[jbass350z]

It seems that all of the h.264 threads are fairly old and the latest in Jan/Feb this year seemed to indicated there was progress being made on h.264 playback. Can someone provide the rundown on what is playable and recommendations for encoding.

Some of the early threads indicated that deblocking needed to be turned off, but some later threads suggested it could be encoded with deblocking but bypassed with some type of configuration file?

I am confused as ever. I want to convert my entire DVD collection to h.264 format with minimal loss (keeping 5.1). I have several xbox's throughout the house that I am using as media centers.

[karifsmith]

I'm curious about this as well. The last I remember reading is that if you encode it in a certain way, then it should play.

What I'd really like to do is be able to play the h.264 'scene' releases through XBMC.

It appears that the CPU is the limitation. And I haven't found any solutions on how to upgrade the CPU. I'm sure there is quite a demand for this.

Has anyone here been able to play .h264 scene releases on the XBMC? Does anyone have an Xbox with an upgraded CPU that they've tried this out on?

[pike]

since the xbox1 hardware isn't getting any faster, not much progress is made on this front.

[gronne]

Has there ever been serious talks about getting on the GPU? I guess not, but it'd be interesting to know.

[karifsmith]

There is a thread on xbox-scene where 'trusty' from China sells 1G upgrades to the Xbox.
http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=532431

It's not the same as the Friendtech upgrade from a few years ago. And even with the 1G upgrade, I don't think you can play .ts files.

It sounds like a certain adapter is needed to install the 1.4G chip like Friendtech used to. Does anyone have more information on that? What is required exactly? And why can't it be made?

[BassKozz]

Any updates on this?
I was using XBMC-2.0.1-FINAL-FAT-T3CH but was getting jumpy/jittery/ overall poor performance with H.264, I recently upgraded to XBMC-SVN_2007-11-04_rev10675-T3CH and while the preformance of playback did increase significantly, I still noticed a few minor jumps.

What (if any) is the "road map" for H.264 on the XBMC ?

[pike]

you obviously found this thread...

tip: scroll up

[BassKozz]

But obviously some progress is being made, as I mentioned in my previous post, the performance difference between Final 2.0.1 and the latest SVN is huge, but not 100%.

Will there be any further progress at all or should I expect the latest SVN to me the best I'll ever see from XBMC?

[Jezz_X]

probably best you will see from xbmc on an xbox yes.
But even if its not all from an xbox version it won't be much more

[Gamester17]

First of all, any and all progress made to the H.264 decoder is not made by Team-XBMC (the XBMC project) developers but by FFmpeg (the open source codec suit that XBMC utilizes).

Secondly, there is not much left to squeeze out of the 'old' 733Mhz Intel Pentium III processor in the Xbox, so you can not expect magic. The Xbox will never be able to decode native 720p video encoded in H.264 as long as you are limited by that processor. My questimate is that FFmpeg have already reached 90% of the potential decoding power out of 'old' processors shuch a 733Mhz Intel Pentium III CPU.

Thirdly, these 'issues' are the main reason that the XBMC Linux port is being created.

Conclusion; wait until XBMC for Linux gets stable/mature enough for any user to use and then get a powerfull enough PC to run it on.

[Geeba]

If the GPU was utilized could the Xbox decode 720p/h.264? It must be alot more powerfull than the CPU?

I remember way back someone was atempting low level access to it?

As much as I love XBMC and use it daily! I dread the thought of the linux version not going to an apliance like the xbox1.....

[Gamester17]

If the GPU was utilized could the Xbox decode 720p/h.264? It must be alot more powerfull than the CPU?

All MPEG-4 ASP (H.263 = XviD/DivX) at 720p probably, but MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) at 720p never, you have to remember that not eveything can be off-loaded to the GPU (not much actually on the old GPU types like the one in the Xbox). However it is a moot point anyway as no one is looking into GPU assisted video decoding for the Xbox. http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=1843

As much as I love XBMC and use it daily! I dread the thought of the linux version not going to an apliance like the xbox1

OFF-TOPIC but you can just get a computer which looks like an applicance, ...you know like in a HTPC or SFF (Small-Form-Factor) chassi

[Geeba]

Geessss... Gamester just read through some of that link you posted... looks like you really did your home work on the GPU stuff!

Off the record are you a bit disapointed it wasnt pushed further?

[BassKozz]

First of all, any and all progress made to the H.264 decoder is not made by Team-XBMC (the XBMC project) developers but by FFmpeg (the open source codec suit that XBMC utilizes).

This brings up a question:
How often is the FFmpeg codec updated for the SVN releases?
Is it safe to assume that the codec is updated before every SVN release?

The reason I ask is because the FFmpeg website says that they recently made some modifications to the codec that directly affect H.264:

(October 9, 2007) Apart from a DNxHD encoder, PAFF decoding support for H.264 was committed to SVN.

[elupus]

not safe to assume. just updated when there has been anything major that we want in our player. don't remember exactly when i did it last time. oh and this is for dvdplayer, mplayer's ffmpeg libs are updated much more seldom as that is a much more complicated process.