XBMC4XBOX and HD

[brettbear]

Hi,

First, congrats on v3.2, and getting the site back up.

I've had my XBOX for 7 years and barely touched it. Decided to softmod it about 5 weeks ago, right around the time the site went down. So, a total nube and have been fumbling in the dark.

Got into it again this week, upgraded to 3.2, and already this forum has allowed me to sort out many of the issues I've had, so thanks.

I have my Xbox hooked up to a 1080 HD projector via component cables so obviously the higher res the better.

One question - noticed a comment about running XBMC4XBOX in 1080i mode being a very bad idea, and using specific skins to reduce mem usage.
Is the main reason for this the limited 64MB of memory?
If it is simply RAM and I wack some more in (I know, easier said than done), should that improve stability with HD resolutions?

What about stability when using 720P?

Cheers!
Brettbear

[whufclee]

You are correct, running 1080i kills the FreeMem so it's not something I would recommend. However there was a post on what the optimal settings are if you want to run in 1080i but I'm not sure whether it's been added to the new forum yet or not.

If you want to use scripts and plugins then there's a good chance they will freeze due to insufficient memory, also you will find trying to play some video files will fail for the same reason.

720p works great and for me I can't see a massive difference between the two anyway. Again, if you use a memory intensive skin then there's always a chance some addons won't work properly (Navi-X is a perfect example but works great in 720p with lite skins such as Slik, XTV-SAF, JX720 etc.)

Increasing the RAM is a very tricky operation and I only know of a handful that have managed to do it (Xphazer being one of them). Currently XBMC cannot make use of the extra RAM as our only dev doesn't have a 128mb xbox! So in answer to your question, no increasing memory will not improve the situation (for now at least). Hope that helps.

[brettbear]

Hi Lee,

Awesome, thanks for the prompt response.

Yep. Previously I was running v3.1 @1080i, and using the SVN plugin installer installed a bunch of scripts and plugins. Nothing worked, and if it looked like working, I'd get freezes & lockups.

Now running 3.2, @720, and using XAI plugin installer - much better. Still getting the odd freeze.

For the XBMC skin I've changed it to PMIII, but didn't think of changing the Navi-X skin - good call. Will do that and hopefully it will sort it.

You're right, not much difference between 720P and 1080i.
The problem I had was my Projector is set to NativeRes, and when I fed it a 720P signal it didn't fit the screen properly (1080i does). I'm now putting the XBOX component signal (@720P) through the Integra Amp and up-scaling to 1080i, which resolves that issue.

Great to know XBMC won't use any extra RAM. I've done a bit of SMT repair work before so that doesn't bother me, but if there is no point (don't want to run Linux), I won't bother!

[SquirlKiller]

I reposted (of what i remember) the tips for 1080i without crashing in the General Discussion section

[brettbear]

Legend; thanks and cheers

[zekepliskin]

Hi there!

I made the original post about how to make things stable under 1080i on XBMC4XBOX - it basically involved use of low memory skins, disabling thumbnails on certain plugins (iPlayer for example) and rebooting it every few hours or so. One of the other tips was, if you're in library mode and you've been scrolling up and down a load of thumbnails and fanart have been cached which has stolen what little free memory remains, so you should sit on the entry for five to ten seconds while the RAM becomes free then play the file.

The Xbox is nice but I honestly wouldn't work too hard to get it running in HD resolutions because despite best efforts it will tend to crash quite frequently, which is enough to annoy non-technical people who just want to scroll about and click play to watch movies with no problems!

If you really want decent performance in HD, consider moving to another platform which is relatively inexpensive, like an Acer Revo or a modified Apple TV. I have an Apple TV (with the BCM970012 card; I need to upgrade to the BCM970015 to get slightly better 1080p24 H.264 decoding performance) and for a small piece of hardware it really does well. Connected to my main TV by HDMI and my 5.1 amp by optical SPDIF. WIth a few tweaks it'll run really fast with Crystalbuntu, and you can add stuff like LXDE to give you a basic OS just powerful enough to run Firefox for web browsing, or even install a BitTorrent client if you're feeling brave! I've had a lot of fun with mine, to the point where I've ripped out the 500GB drive in my Xbox for use as an external media file holder for the Apple TV via USB2.

[whufclee]

An Android box is another option... a better option than ATV in my personal opinion (but hey that's only my opinion). If you're feeling brave and want to try something experimental the raspberry pi seems to do a very good job at playing HD content too although it's still very much at development stages and the two distro's for pi are still in Beta.

[zekepliskin]

An Android box is another option... a better option than ATV in my personal opinion (but hey that's only my opinion). If you're feeling brave and want to try something experimental the raspberry pi seems to do a very good job at playing HD content too although it's still very much at development stages and the two distro's for pi are still in Beta.

Out of interest why do you consider it a better option? I'd like to have the benefit of your experience!

I considered a cheaper Android box but honestly, considering how much time I wasted getting CM 7.2 running on my phone I didn't want that hassle, plus the fact XBMC for Android is a very new version and will come with various problems. On the Apple TV it's a case of swapping the WiFi card for a Crystal HD (get the BCM970015, it's miles better than the BCM970012), prepping a USB stick on Windows, booting the ATV into recovery mode and letting the install do what is needed. Within an hour you can be running XBMC... all pretty easy. And if you then want extra bells and whistles you can SSH in, add LXDE, run it, then do any further mods from the ATV itself now you have a GUI environment with access to terminal.

I also considered the Raspberry Pi but like the Android box it's at too early a stage to be stable/useful enough and the complete lack of SPDIF out onboard would mean adding a USB soundcard and god knows what state the drivers for those would be right now. Sam (head of Crystalbuntu/Raspbmc projects) is doing a fantastic job with the limited time he has but it's unfair to expect him to be doing full end-user support. And with the Pi you're always going to be in a situation where yeah, sure, the device itself is tiny but you need to have a bunch of things hanging off it (FLIRC dongle for IR remote control, USB2 HDD for non-network content, USB dongle for 5.1 sound) and that would ruin portability for me. Whereas with just an Apple TV and the original Apple remote, it's all integrated neatly in the one box - 160GB on the internal HDD isn't a lot but it's enough to carry a huge music collection, some TV show episodes in 720p and a few 1080p movies. Great if you're out a lot and you want a good portable media centre which after setup is very no-nonsense!

[whufclee]

Well I'll let kozz fill you in on the benefits of the Andoid box as he's bought one this week and it sounds amazing (I'm sure he'll do a proper write up on it soon). Like the ATV it comes with a remote and is pretty much ready to use out of the box. The main benefit I see is that it's more like having an HTPC than just a media center - at the end of the day it's basically the same as you get with a tablet but it's on your TV. Not only can you install whatever apps you want but there are some great emulators available for andoid (and also some really good android games) and it has support for Xbox360 controllers. Another bonus is that you can have other apps running in the background and will receive notifications of new email, facebook stuff etc. Oh and I almost forgot torrent support

At the end of the day everyone's different and has different needs - ATV is a safe bet as it's thoroughly tested but for me Android has a lot more to offer, however it is still pretty new so there are bound to be some bugs to sort out.

I'm really liking the pi myself at the moment - still quite a way to go with development but it's showing some great promise already. I didn't actually realise just how small it was until I opened the package the other day - I'd read the specs but hadn't really taken in just how crazy small it is! Whichever way you swing the future's looking very promising.

[vic3mila]

At the end of the day everyone's different and has different needs - ATV is a safe bet as it's thoroughly tested but for me Android has a lot more to offer, however it is still pretty new so there are bound to be some bugs to sort out.

A bit OT maybe, but ... I have a 1.1 chipped XBOX with remote, is does all I need but it is loud (and a bit slow updating library)
Looking ahead for ATV v.2 (the black hockey puck) because is has no fan, no external power, lan, wifi, BT and drain only 6W.
The only doubt is about his remote: too few keys (but heared about using mini BT keyboards).
Any experience here about speed? Updating library and using interface at least...

Not yet interested in full-HD contents, mainly because my tv is an HD-ready

--
Riccardo.

EDIT: @zekepliskin: just found this: http://hackaday.com/2012/06/14/hands-on-with-raspbmc/
-----8<-----
The good news is that its works. XBMC runs pretty fast, with just a hint of lag when loading some menus. We felt at home using the confluence skin we’re familiar with, and had no trouble setting up our samba shares to the video library. The one problem is that it won’t play any of the video files we have on hand. None of them. So we downloaded the Big Buck Bunny trailer. It wouldn’t play that either. This is all a codec issue. Although the chip used on the RPi is capable of hardware decoding MPEG2 video, the foundation didn’t license that ability. So it can’t play that format, period. With the movie trailer we tried the OGG format and that’s not currently supported, but the MOV version did play, in full 1080p without trouble.
-----8<-----
RaspberryPI is not an option for XBMC, at least for now...

[Sproket]

I use 720p for my projector, works great.

This is how I changed to 720p. I changed the evoxdash.xbe, thats my modded boot side.

http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=152822