ASUS Eee Box with Intel GMA 950 integrated graphics as a XBMC hardware platform?

xbs08 Wrote:"Without hardware decode assist for any of the HD video codecs the Eee Box’s Atom processor is left to do all decoding on its own, and unfortunately it’s not fast enough to decode any high bitrate HD video. In our testing we found that the 1.6GHz Atom was fast enough to decode a 4.5Mbps 720p H.264 stream at around 90% CPU utilization; anything more complex and we started seeing dropped frames. 1080p HD movies are completely out of the question. The CPU is fast enough to play 720p XviD/DivX however."

anandtech.com

I lll have to play to see if this is true - it didnt seem laggy when I played the 720 content but that is why i put in a SSD and some memory, faster access between hard drive and RAM.

as for audio, i didnt know it has special line out jack, i was gonna get a USB 5.1 audio and see how that worked.

My main reason for using the eeebox is reduce the number of moving parts that is one of the reasons i put in the SSD. I only play network items and nothing is stored locally.

bond007taz Wrote:I lll have to play to see if this is true - it didnt seem laggy when I played the 720 content but that is why i put in a SSD and some memory, faster access between hard drive and RAM.

as for audio, i didnt know it has special line out jack, i was gonna get a USB 5.1 audio and see how that worked.

My main reason for using the eeebox is reduce the number of moving parts that is one of the reasons i put in the SSD. I only play network items and nothing is stored locally.

plays 720 h264 files just fine, it doesnt like 1080 though - it will play but not well

bond007taz Wrote:when I played the 720 content but that is why i put in a SSD and some memory, faster access between hard drive and RAM.

correct me if I am wrong, but the extra ram and SSD drive are not really the bottleneck it is going to be the CPU...upgrading them will not make a significant difference in CPU throughput

Saying it works on 720p is one thing but it in the end bitrate is going to be more telling than 720p...when mine arrives and I get some time I will post results @ various bitrates. might be a week or two so if someone else has one, it would be interesting to step up the bit rates until playback faltered....

troutbum Wrote:...when mine arrives and I get some time I will post results @ various bitrates. might be a week or two so if someone else has one, it would be interesting to step up the bit rates until playback faltered....

Hi troutbum, curious if you had a chance to do some testing yet? Despite a bunch of searching the forum I can't seem to find a conclusive answer as to whether the latest ATOM chips can decode the common 720p mkv videos out there...

I'm also looking for a definitive answer on this. Considering buying this and running it with aeon or aeon lite, playing 720p h.264 mkv's. Any idea on how that setup would work?

ADDED: Would upgrading to a 330 dual core atom change anything?.
McQ

In this Anandtech review, there is mention that the chipset on Eee box does not support hardware H.264/MPEG-2/VC1 decode acceleration, while Poulsbo (the mobile Atom chipset) does it.

http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc...i=3321&p=4

Does that mean that an EEE PC 900 would perform better than the EEE Box?

lepreshawn Wrote:In this Anandtech review, there is mention that the chipset on Eee box does not support hardware H.264/MPEG-2/VC1 decode acceleration, while Poulsbo (the mobile Atom chipset) does it.

http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc...i=3321&p=4

Does that mean that an EEE PC 900 would perform better than the EEE Box?

Unless the specific decoding chipset was supported by Linux, in particular FFMPEG, it won't matter.

Ive bought a EEE-box now, and sadly it struggles with the common 720p.mkv files.. I get arund 15-20 fps while playing back movies, and almost 100% cpu usage. Idle with the mediastream skin CPU usage is around 60%.

Does anyone have any bright ideas on what I can do to fix the lag? Ill fiddle with this a bit more, but unless its solved fast its back to mediaportal. CoreAVC is waaay better then ffmpeg, and since I can't choose what codec to use in XBMC, then I have no other choice..

I have a more then capable HTPC right now btw, but its way to loud.. So its been moved out of my bedroom, and it degraded to a fileserver for now This EEE-box is so silent I can bareley hear it when everything else is off.. If it would only work with 720p files

I found only one sollution.. CoreAVC. I get an average of 60%(some peaks above 80% tho) CPU usage with a normal scene 720p .mkv tv rip. With XBMC I had CPU usage at almost 100% and dropped frames like no tomorrow.

So its back to MP.. I guess if XBMC gives me the ability to change codecs before MP2 is released, then I might come back.

XBMC is awesome, but with that new slow HTPC, mp is the way for me.

Hope this was informative for those of you wondering about using this PC for XBMC..

Since i always read in the XBMC for MAC forums that the Apple TV can handle 720p content very good, i am a little bit surprised that the EEEbox is slower than the Apple TV it seems...