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

For anyone else whose MCE remote no longer works "out of the box", take a look at this thread:

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=112649

Apparently the key mappings in lirc have been renamed. After modifying my Lircmap.xml file, my remote is working again - though I've still got a few of the buttons that are specific to my remote left to reprogram.

Thanks for the input and the guide. I was chasing the permissions issue but it turns out my my home built linux router is causing a conflict with shares on the xbmc server. The shares came up fine after replacing it with a commercial router.
The linux router has samba file sharing as well but I took it's configuration offline when trying to use the samba share on the xbmc server.
The linux router serves many other functions as well so ill have to go back and track the problem down. Anyway, at least I know where to start looking. Thanks again Alan & RB

My xbmc build has a 2tb sata drive with 680 mkv movies The hdmi output and main functions are working well.
I decided to test the UPnP server feature on the xbmc so I could share files to other devices without installing additional software. My devices see the share but they are unable to play any of the movies.
One device being a Samsung smart tv.
I know the tv can read mkv files via a usb direct connection and serviio.
The drive is formatted in ext4.
I can stick the drive in a ubuntu server which has serviio (a UPnP server software) and my devices see and play fine.

I've also noticed the xbmc UPnP share drops off the network consistently.
Has anyone else had experience with this?

Thanks

hi.. I follow the guide but i don't understand why with i3-2100 i have a 50 60% of cpu utilization..it is normal?? it's because the GPU is integrated with CPU?? thanks..

everything works fine so far... but i cannot shutdown my computer using XBMC..

Thx

Any ideas?

Edit:

ok, fixed by removing ur Autostart files, adding the ppa ppa:alexandr-surkov/xbmc, installed xbmc and xbmc-live (install lightdm first) ...

Then XBMC autostart, shutdown etc works fine: Now i will build a PVR Build of xbmc using ur VC1 commit -> replace all xbmc files and then it should be fine

alanwww1 Wrote:Thanks for the testing. Was this test done with YOUR patch or with MINE. Are there any differences between the patches ? Could you please try my samples as well ?

Thx, Alan

The patches I used are identical to the ones you had pulled into xbmc recently. I tried the second source code vc-1 sample and see the same thing you posted in the image. Lots of artifacts - I should add I played back the sample under windows (media player and MPC-HD + Lavfilters + LavCUVID) and initially there are a lot of artifacts there too (I guess from missing key frames or whatever?).

On a different but related subject. If you talk to someone who has influence please please get them to push forward on the implementation of limited/full range colour support in the driver. I looked back over submitted patches and it seems some work was done for pre-SandyBridge+ GPU's but I can't find anything since.

Additionally I tried Gnif's AE branch to see if it would now work given the updated ELD information available. Unfortunately it does not, not for DTS HD or Dolby TrueHD. It throws a stream of buffer underrun errors (similar to those reported by someone else in that thread using different hardware). When the 3.2 kernel goes final (and hopefully Gnif returns) I'll hope to contribute to testing for AE (enjoyed it for a long time with my Nvidia G210!).

EDIT: Played around a little more today and one thing I noticed was xrandr is reporting just two refresh rates for my TV's default resolution (1280x720); 50 and 60Hz but it can also do 59.94Hz. In Windows 7 the Intel driver reports three refresh rates; 50, 59.9 and 60. Equally when I use a G210 the Nvidia driver reports the 59.94Hz rate - it labels this as 1280x720_60_0. So not sure what is going on here. A sidenote - and I see you raised this in the mailing list alanwww - the modes reported by the intel driver are of the form "0000x0000"x0.0 - I'd expect them to be "0000x0000x50.0" or whatever. Or better the same as Nvidia - "0000x0000_00_0" (if that makes sense!).

djste Wrote:hi.. I follow the guide but i don't understand why with i3-2100 i have a 50 60% of cpu utilization..it is normal?? it's because the GPU is integrated with CPU?? thanks..

Have you enabled the option to "allow hardware acceleration" in Settings > Videos > Playback?

Besides beeing on Pre-Eden, where are the advantages of building a system with this guide rather then using the XBMCLive-Version? And are they also disadvantages?

I feel like this should be in the first post as well.

Suven Wrote:Besides beeing on Pre-Eden, where are the advantages of building a system with this guide rather then using the XBMCLive-Version? And are they also disadvantages?

I feel like this should be in the first post as well.

With xbmc live at the moment:

- no vaapi acceleration
- no libbluray
- auto refresh rate does not work
- bad shader performance in projectm

As i wrote in the first post. I recommend Openelec for regular users. If you don't see why you wan't to use this guide, you should stick with openelec i think.

alanwww1 Wrote:For suspend to work you might need a BIOS upgrade. I had problems with some boards, some worked out of the box.

Which boards did you have issues with? I'm on an Asus P8H67M LE (with latest BIOS update) and I can't get the suspend/resume working. The PC seems to go down, but when I attempt to resume (from the power button), the system only seems to partially wake - fans come on, power to peripherals, but nothing on screen, doesn't accept any input, and can't ssh in either.

What troubleshooting steps exist for this type of issue?

Thanks