[GUIDE] Simplified Guide for a perfect minimal HTPC on INTEL platforms

Hi Alanwww1,
in the feature list of Eden they mention "And now even AMD devices are supported for GPU video decoding in Linux to some extent, thanks to the inclusion of VAAPI.".
As I understand VAAPI is also for the GPUs in the Intel processors, so I have a sandy intel with 2000 graphics and ask myself if the steps in the first post are still necessary?
Or is it better to install xbmcbuntu and everything is included?

Thank you very much!

Apart from deinterlacing and multichannel audio I think XBMCBuntu could bring you the same experience. You could check it.

I just performed a fresh install of XBMCBuntu today onto my new Crucial M4 SSD (wicked boot times FTW!), and it doesn't look like the Intel IGP is utilizing VAAPI out of the box. I fired up a h.264 HD file and opened the OSD to check. It was using ffh264 as the video decoder. I'll go through the first post and reboot to see if I see a difference.

Edit:
I installed the i965-va-driver, vainfo, and gtk2-engines-pixbuf, and now have VAAPI acceleration working again. I also needed alanwww1's xorg.conf to get refresh rate matching again as well.

Just wondering has anyone managed to get a hp mce ir receiver to work with this setup? Im using openelec which supports it but I would love to try this but I believe its not compatiable with the latest kernels?

Thank you very much pumkinut,
too bad that for out-of-the-box experience it still seems to be better to use nvidia products with xbmc.
Maybe I´ll try your xbmcbuntu configuration with the manual installation of the VAAPI packages.

(2012-03-31 23:23)pumkinut Wrote:  I just performed a fresh install of XBMCBuntu today onto my new Crucial M4 SSD (wicked boot times FTW!), and it doesn't look like the Intel IGP is utilizing VAAPI out of the box. I fired up a h.264 HD file and opened the OSD to check. It was using ffh264 as the video decoder. I'll go through the first post and reboot to see if I see a difference.

Edit:
I installed the i965-va-driver, vainfo, and gtk2-engines-pixbuf, and now have VAAPI acceleration working again. I also needed alanwww1's xorg.conf to get refresh rate matching again as well.

(2012-03-06 08:30)shihan Wrote:  Try as i might i just cant seem to get anything better then stereo out of the box i have. Its a h55 with an realtek alc892 card (ecs h55h-i), i've tried quite a few different things (such as the workaround above) but it always outputs stereo sound (tried hdmi, rca and coax). Currently im on 11.10 64bit ubuntu with xbmc 11 from the unstable ppa.

theres a good list of options you can pass to the sound modules at http://wiki.sabayon.org/index.php?title=...ound_Cards (as well as some other places) but i dont really seem to be getting very far with any of that.

Tried adding various config to /etc/pulse/daemon.conf, but other then changing the sound mixer to show 5.1 options, its really not changed the output at all (though i would have thought that wouldnt have any impact to xbmc itself anyway).

Any other suggestions i might try before i blat the thing with 12.04?

TIA

After hacking around in the sound modules on linux for a while, i finally figured there was something wrong with the board (though i ended up having to install windows 7 just to prove it to ecs)... the new MB arrived about 2 weeks ago and the system worked from its first boot - though why it worked ok with myth is a bit of a mystery to me, unless it got killed somehow during the upgrade.

I can feel my next battle of wills is going to be a truly painful exercise though... the second tv we have (still running myth) is a somewhat old tv that has never worked properly with anything but nvidia... it does 1080i (not p), but i've never gotten either ati or intel to run with it properly (ati will do 1280x720, but i've never had an intel box drive it at all). Just plugging the ecs box in and booting it up wasnt very promising either, even moving the xorg.conf aside, it detects 1280x720p @ 50 and 60, but the display is quite messed up. More fun times ahead!

(2012-02-13 18:02)chimpin Wrote:  Using kernel 3.3 rc1 and then 3.3 rc3, this is what I get from my onkyo. And It's kind of greenish.

Same problem! But only on progressive refresh rates...(on 25 and 30 there is no green hue)
I have an Onkyo NR3007 and with OpenELEC 1.0.2 which uses Mesa 7 and Kernel 3.1 its all ok. The same 2100T, DH67BL (latest bios) sandy bridge setup using OpenELEC 2.0 beta 1 and beta 2 (using kernel 3.2.15, beta 2 is using Mesa 8.0.2) gives a green hue when connected to my Onkyo. (on progressive refresh rates)

When I connect it directly to my TW5500 beamer, the hue is gone, but with the onkyo in between it has a green hue.

This problem does not exist on the OpenELEC zacate 2.0 beta 1 and 2 build on the onkyo. (could be because its using YCbCR instead of sRGB)

Anyone tested out xbmc on ubuntu 12.04 ?

VAAPI seems completely broken here, you can't start a movie at all, the video doesnt even start showing.
If you turn off VAAPI, everything seems fine

(2012-04-29 02:22)pulz Wrote:  Anyone tested out xbmc on ubuntu 12.04 ?

VAAPI seems completely broken here, you can't start a movie at all, the video doesnt even start showing.
If you turn off VAAPI, everything seems fine

Did some more testing on this, seems like it might be an issue with the offical xbmc build on ubuntu 12.04.

Mplayer vaapi just works fine, but xbmc fails to bring up any video at all.

Submitted a bug report http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/12970

Great Guide!

Your instructions have served me very well to setup a nice home media center/file server. Last night I'm afraid I dorked up my system by upgrading to the ubuntu 12.04 distro. Since the upgrade xbmc has been showing funky colors in the form of a washed out purple color rather than showing true blacks. I need some advice on how to get things back to normal.

I'm running an Intel 2500k processor and using the intel 3000 graphics over hdmi plugged into a pioneer AV receiver with a samsung 59" plasma television. Any advise on how to get the system working again without reinstalling?

Thanks in Advance.