. Everyone just leaves off the "wifi" part of the name v  v
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Apr 14, 2009 06:00
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