2010-06-03, 18:06
Same question over here, ...which of these have the better upscaling capabilities ?
gunny75 Wrote:Hi all,
I have a popcorn hour 100 and I'm testing XBMC with a Zotac ion motherboard.
It's only my impression or the video are better on popcorn?
The upscaling seems to work better.
XBMC is the windows version.
Someone else have done other tests?
Thanks.
ubuntuf4n Wrote:poofyhairguy, is it also possible to do that tweaking with a windows machine?
poofyhairguy Wrote:Since it is basically a Blu Ray player without a Blu Ray drive, it has dedicated hardware meant just for the purpose of playing/upscaling video.
GJones Wrote:Just for comparison purposes, try XBMC Live on the Zotac. The Live (Linux) version has better video support on a standard install. Comparing a dedicated box to an install on top of Windows is a bit misleading.
moonwhaler Wrote:I actually had an A110 for about a year, but the lack of customizing, polished UI and broken support of some video content (which must have been some sort of error with the libs) led me to XBMC (which I already used on my XBOX) and some dedicated HW: Zotac ION-A, Linux (installed from LIVE!).
I would never (!) go back. Not even for money. ;-)
saratoga Wrote:So does the Ion. Thats why you can't just buy any Atom system. You need the dedicated hardware just for the purpose of playing and upscaling video.
poofyhairguy Wrote:A Popcorn Hour is a decoder chip surrounded by the minimum needed to give it an interface. It can't run a real OS, nor can it use the dedicated hardware to do anything but decode x264.
poofyhairguy Wrote:Not quite the same.
The ION is a real GPU.
poofyhairguy Wrote:The programable shaders can be used to decode x264 just as easily as they can be used to play Half Life 2 or to run Compiz. An ION box is a real computer.
poofyhairguy Wrote:It can't run a real OS,
poofyhairguy Wrote:nor can it use the dedicated hardware to do anything but decode x264.
poofyhairguy Wrote:It is true that Atoms combined with Intel GPUs don't have enough umph to decode x264, but I would consider adding the ION more a GPU upgrade than adding "dedicated hardware."
waldo22 Wrote:I know what you mean, but I wouldn't say that's really accurate re: "can't run a real OS".
The early Sigma chips were ARM, the newer ones are MIPS.
They can run Linux just fine, they just don't have a real GPU. 2D content can run quite happily on the latest Sigma boxes.