2010-01-25, 21:11
There is an ongoing thread here that I am participating in that covers a new feature that may be implemented in XBMC sometime in the future. The feature is using a compression type called DXT or .dds files to compress fanart (and possibly other images in the future) instead of the typical jpeg files in .tbn containers. The advantage of this is that .dds files can be decompressed by GPU instead of CPU and significantly improves performance in low cpu-power machines such as the ION ones that have become increasingly popular.
I have implemented this in my own ASRock 330 Pro and have seen a significant gain in GUI speed while browsing through movies and tv shows. For example, using the standard .tbn files, scrolling through a large list of movies in Multiplex view using Aeon65 maxed out the CPU and the GUI fps dropped to around 10. Using .dds files, scrolling uses less than half of the cpu and fps stay above 20.
I would love to see this fully supported in XBMC, but as of right now it is extremely early in development stages. It was originally implemented in October '09 as a test to see if it was worth developing further and has only recently gotten a Feature Request on Trac. I am encouraging everyone who may be interested in this to check out the thread I linked (please read through the whole thing) and keep the interest level in this feature high to encourage future development.
I have implemented this in my own ASRock 330 Pro and have seen a significant gain in GUI speed while browsing through movies and tv shows. For example, using the standard .tbn files, scrolling through a large list of movies in Multiplex view using Aeon65 maxed out the CPU and the GUI fps dropped to around 10. Using .dds files, scrolling uses less than half of the cpu and fps stay above 20.
I would love to see this fully supported in XBMC, but as of right now it is extremely early in development stages. It was originally implemented in October '09 as a test to see if it was worth developing further and has only recently gotten a Feature Request on Trac. I am encouraging everyone who may be interested in this to check out the thread I linked (please read through the whole thing) and keep the interest level in this feature high to encourage future development.
