[zeuss-axis]

I'm curious what the difference is between the video player used in the Windows build and the Xbox build. I've recently migrated from an Xbox to a Windows HTPC, and the video quality on the Windows version is subpar.

Initially, I thought it might be the video card on the Windows box, but when I play the same video in VLC on the Windows box, I get much better results than from within XBMC. Both results are worse than on the Xbox, and I'm working on Catalyst settings to fix that...thoughts?

Running:
XBMC rev 13239
Windows XP SP3
Catalyst 8.5
AMD 780G chipset
3200HD integrated video

[sticky]

I'm curious what the difference is between the video player used in the Windows build and the Xbox build...

One has years of development and refinement, and one has recently begun to be ported to a new platform.

[zeuss-axis]

One has years of development and refinement, and one has recently begun to be ported to a new platform.

I understand that the Windows build is new, but I'm curious what changes have been made to the Video player (MPlayer?) between the Xbox and Windows builds. Is a 'packaged' player implemented, or is it being built from scratch? If the latter, is there active development on this, or is it on the back burner?

[kinison]

the original xbox had a geforce 3 card, you might get better results if you use a nvidia video card.

[WiSo]

xbox -> directx
linuxport -> opengl

Unfortunately the opengl driver aren't the best for ATI and intel. Can't say something about the quality though.

[zeuss-axis]

Thanks for the responses!

xbox -> directx
linuxport -> opengl

Unfortunately the opengl driver aren't the best for ATI and intel. Can't say something about the quality though.

Now we're getting somewhere...is there anything that needs to be specially configured in Win XP for using OpenGL? I'm only vaguely familiar with OpenGL/DirectX...

[Gamester17]

It could maybe also be the renderer and scaling/upscaling techniques which is both different?

Could you possibly test XBMC for Linux on the very same machine (search for "LiveXBMC")?

[roeroe]

I'm curious what the difference is between the video player used in the Windows build and the Xbox build. I've recently migrated from an Xbox to a Windows HTPC, and the video quality on the Windows version is subpar.

Initially, I thought it might be the video card on the Windows box, but when I play the same video in VLC on the Windows box, I get much better results than from within XBMC. Both results are worse than on the Xbox, and I'm working on Catalyst settings to fix that...thoughts?

Running:
XBMC rev 13239
Windows XP SP3
Catalyst 8.5
AMD 780G chipset
3200HD integrated video

I have a similar spec machine that I got recently I been mainly use media portal with KMPlayer + CoreAVC and the play back is superb, on par or better than Xbox XBMC (I have 2 xbox running XBMC for the last few years).

The interface is not as good as XBMC so last night I decided I'm going to spend sometimes with XBMC and make that my main interface and try to live with any short fall it currently have in the test build (contrary to most people I really has not have most issues people mentioned here, Windows build is fairly stable for me with no crazy crashes or playback)

Having said that when it comes to windows I usually striped out stuff I don't need and just run a plain OS that just barely enough to pay back media and access samba shares. Stuff like system restore, indexing, MSN, Windows Media player, encryption, IPSec, Virtual memory etc.. all gone or disable

I should have XBMC windows ready for prime time later tonight and play back some video and see if what you said is true.

My specs:
Gigabyte GA-MA78G-DS3H (780G chipset)
AMD 4850e CPU
Corsair 8GB PC6400 DDR2 RAM
Windows XP 64
Samsung LA40F81BDX (1080P, 100Mhz screen)

[zeuss-axis]

It could maybe also be the renderer and scaling/upscaling techniques which is both different?

I have yet to play with upscaling features; this could very well be the issue. I think the sources I was testing were smaller than the 720p resolution I'm running at.

Could you possibly test XBMC for Linux on the very same machine (search for "LiveXBMC")?

I'm afraid not; no support for ATI cards. Nevertheless, I'm going to partition and install Ubuntu on the same machine...see if the Linux port produces similar results. Stay tuned!

[sticky]

It could maybe also be the renderer and scaling/upscaling techniques which is both different?

Could you possibly test XBMC for Linux on the very same machine (search for "LiveXBMC")?

I run XBMC linux and windows on the same box, and I don't think I have significantly different video results (tearing aside) - but if I had to pick, I'd say the windows version is a bit cleaner (I have a 8600 GT).

I've posted a few times about the differences between the linux and win versions, with the most notable (video) difference being that there's persistent (slight) tearing in the linux version (for me).

[zeuss-axis]

there's persistent (slight) tearing in the linux version (for me).

Help me out a bit-- what is 'tearing'? Is it the presense of short horizontal lines (~1" wide) randomly appearing in the playback? If so, I'm experiencing the same with my setup from within XBMC.

[roeroe]

I'm curious what the difference is between the video player used in the Windows build and the Xbox build. I've recently migrated from an Xbox to a Windows HTPC, and the video quality on the Windows version is subpar.

Initially, I thought it might be the video card on the Windows box, but when I play the same video in VLC on the Windows box, I get much better results than from within XBMC. Both results are worse than on the Xbox, and I'm working on Catalyst settings to fix that...thoughts?

Running:
XBMC rev 13239
Windows XP SP3
Catalyst 8.5
AMD 780G chipset
3200HD integrated video

Test it last night cant see much of a difference in my setup playing back Xbox and Windows version.

[zeuss-axis]

Test it last night cant see much of a difference in my setup playing back Xbox and Windows version.

What's the size of the video you're testing with, and what aspect ratio are you set to? Ar eyou using upscaling at all? ATI or NVidia graphics?

I haven't had a chance to play with this at all yet...thanks to everybody for testing!