[atv2]playback movie xbmc vs plex - choppy xbmc
#1
Ok, let me first say that, PLEX, at first, seemed nicer than XBMC. Well, more polished at least. HOWEVER, I must say that as I play with different things in PLEX, the grass is definitely less green than it looked.

Anyhow, to the point. I was recently in a situation which allowed me to stream 'Alvin and the Chipmunks 3: Chipwrecked' from a windows server to an atv2. This movie was in R5 format (not dvd released) and I noted something quite peculiar...

When I watched it using XBMC on the atv2, the audio was nowhere near in sync. not even close, and, no adjustments to the audio sync would make any change. advancing/retarding the audio had absolutely no effect.

Watching the movie in PLEX, it was spot on. perfect. Why do you suppose?


I'm aware that XBMC transcodes on the receiving/client end and plex does the transcoding on the source machine but that's as far as my understanding takes me.

Ultimately, I'd like to just ditch PLEX all together but little mysteries like this keep me hanging on. Any input?
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#2
XBMC uses the ATV2 only for video playback. It uses other computers only for storage. XBMC does not do any transcoding. The trade-off here is that HD videos have to be in h.264, non-interlaced, and follow the h.264 specs within reason (no crazy 16 ref frames, etc). SD content should all play nicely as long as it isn't interlaced.

Plex uses other computers to do all the heavy lifting and video decoding. Plex transcodes the video, meaning it re-encodes it to a specific ATV2 friendly format. Sometimes this can degrade video quality, though it's normally something people won't notice.

In other words, Plex requires a computer to work on the ATV2. XBMC does not.

Plex will choke if you use more than one ATV2 at a time (well, if you have a beefy computer, it might handle two HD transcodes), but XBMC will work with any number of ATV2s in one house. You can load files directly on XBMC, or use add-ons, without using a computer or NAS at all. A $30 router with a USB port can be used so you don't need a computer for XBMC/ATV2 for extra file space.

A recent release of XBMC (v11 RC1) had bad sync issues. Make sure you are updated to v11 RC2. That might fix your issue with Chipwrecked.
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#3
Thanks for the input. makes total sense.

I'm working toward dumping PLEX for sure now. Now all I have to do is find a way to fix the crackle plugin so it works fully and properly and I'll have no need for PLEX anymore.
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