Dell Optiplex Gx620
#1
A local business owner gave me an old Dell Optiplex gx620 that was used previously in a business office, and I was hoping to repurpose it to use as an xbmc htpc in my bedroom.

Relevant info on the machine:

Pentium 4
3 GB Ram
Windows XP
400 GB HDD

In addition, I had an old geforce 210 video card lying around that I have installed in a PCI slot - though I gotta say, I am a noob at installing hardware. I downloaded drivers from nvidia's site for the video card and connected the video card to an hdtv via hdmi. Picture and audio in windows and xbmc work, with the exception of 1080p.

I installed xbmc 12.3 (since that is the version I currently have on my other machines and am familiar with) and added folders from my living room i3 htpc as sources for tv and movies. That seemed to work fine for the most part, though episodes of at least one show aren't showing up. On to my real hardware concerns.

Playback of SD content and 720p content seems to be working fine, yet playback of 1080p content (basically no matter what the bitrate) stutters and shows a ton of dropped frames when I push "o" during playback - like to the tune of hundreds per minute I'd say. If I pause the video for several seconds and then push play it plays fine for a few seconds before it begins to stutter and drop frames again.

I thought maybe this was an issue of delivery of the video over the network being bad. My i3 htpc hosting the files is connected via cat6 to a gigabit powerline adapter, as is my router. The optiplex is then connected via cat6 to my router. The interesting thing is that the same files playback fine on a Roku 3 that I have connected via cat6 to another powerline adapter when played in Plex using the direct play option (which I understand to mean no transcoding), which seems to suggest that the network is not the problem. Also, I downloaded some high bitrate 1080p video samples (like the bird file and a couple others) to the optiplex and they stutter really badly when played in vlc player.

So my question, do you think this is a problem with network limitation / bottleneck or one with the hardware of the optiplex? If the latter, what component is holding it back from handling 1080p videos? Or is it some limitation of windows xp? I had read xp causes problems with, or prevents, hardware acceleration / gpu decoding. Will giving some variant of Linux a try be better?

Any ideas or tips to help me troubleshoot?
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#2
From memory XP doesn't support dxva2 which is what is used by xbmc. Try openelec.
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#3
Quite simply xbmc does not support windows XP.
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#4
Well, last night I installed Ubuntu on the machine and today I installed xbmc and adjusted all the settings and everything (including 1080p over the network) seems to be working nicely.

I have absolutely no prior experience with Linux, but so far I am really liking Ubuntu. It looks dope.
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#5
(2014-08-16, 22:40)drew_willy Wrote: I have absolutely no prior experience with Linux, but so far I am really liking Ubuntu. It looks dope.
Unity doesn't drive you nuts? Coming from Windows XP I think you'd want to put your fist through the monitor. I much rather prefer Mint with Cinnamon to Ubuntu and Unity.
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#6
(2014-08-17, 04:06)Stereodude Wrote:
(2014-08-16, 22:40)drew_willy Wrote: I have absolutely no prior experience with Linux, but so far I am really liking Ubuntu. It looks dope.
Unity doesn't drive you nuts? Coming from Windows XP I think you'd want to put your fist through the monitor. I much rather prefer Mint with Cinnamon to Ubuntu and Unity.

Well, I am more accustomed to using Windows 7, actually. It was just that this previously owned machine had XP on it already. I don't have any particular affinity for XP, as I have been Windows 7 for years.

Still, you know, Unity didn't bother me in the slightest. It sort of reminds me of OSX, actually. It is fine.
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