Hardware for Linux and XBMC

herg Wrote:You probably won't find many of them in the "wild", but having it work as is would be one of the criteria for me to buy a HD/Blu drive.

So far you find pretty much every title "in the wild", as you put it.
I think serious thought should be given to some way of using CoreAVC as an external decoder for h.264 content. I know some builds of mplayer allow this, maybe it's possible even with ffmpeg.

That would be fantastic, but it's up to the ffmpeg developers, not the XBMC ones. Unfortunately they very clearly stated that they will not support binary codecs for idealogical reasons.

Weavus Wrote:That's the exact board I'm planning on using when I build my system in the near future so please report back anything you can about using it with XBMC! I'd be especially interested in any information on using the HDMI port and audio via HDMI. Thanks.

Here's another with intrest in that board. It's what I'm thinking about for my HTPC

Weavus Wrote:That's the exact board I'm planning on using when I build my system in the near future so please report back anything you can about using it with XBMC! I'd be especially interested in any information on using the HDMI port and audio via HDMI. Thanks.

Set it up tonight, or at least am TRYING to. I am using it with a D-vine MCE303 case -> http://htpc.mce701.com/product_info.php?...2c8d2c09f6

So, I fired up Mythbuntu tonight. On my previous board with an 8500GT setup was smooth. This has been anything but - so far. For starters if I reboot the machine without it being set as source on the receiver the machine comes up in some funky video mode. Previously this wasn't an issue and I'm hoping that dorking with the modelines will fix this. On the plus side the video drivers recognize the video chipset and are open source. The audio however doesn't appear to be recognized, ALSA mixer doesn't show any devices except Intel HDA. I will mess with this more right after I get XBMC running again - I have the optical expander board on order asI don't wantto use the coax. The IRDA receiver and the VFD are also not working (yet), previously with the MCE USB remote device it fired right up - not so this! This page -> http://venky.ws/projects/imon/ seems to say that Lirc ought to handle it - not yet for me, not sure how to set it up!

Frankly, my previous ASUS combo was close to a cakewalk. This one so far hasn't been close to as smooth for the basic stuff. If my older board had been mATX I'd have been happier sticking with it and an 8500. Stay tuned though, I'm not done and I might yet figure this out. I'm not the sort to give up easily

Okay, XBMC is at least running after the last recompile. 3FPS max, CPU at 50%, XBMC reportedly using only 3% of the CPU. Console is warning that "Some other thread is trying to leave our critical section". How depressing! This might be something other than the hardware here causing this, I'm not sure. If no one else is seeing issues like this than I'd say it's the video chipset\driver combo. I may throw the 8500 in tomorrow night and see how it does, I'll need to get or fab a low profile bracket for it :-(

Yah what motherboard are you using? if you're using the EVGA 7150/630i I got all the video and audio drivers working properly

nevermind I found what mb you're using. I am using the dvine mce303 as well and haven't yet gotten the vfd/ir working. I will keep trying but you mind keeping me updated on your progress? maybe by pm and I'll do the same.

BLKMGK Wrote:Okay, XBMC is at least running after the last recompile. 3FPS max, CPU at 50%, XBMC reportedly using only 3% of the CPU. Console is warning that "Some other thread is trying to leave our critical section". How depressing! This might be something other than the hardware here causing this, I'm not sure. If no one else is seeing issues like this than I'd say it's the video chipset\driver combo. I may throw the 8500 in tomorrow night and see how it does, I'll need to get or fab a low profile bracket for it :-(

gzusrawx Wrote:nevermind I found what mb you're using. I am using the dvine mce303 as well and haven't yet gotten the vfd/ir working. I will keep trying but you mind keeping me updated on your progress? maybe by pm and I'll do the same.

Not to worry I'll keep folks posted just bear in mind a Linux expert I am NOT. I did get it to allow a 1920X1080 mode last night - screen was hash but I could actually see the top menu bar for once I also THINK I've got the audio working using a different ALSA mixer I downloaded (grumble). I'll know for sure when the optical adapter shows up.

Looking it over it's loaded an "experimental" Intel video driver. Interestingly enough the EDID information showing up in the logs looks MUCH saner than what the damned NVIDIA driver reported I enumerated the USB bus and found a Falcon something or other device for the VFD. What is irritating is that if you go out to the manufacturer's WEB site they mention the possibility of having to reflash the VFD board for proper functionality. The troubleshooting of this being done via Windows of course. The retailer's promise of drivers for "other" OS as well as directions for modding the case for "high performance" power supplies is non-existent as well.

Let's just say that LATE last night when I rolled into bed I was NOT a happy camper. I hope that this afternoon I'll have my second wind and get moving on this. Last night I was pretty tempted to just go back to what I had that was working perfectly. As it is I may end up back using the NVIDIA card since I KNOW it works, I might even go for a different mATX board if the audio gives me too many issues. I had learning to do with the other board too but I thoguht I was mostly past all that.

Anyway, stay tuned if you're pondering this board and I'll try to explain what does and doesn't work. I am, of course, open to suggestions!

They do have a link to the irtrans driver for linux:
http://www.irtrans.de/en/download/linux.php

gzusrawx Wrote:They do have a link to the irtrans driver for linux:
http://www.irtrans.de/en/download/linux.php

Whoa, where was that? It says it's in the kernel but IRW says "connection refused." How should it be setup in Lirc? What they have included there is a couple of kernel diffs, that's not exactly terribly helpful...