[ashlartowers]

You are probably right. I really just need to get a new 720p capable TV.

It would probably be cheaper to replace your xbox.... ;-)

[BDPNA]

I agree, but even a new Xbox is still gonna give me the 64MB barrier issue. Any way I slice it I just can't do 1080i on XBMC with Mediastream sadly.

[ashlartowers]

I agree, but even a new Xbox is still gonna give me the 64MB barrier issue. Any way I slice it I just can't do 1080i on XBMC with Mediastream sadly.

I meant replace it with a Linux Box or Apple TV! :-O

[xbs08]

I agree, but even a new Xbox is still gonna give me the 64MB barrier issue. Any way I slice it I just can't do 1080i on XBMC with Mediastream sadly.

I can't understand why some people still prefer 1080i to 720p?

Do yourself a favor and google 1080i vs. 720p

[paul]

Quite right progressive is far better than interlaced regardless of the dam resolution,
But you try telling people that they prefer to believe bigger is better well that's bullshit.

[skunkm0nkee]

I think some users may have displays which can't handle 720p but can handle 1080i. I agree that 720p is probably preferable but for some users they might not have the option

[sion28]

Quite right progressive is far better than interlaced regardless of the dam resolution,
But you try telling people that they prefer to believe bigger is better well that's bullshit.

Don't be so sure you all aren't falling into a similar trap of blind devotion. It's true, a lot of people think bigger is better without knowing anything about the technology. However a lot of people think progressive is better, even at lower resolutions. Therein lies the flaw: It depends on the source of the material, and the quality of the de-interlacer in their TV.

For things like the fan art and menus and other relatively static images that make up XBMC, 1080i is going to look about 2x sharper than 720p, since there won't be any motion artifacts. This is true regardless of the de-interlacing abilities of the TV.

For videos and movies, it depends on the source. If the source media was originally progressive, like 24fps film (nearly all movies and many, many current HD tv shows) then a 1080i/60 signal has all the information of the original 1080p/24 source. All that's needed is a half-way decent de-interlacer, and you get a lossless transfer back to 1080p. I don't think anyone would argue 1080p is better than 720p, if your display can handle it.

For an extensive explanation of why this is true, read this article:
"high definition 1080p tv why you should be concerned" over at hometheaterhifi.com

Furthermore, if the source actually WAS 1080i (like recorded with a 1080i digital video camera) then unless you own a TV that can display 1080i (rare these days, unless your TV is fairly old... see below) then the image is going to be converted to 1080p (if you have a 1080p display) or 720p (if you have a 720p display) anyway, so then it's just a decision of "which device, XBMC or my TV is going to be better at converting this 1080i image to the TV's native resolution?) If you have a 720p display, it's very likely that it's real resolution is something like 768x1366, and not true 720x1280, so the TV is going to convert it anyway (because NO source material has a resolution of 768x1366 unless you re-encoded a video that way on purpose), so best to just leave it alone.

Finally, displays. As Skunkmonkey mentioned, don't forget that a LOT of people own crt-based HD RPTVs that are capable of 1080i *only*. Everything is converted to 1080i, so it's best if you can feed it 1080i.

[sion28]

Okay, so I run XBMC on an xbox, and was disappointed at how slow mediastream was, especially when moving from menu to menu (like from the main home screen to say the "watch movies" screen. The "please wait" tab stays up for entirely too long. PM3 is virtually instantaneous in comparison to mediastream.

Then I discovered this thread with mediastream-lite "for xbox". COOL! I thought this would solve the problem. Hmmm.... not so much.

I just installed the latest "lite" version and I don't see much of an improvement, or any difference really, from the original mediastream. Both are slow. Well, "lite" might be *slightly* faster, but it's so slight I suspect it might be a placebo effect!

So, my question: what is the main benefit of the "lite" version that everyone who uses it, sees?

[paul]

To answer your question.
When i first started using mediastream it was a real pig to run on xbox but to be fair to team razorfish it was not intended for it. even with the last version V1.00 it still uses a lot of memory to display all that lovely fancy fanart that we all have come to love or Hate + all that transparency and slide out menus eats memory that's why videos will often fail to play on xbox. and so myself and Rocky5 produced lighter packs
And in my case my lite versions gives you 33mb of free ram and this is just enough free ram in my oppinion to play videos both locally and over a network less than that and some will fail to play.

Now if your getting less than that and somebody said they had 17mb left then it's not entirely the skin to blame,
for example have you downsized your fanart and more importantley have you upgraded xbmc recently?
and so far 90% of feedback say it has cured there problems so it does work ok

and you can't compare mediastream to PM3 as it is written for pal tv's and therfore it should and does run well

[sion28]

Paul,

First of all, I appreciate your and others' work, I wasn't trying to diss MS-lite or anything.

I haven't checked my memory after loading ms-lite. The 33MB value you report... is that realized while nothing else is playing (i.e. just after startup?)

Also, I never had any troubles playing videos. My complaint with mediastream was how long it took just navigating around.

So another specific question: should one expect to (do you) see a significant improvement in navigation speed with ms-lite over normal ms?

One more thing... I don't have any fan art of my own... so I don't know really what you mean about downsizing fan art. I thought "fan art" just referred to whatever XBMC scraped off the internet for the background images that show up when browsing my movie collection (for example). I don't think I really have control over the size of those, do I?

Thanks for your reply and help and work!

[paul]

No sweat mate i assumed you were not slagging it off.
As for fanart most of it comes down at 1280x720 i resize mine down to 960x540 but if your not having any issues with regards to memory then theres no need.
With regards to the speed of menu navigation you could try editing the skin xml[HTML]<effectslowdown>0.8</effectslowdown>[/HTML] if you change the value down it does speed up the navigation of the menu's . hope this helps

[sion28]

No sweat mate i assumed you were not slagging it off.
As for fanart most of it comes down at 1280x720 i resize mine down to 960x540 but if your not having any issues with regards to memory then theres no need.
With regards to the speed of menu navigation you could try editing the skin xml[HTML]<effectslowdown>0.8</effectslowdown>[/HTML] if you change the value down it does speed up the navigation of the menu's . hope this helps

It's not so much the menu speed, as the time it takes to go from one screen to another. For example, starting from the main home screen, if I select "watch movies" it then goes to the movie screen (the one that shows the theater with red chairs). The time it takes to go from the home screen to the movies screen is really long, IMO.

This delay, ultimately, is why I don't use mediastream regularly. If this could be made noticeably faster, I would probably use mediastream a lot.

The speed with which menus pop up and scroll is fine, IMO.

[paul]

I doubt anything will make it any quicker than it allready is not that i have much of a problem with it.
like i said it was not really intended for xbox use

[skunkm0nkee]

The time it takes to go from the home screen to the movies screen is really long, IMO.

This delay, ultimately, is why I don't use mediastream regularly. If this could be made noticeably faster, I would probably use mediastream a lot.

The majority of the delay is caused by the loading of the movies data from the library, it's not a skin delay.

[sion28]

The majority of the delay is caused by the loading of the movies data from the library, it's not a skin delay.

I wish that were true, because then mediastream would be as fast as PM3 in this regard, but it's not.

For example, if while using PM3, I click on "videos" from the main screen, the transition from the main screen to the videos screen is almost instantaneous. With mediastream, it pauses, pops up the "please wait" tab, then shows the videos screen.

I just don't see why it's so slow in this regard.

Thanks for the feedback/discussion. Again, I don't want to sound like I'm criticizing the skin, just trying to figure out if there's a way to make it faster, or if I'm doing something wrong.

BTW, I checked, and right after a cold boot up with mediastream-lite, I have 31MB free.