Is it THAT HARD to find a good 1080P XBMC solution?

Forums › Home Theatre (including HTPC and EPG Collector) › Is it THAT HARD to find a good 1080P XBMC solution?

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#785609 22-Mar-2013 18:19

My recommendation now?

A decent PC, or else accept compromises. Open to be proved wrong but I've tried most of the alternatives and a PC is the only 1080P solution that works to my satisfaction.

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

reven

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#785612 22-Mar-2013 18:24

the ouya should be a perfect solution when it arrives

I personally don't recommend spending any more on anything until the ouya ships. there are more expensive solutions, there are cheaper ones, but the ouya is a new system designed for the TV. so you'll get a whole bunch more like
- netflix
- hulu
- games
- apps
- plex
- xbmc

Talkiet

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#785613 22-Mar-2013 18:25

reven: the ouya should be a perfect solution when it arrives

I agree, it should be.

There have been several other 'should be' options so far as well. Many work well for 720P but for some reason none of them work well enough for me in 1080P.

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

LennonNZ

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#785617 22-Mar-2013 18:33

What about a Apple TV 1 !

http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Apple_TV_1/FAQ

By default it will play 720 but with a BMC Crystal Card (replace the wireless card in it) it will output 1080p (as the card does all the processing)

You can get the AppleTV S/H on trademe for about $130 and the card will cost around $20 from Ebay

reven

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#785635 22-Mar-2013 19:18

Talkiet:
reven: the ouya should be a perfect solution when it arrives

I agree, it should be.

There have been several other 'should be' options so far as well. Many work well for 720P but for some reason none of them work well enough for me in 1080P.

Cheers - N

1080P shouldn't be an issue the pi does 1080P perfectly, the only thing that lets the pi down is the CPU and menu speeds.

playback i dont have many issues with it, except
- 1080i live tv
- some older codecs dont play (divx 3 i think)

richms

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#785658 22-Mar-2013 20:17

pcs have given me the worst playback ever. Cant go a minuite without dropping a frame.

Richard rich.ms

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Talkiet

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#785682 22-Mar-2013 20:52

reven:
Talkiet:
reven: the ouya should be a perfect solution when it arrives

I agree, it should be.

There have been several other 'should be' options so far as well. Many work well for 720P but for some reason none of them work well enough for me in 1080P.

Cheers - N

1080P shouldn't be an issue the pi does 1080P perfectly, the only thing that lets the pi down is the CPU and menu speeds.

playback i dont have many issues with it, except
- 1080i live tv
- some older codecs dont play (divx 3 i think)

I had a rPI and it was close... But the CPU was catastrophically slow for navigation, database updates... Even fastforward and skip was bad... With a good PC I can now smoothly FF and RW even 1080P, and the database and navigation is snappy.

I did install XBMC to a fast USB stick, and tried the overclocking too... Still too slow for me.

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

Talkiet

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#785684 22-Mar-2013 20:53

richms: pcs have given me the worst playback ever. Cant go a minuite without dropping a frame.

Then you just haven't set it up right... I admit I had a few teething issues with mine (C2D 3Ghz, GTX560) but when I found the secret formula it's all great.

The feeling when I got it working AND was able to smoothly fast forward AND reqind was amazing.

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

timmmay

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#785690 22-Mar-2013 21:08

Even standard def video doesn't look as good on the R.Pi as the PS3 via PS3 media server. It seems to be running my 1080p TV in 720p mode, the words are quite blurred. The distribution I'm using disables 1080p by default because the R.Pi can't quite do it properly.

720p is quite good, it just skips frames occasionally during busy scenes.

Talkiet

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#785699 22-Mar-2013 21:33

timmmay: Even standard def video doesn't look as good on the R.Pi as the PS3 via PS3 media server. It seems to be running my 1080p TV in 720p mode, the words are quite blurred. The distribution I'm using disables 1080p by default because the R.Pi can't quite do it properly.

720p is quite good, it just skips frames occasionally during busy scenes.

I'd have to disagree with this... RaspBMC (I believe) renders the menus in 720p, but playback is in real 1080P. I got properly smooth playback with 1080P files (once they started!) as well - and the video frame rate matching (24P material kicked the TV into 24P) was great.

Once the file got playing - the rPI had equal quality with the high end PC I am using - it was just usability where it fell down.

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

timmmay

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#785711 22-Mar-2013 22:10

I'd have to check, not really sure.

Usability's fixed almost completely by the Yatze Android app. Choose what you want to play, it plays. So much better than a standard remote, just more awkward with a huge tablet.

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#785740 23-Mar-2013 00:16

You guys are doing something wrong with your rPi units. Take a look at YouTube. There are plenty of clips demonstrating flawless menu and playback of 1080p content.

What bit rates do the files you wish to play have? Do you bit stream the audio or decode it on the unit?

Talkiet

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#785741 23-Mar-2013 00:20

1080p: You guys are doing something wrong with your rPi units. Take a look at YouTube. There are plenty of clips demonstrating flawless menu and playback of 1080p content.

What bit rates do the files you wish to play have? Do you bit stream the audio or decode it on the unit?

Nope, I think I just have higher standards and expectations for responsiveness and ability to do stuff like DB updates, run trailers, fast forward, rewind, start playing in 1-2 seconds (not 10-15 seconds) etc...

As I have said... Playback, once started, I found to be fine on the rPI - it was everything else that way too annoying for me. I'm sure it's fine for many people... It is after all a silent, cheap as chips, low power solution you could hide behind a TV...

But there are compromises compared to having a normal PC.

Oh, 1080P files were between 8-15GB and I always had my AV amp do the audio decoding.

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

timmmay

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#785769 23-Mar-2013 08:15

1080p: You guys are doing something wrong with your rPi units. Take a look at YouTube. There are plenty of clips demonstrating flawless menu and playback of 1080p content.

What bit rates do the files you wish to play have? Do you bit stream the audio or decode it on the unit?

Everything from low bitrate standard def to high def 1080p.

How do you set it to stream the audio through? My receiver could decode it if it was given to it properly, taking some load off the R Pi.

reven

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#785790 23-Mar-2013 09:31

if you are doing a fast forward/rewind you are doing it wrong. use skip. its smoother and quicker. fast forward was only really good in days of tapes. once you've gone digital you should be using skip.

i agree with the menus are slower, but for a $80 all up device this is acceptable to me, they aren't drastically slow, most things are pretty quick. I have turned off background/fanart off.

DB scans are slower, I usually do this on my server so my PIs dont need to do it (using shared mysql db)

The menus are rendered at around 540p and that is upscaled to whatever resolution you have it set to (eg 1080p). all the video playback is rendered at the resolution you have selected (eg 1080p).

its not really fair comparing a PI to a full HTPC due to cost. suer if I spent $400-$500 on an HTPC it would play everything perfectly and the menus would be fast. but thats around 10x the cost of the pi.

the ouya should be a worthy contender to replace HTPCs (unless you're very old school and still have tv tuners in your HTPC and not in a server), or the pivos xios ds device. ouya will just have the native apps like hulu/netflix which will work with the controller/remote.

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