[karoshi99]

Got 12882 (XBMC 4 windows) installed and everything works fine except for playing any kind of video-file. The screen goes black but he sound is there. Menu's pops up and i can pause, ff and so on but still, pitch black.
Tried every setting and resolution without any luck.

The computer is a HP nx7400 with Intel 945GM chipset.

Anyone got a workaround or dirty fix?

[Phelps]

Got 12882 (XBMC 4 windows) installed and everything works fine except for playing any kind of video-file. The screen goes black but he sound is there. Menu's pops up and i can pause, ff and so on but still, pitch black.
Tried every setting and resolution without any luck.

The computer is a HP nx7400 with Intel 945GM chipset.

Anyone got a workaround or dirty fix?

I have the same problem with the current drivers, however an older version (7.14.10.1295) works fine for me.

-- Phelps

[wHack]

I find it interesting that the support for the intel 945 is next to non-existant I've even heard people suggest it isn't a good enough video card to run xbmc in the xbmc for windows forum, yet it's the most commonly used hadware for the osx xbmc port. Of course this really means little about how easy it is to get working in windows as the problem could well be a driver issue but it's kind of sux that you can't really run xbmc on a 945 under windows, despite the fact that obviously the hardware can handle it.

[Dudeman]

I find it interesting that the support for the intel 945 is next to non-existant I've even heard people suggest it isn't a good enough video card to run xbmc in the xbmc for windows forum, yet it's the most commonly used hadware for the osx xbmc port. Of course this really means little about how easy it is to get working in windows as the problem could well be a driver issue but it's kind of sux that you can't really run xbmc on a 945 under windows, despite the fact that obviously the hardware can handle it.

You're correct, it should work just fine, but it doesn't. I work for a computer manufacturer, and I've tried XBMC on dozens of notebooks and mobos with the 945 chipset and it's always the same, you can hear the audio track, but no video.

I do have a AOpen Mini MP965D (965 chipset with GMA X3100), and that works fine, but it should also work with GMA 950. I have a Mac Mini as well and that's based on the 945 chipset with GMA950 and it works great.

Something else I noticed is the PC version with X3100 exhibits an annoying amount of tearing in certain sequences (mostly horizontal movement), which is almost non-existent on my Mac Mini. My main PC with and nVidia card shows no tearing at all.

The short of it, is the 945 should work, and the 965 should work even better, but at the moment, the PC port seems to favor a higher end accelerated video card, and is not yet there on the integrated graphics, so it obviously needs more work.

[WiSo]

Just find a developer with OpenGL knowledge and recent hardware to find it out. All ports using more or less the same video renderer and I really can't say why it works on one platform but not on the other.
Please note we're no big enterprise which can test their software on all available hw.

[gryphon5]

After trying a very wide variety of Intel drivers on my Windows XP with no success, I decided to give up and install Ubuntu. XBMC works fine with this hardware under linux. Image tearing is present, but is reduced after enabling vsync. Although there is still an annoying 10-20 pixels at the top of the screen which still seems to tear independant to the rest of the video.

Anyway, that is off-topic for this forum

[WiSo]

Which more or less points to the drivers (even though I'm no expert here)

[Dudeman]

... All ports using more or less the same video renderer and I really can't say why it works on one platform but not on the other.
Please note we're no big enterprise which can test their software on all available hw.

So what you're saying is that the XBMC renderer taps directly into the OpenGL driver, and it is that driver's capabilities (or lack thereof) that we're dealing with. Hence until the drivers change, or someone writes a completely different driver, we're probably not going to see any changes to the video playback.

BTW, Intel is no longer updating the GMA 950 and earlier drivers, so we're probably screwed on that platform unless someone writes their own or hacks Intel's.

Testing is not a problem for me, as I have access to a variety of hardware. I can certainly help by trying XBMC on different platforms and give you feedback, but I'm not a programmer, so I can only report back what it does nor doesn't.

[nmirza]

dudeman, you said you have a mac mini with 945/950 chipset and xbmc windows works fine? i also have a mac mini c2d 2ghz, with 950 gma, but i also have the same problem of getting audio with no video. i've been trying using updated drivers sincei started using this about 3-4 months ago, but none of the drivers have worked so far. are you saying you got your mini to work with xbmc on win, or on osx? i also have no problems with os x but would like to get the windows port to be up and running.

in short, are we saying there is nothing team xbmc can do about the no video on 950 issue, and the only solution is to find a programmer to write drivers

[Dudeman]

dudeman, you said you have a mac mini with 945/950 chipset and xbmc windows works fine? i also have a mac mini c2d 2ghz, with 950 gma, but i also have the same problem of getting audio with no video. i've been trying using updated drivers sincei started using this about 3-4 months ago, but none of the drivers have worked so far. are you saying you got your mini to work with xbmc on win, or on osx? i also have no problems with os x but would like to get the windows port to be up and running.

in short, are we saying there is nothing team xbmc can do about the no video on 950 issue, and the only solution is to find a programmer to write drivers

I have a Mac Mini with a CoreDuo 1.66 and 945 chipset which works great with OSXBMC, not Win XBMC. I also have a MiniDuo MP965D from AOpen which uses the 965 chipset (GMA X3100), which works OK with Win XBMC, but shows some tearing in the video during horizontal movement.

Some people dismiss the GMA 950 as incapable of working in XBMC because it doesn't have some capability or functionality.

So my comment was that it works fine under OSX, but not Windows, so it must have something to do with programming not hardware. Wiso's reply seems to imply that the XBMC video player is the same on al platforms (Mac, Windows and Linux), so if one works and the other doesn't, it must be driver related.

I'll buy that, but Mac OSXBMC had a nearly identical problem early on, elan (the developer) was able to figure out and fix the blank screen playback.

The biggest problem, as I see it, is that the Intel 945/GMA950 is an old chipset which is no longer actively supported by Intel, and the drivers currently available (new and old) are probably gonna bit all there will ever be. But on the other hand, there are thousands of users with laptops, and desktops out there with this chipset that could benefit from someone looking into this and giving it a go.

I know the next comments will probably not go over very well with some people here, but perhaps, someone (hint, hint) should contact elan on the OSXBMC and ask him how he solved the GMA950 problem.

Yes I know that the current XBMC team and elan have had their issues and they forced him out of the team, but he is a very talented programmer and they could use his help.

Just my $0.02 on the subject.

[WiSo]

Some people dismiss the GMA 950 as incapable of working in XBMC because it doesn't have some capability or functionality.

I'll buy that, but Mac OSXBMC had a nearly identical problem early on, elan (the developer) was able to figure out and fix the blank screen playback.

I assume that we have already this changes in the renderer which of course is also in use on win32. The problem is that every driver may handle things differently and this makes things worse. So what you fix on one platform may break the other.
You need a full time guy with reasonable knowledge to find a workaround for all drivers and cards and that we don't have.

[sjhotz]

I got a Lenovo X60 with the 945 Express Chipset playing video!

Here is the odd thing... its running under Wine in Ubuntu 8.04 (lol!) Video performance and CPU usage is excellent! I got the idea after figuring out that the Ubuntu build would work as well if i just switched the Pixel Shader Method, odd thing is i would have to make a switch every time i started XBMC (and it didn't care which Pixel Shader i choose as long as it was switched and restarted) anyway, food for thought!

[WiSo]

Where did you do the pixel shader change?
I did also some tests on my mac mini with WinXP and it runs fine when I force it to use software rendering.
I'm no OpenGL expert but it looks like that the intel drivers report that the card support GL_ARB_fragment_program but still can't handle shaders (at least OpenGL shaders).
Any further thoughts?

[sjhotz]

It seems to be available under the Video Settings, under player, but only on the Linux Build (and of course the Original Xbox build), whats odd to me is that the Windows build installed via Wine under Ubuntu gives me Video with ZERO issues, just works period, no pixel shader switches required.

[Pukehead]

I have the same problem, black screen but sound and even subtitles.

MSI G31M2 (Intel G31 Express chipset)

Any idea how to get it play right under windows?