[WINDOWS] Broadcom Crystal HD integration support in XBMC for Windows?

What happens if you install and simply launch the arcsoft player (with no video loaded), minimize it, and then start up xbmc and play a video in xbmc?

The Arcsoft player can be downloaded here:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softw...ct=3943766

I have tried my chip in 7, Vista, and Linux, all are choppy unless I run the Arcsoft player in the background (well, couldn't test this on Linux, but did so on XP and 7)

Flash is even choppy using the 10.1 release candidate unless I have the arcsoft player loaded.

AustinPowersISU Wrote:What happens if you install and simply launch the arcsoft player (with no video loaded), minimize it, and then start up xbmc and play a video in xbmc?

The Arcsoft player can be downloaded here:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softw...ct=3943766

I have tried my chip in 7, Vista, and Linux, all are choppy unless I run the Arcsoft player in the background (well, couldn't test this on Linux, but did so on XP and 7)

Flash is even choppy using the 10.1 release candidate unless I have the arcsoft player loaded.

Hallo!

i will try that tonight and tell you asap.

Cheers,

TheCooK

TheCooK Wrote:Hallo!

i will try that tonight and tell you asap.

Cheers,

TheCooK

Any Luck?

Hi All. After reading davilla's blog post and reading this entire thread, I installed my bcm970012... just wanted to report my setup and results:

I have 2 Mac Mini 1.6 Core Duo machines with both Leopard and Windows 7 installed on both. One Mac Mini is connected to my Sony 46" 1080p TV with a DVI to HDMI cable and the other to another 1080p TV with the same type of cable. Like some others, I too read davilla's blog entry "Broadcom Crystal HD, It`s Magic." and ended up buying the bcm970012 from logicsupply with the high hopes that I'd just be able to pop it in and experience 1080p glory. So, I ordered 2 cards with DHL next day shipping to Canada and the total was USD 140.70( which ended up being $145 on my CC). It indeed came in the next day but there was a COD charge of $13.74 (taxes). I quickly opened up my Mac Mini and removed the wireless card and antenna and put the bcm970012 card in. If you've upgraded the RAM in your MAC Mini yourself, you can easily do this as it requires the same amount of work to get to the Mini PCIe card as it does to get to the RAM.

So, the card is in and I close up my mac mini and boot into windows 7. Win7 says it can't install the drivers automatically (can't remember the exact pop up baloon). I download the newest driver. (Go http://www.broadcom.com/support/license...._3.3.0.zip and accept the licence that pops up and download the zip file).
Unzip the file and run setup.exe in either the 32bit or 64bit folder depending on your OS. Go through the install and then make sure it's installed properly. I did this by going to Device Manager -> Sound, Video and game controllers -> and here I found "Broadcom CrystalHD Video Decoder". Next step was to install the latest nightly build (as already mentioned, I don't believe you need to upgrade to the latest build, but I did). I went http://mirrors.xbmc.org/nightlies/win32/ and downloaded the latest xbmc-r28256-trunk.exe . I made a backup of my userdata folder and installed the new build over the existing build. I launched XBMC -> Settings ->Videos -> Playback -> Changed Render Method to "Broadcom Crystal HD" . I then tried to play a 1080p mkv file (this file used to use almost 100% CPU and skip most frames in this setup) and click on "O" to see my CPU usage. WOW!! My little old 1.6GHz mac mini was playing this 1080p mkv with no skipped frames (besides the 10 it skipped right in the beginning) and utilizing avg 30% CPU usage. I had indeed received the Holy Grail of XBMC on a Mac Mini easily able to run 1080p.

There's only one "problem" I found. When in the menus of XBMC, there would be flashing/flickering (I'm using Transparency!). I had had this problem before and it was fixed by going in to Settings -> System -> Video Output and selecting "Use a fullscreen window rather than true fullscreen". (My "Display" is set to "1920x1080 @ 60.00 - Full Screen"). So I proceed to make this change and everything seems fine except when I go back to play that same 1080p mkv file, it's now skipping frames like a mofo... still using only 30% CPU but skipping several frames/sec. As it turns out, with "Use a fullscreen window rather than true fullscreen" enabled, I get skipping of frames on 1080p files (tried 3). So, now what I plan on doing (cause I really dislike the flickering) is leave the "Use a fullscreen window rather than true fullscreen" enabled most of the time and disable it when I need to play a 1080p file. I'm just soooo happy it worked that I don't mind this small inconvenience for the moment.

Thought I'd report my results and perhaps help some others with a similar setup make their decision. I'm certainly not sorry I took a $145 gamble... the results are MAGNIFICENT!!!

I've been reading the XBMC forums for a while now and it's saved my skin many times. I've just never had anything useful to add until now. I just wanted to give a shout out to the XBMC team. Your software was the decision behind me going completely digital in my video library and networking my condo so I could access my library via XBMC from anywhere. I couldn't be more sincere when I say THANK YOU!

AustinPowersISU Wrote:Any Luck?

Let me jump into this thread -- I'm working on the same problem.

Acer Aspire One 532h, Crystal HD bcm970012, Win 7 HP

I cannot get decent performance out of the Crystal HD chip using WMP, XBMC, or MPC-HT. The video will play, but the framerate is horrible. Oddly, the CPU usage is quite low even though the video is skipping horribly.

Enter Arcsoft MediaTheater. Installed it, and just ran the app. With it running in the background, my other media players now work great with the Crystal HD (XBMC included). I can have a video playing in XBMC, alt-tab to Arcsoft and close it, and the XBMC video starts skipping frames.

That's all I have so far. Arcsoft MT is changing something in the system when it runs, no idea yet what that is.

bluevolume Wrote:Let me jump into this thread -- I'm working on the same problem.

Acer Aspire One 532h, Crystal HD bcm970012, Win 7 HP

I cannot get decent performance out of the Crystal HD chip using WMP, XBMC, or MPC-HT. The video will play, but the framerate is horrible. Oddly, the CPU usage is quite low even though the video is skipping horribly.

Enter Arcsoft MediaTheater. Installed it, and just ran the app. With it running in the background, my other media players now work great with the Crystal HD (XBMC included). I can have a video playing in XBMC, alt-tab to Arcsoft and close it, and the XBMC video starts skipping frames.

That's all I have so far. Arcsoft MT is changing something in the system when it runs, no idea yet what that is.

Awesome, thanks for confirming.

I was starting to wonder if my Acer 532h was defective or if my Broadcom card was.

I wonder what the heck the arcsoft player does to fix this issue...

Edit: Just realized I never said previously that I have a 532h as well!

Acer Aspire One 532h + Crystal HD bcm970012

Tried Ubuntu 9.10 (10.04 was not out yet when I attempted this), WinXp, and Win7, all choppy unless Arcsoft Player loaded (cannot test this in Ubuntu).

AustinPowersISU Wrote:Awesome, thanks for confirming.

I was starting to wonder if my Acer 532h was defective or if my Broadcom card was.

I wonder what the heck the arcsoft player does to fix this issue...

Edit: Just realized I never said previously that I have a 532h as well!

Acer Aspire One 532h + Crystal HD bcm970012

Tried Ubuntu 9.10 (10.04 was not out yet when I attempted this), WinXp, and Win7, all choppy unless Arcsoft Player loaded (cannot test this in Ubuntu).

It seems pretty clear that there's some sort of configuration or incompatibility issue here. My 532h is a home-rolled Win 7 HP, so the fact that both of our systems are having this problem is pretty significant.

What's the next step in figuring this out? I have been launching/killing Arcsoft and monitoring for system changes and I haven't found anything yet. No changes in process priority, no services starting/stopping. Maybe if there was some mega system monitor tool that watched for any changes that could help narrow it down.

My thought? Arcsoft is setting some flag in the video subsystem that's giving the Crystal HD card the priority it needs.

AustinPowersISU Wrote:Awesome, thanks for confirming.

I was starting to wonder if my Acer 532h was defective or if my Broadcom card was.

I wonder what the heck the arcsoft player does to fix this issue...

Edit: Just realized I never said previously that I have a 532h as well!

Acer Aspire One 532h + Crystal HD bcm970012

Tried Ubuntu 9.10 (10.04 was not out yet when I attempted this), WinXp, and Win7, all choppy unless Arcsoft Player loaded (cannot test this in Ubuntu).

I too have an Acer Aspire One 532H (wow, three of us!) with the Crystal HD and am having the same exact issue.

With Arcsoft in the back playback is no longer choppy and freezing.

I can't thank you enough for finding this out!


I actually had a thread at Doom9 describing this issue, I will go tell them what you've found (with credit to you of course) and see if they have an idea what's going on so we can get this fixed in multiple players.


EDIT:

Flash is still choppy for me . . . AustinPowersISU, which browser and which RC are you using with Flash, and do you have to open them in a particular order to get it to work?

Glad I found this forum. I too was struggling with the 532H and Crystal HD. My Archos 504 could play H.264 better. Now with the TMT loaded and using any other playback software things are nice an smooth. Blu-Ray MKV, and 720P MKV work great. Adobe is still a bit choppy even with the newest 10.1RC6 release.

I guess the big question here is if it's just the 532H that's having the problem or not.