[AbMagFab]

I have 6 XBox XBMC's around my house. My wife, daughter, babysitters, and everyone else can easily use them. The main issue is no HD support.

So - I went down the quest of building HTPC's. I have two right now in test mode, sitting next to two of my XBox XBMC's. They're running MediaPortal with ArcSoft TMT for BD playback. They work, but they're clunky and not very friendly yet.

When I discovered that XBMC is now formally working on a Win32 release! Yay!

So some quick questions after doing a test download and some playback on my desktop PC (not my HTPC's):

1) In windowed mode, using a Q6600, 1080i MPEG-2/DD5.1 files were super choppy. Is that just windowed mode? The CPU wasn't pegged at all.

2) Is there any support for 24p MKV files? Will XBMC auto switch resolutions, or allow running of a script on detection of 24p? Or are we stuck at 60p?

3) I couldn't get it to play lossless WMA (non-DRM), but it played FLAC, MP3, and more just fine. Is this a known limitation?

4) I have a ton of pictures scanned from slides, that are 4000dpi and about 25MB each. It's super super slow when I go into one of those directories. It's not network issues, as when I go to that directory from the same PC UI it's super fast. What's up?

Thanks!
-Mark

[AbMagFab]

Also, 1080p MKV's with FLAC lossless play fine. As do SD DVD ISO's, and AVCHD 1080p/30's.

Weird that only 1080i MPEG-2's don't play well? These are DSDumped MPEG's from Tivo HD files.

[FlimtotheFlam]

I have a Q6600 and I can play two 1080p files at once no problem. Might be the video itself.

[AbMagFab]

I have a Q6600 and I can play two 1080p files at once no problem. Might be the video itself.

The video plays fine on the same PC using any other player. I have about 250 videos in this same format. It's just MPEG-2 1080i.

1080p (BD) mkv/FLAC plays fine, as I mentioned. As does 1080p/30 AVCHD from a Canon HD camcorder.

Can I capture some log file to determine what's causing XBMC to fail? These are pretty easy files to play (and they're the bulk of my HD video collection).

[Hitcher]

I'm no expert but it could be that they're interlaced and XBMC is deinterlacing them is causing the problem. Try turning off deinterlace?

[Gamester17]

Are the 1080i MPEG-2 videos 60FPS? XBMC does not yet support 1080i/60 videos.

3) I couldn't get it to play lossless WMA (non-DRM), but it played FLAC, MP3, and more just fine. Is this a known limitation?

FFmpeg (the open source codec suit used by XBMC) does not yet support WMA Pro, see => http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=27455

[AbMagFab]

Are the 1080i MPEG-2 videos 60FPS? XBMC does not yet support 1080i/60 videos.

FFmpeg (the open source codec suit used by XBMC) does not yet support WMA Pro, see => http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=27455

Doesn't my XBMC on XBox play WMA Lossless? I could have sworn it does.

As for the videos, they are regular cable TV HD, so I don't think they're 1080i/60, are they? Not sure how I check, though, to be sure?

[bb10]

Doesn't my XBMC on XBox play WMA Lossless? I could have sworn it does.

As for the videos, they are regular cable TV HD, so I don't think they're 1080i/60, are they? Not sure how I check, though, to be sure?

Read the thread Gamester17 linked you to. (especially the last post)

[regulator207]

AbMagFab. I've been following your hdmi roundup thread on avsforum and appreciate all your efforts.

I just got the parts for a new htpc and i'm planning on using xbmc as a frontend and using the launcher plugin to play BD. Not exactly sure how to do it correctly but I read that somebody has managed to make it work in the launcher plugin thread but they didnt post instructions.

Also, are you able to get hdmi audio using xbmc?

[AbMagFab]

AbMagFab. I've been following your hdmi roundup thread on avsforum and appreciate all your efforts.

I just got the parts for a new htpc and i'm planning on using xbmc as a frontend and using the launcher plugin to play BD. Not exactly sure how to do it correctly but I read that somebody has managed to make it work in the launcher plugin thread but they didnt post instructions.

Also, are you able to get hdmi audio using xbmc?

Well, given that:

1) It doesn't play BD ISO's
2) It doesn't play MPEG-2 HD from TV
3) It doesn't do any sort of GPU acceleration

I'm not sure it's really a viable HTPC option. MediaPortal is pretty user friendly, and I have to launch TMT as it is to get BD playback. Plus I get native MPEG-2 HD playback, so I only need TMT for BD ISO's.

The main value (to me) of XBMC is having a simple, easy to use interface that just works. In the HTPC world, I'm not sure it's a good fit at the moment.

Perhaps when ffmpeg improves, it will be better, but right now I can't see how it is of much value to a HTPC. Which is incredibly disappointing to me, as I think XBMC on XBox is, by far, the best non-HD media player out there. Nothing else comes even close.