BD Rip Support for ATV + Broadcom Card
#16
If you have multiple clients for your video content than it does make sense to store on a NAS or a file server instead of wandering around with USB drives and trying to find out which one has a movie you need. However you need a Gigabit Ethernet network on the server side for that. The network device must be a switch not a hub. I am able to play a 1080p H.264 movies on my ATV with Crystal HD just fine from a file server over a wired Gigabit network even though the ATV itself only has 10/100 network adapter (shame!). Another benefit of playing over a network is somehow reading from the network is easier for a CPU (less CPU load) than from a local hard drive regardless of internal or USB. This is just my experience. I believe that on computers with more powerful CPUs that effect would not be noticeable but on less powerful comps like ATV or Atom-based it does make a difference.
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#17
The NAS consideration is generally valid but it depends on how may playing devices you have for a given content
In my case music and picture are shared to a number of clients but video is only played through the ATV so there is no point putting it on a NAS
A wireless N or a 100 mbit are sufficient for [email protected]
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#18
I've been considering getting a 2nd hand Apple TV and the Crystal card for some XBMC fun.

I noticed this thread and the issues with Planet Earth. I suspect this is related to playback issues of 1080i content in that the current driver is not de-interlacing this content correctly.

Can anyone confirm this?

I'm currently debating between ATV + Crystal or an Aspire Revo 1600 for some XBMC love.
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#19
voip-ninja Wrote:I've been considering getting a 2nd hand Apple TV and the Crystal card for some XBMC fun.

I noticed this thread and the issues with Planet Earth. I suspect this is related to playback issues of 1080i content in that the current driver is not de-interlacing this content correctly.

Can anyone confirm this?

I'm currently debating between ATV + Crystal or an Aspire Revo 1600 for some XBMC love.

Planet Earth rips are not deinterlaced, they are progressive. There are many, many rips of Planet Earth floating around. The ones that have wacky encoding ([email protected] with 16 ref frames) will give any system fits, CrystalHD is no exception.

I have heard of users playing the actual Planet Earth bluray (decrypted of course) without problem.
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#20
davilla Wrote:Planet Earth rips are not deinterlaced, they are progressive. There are many, many rips of Planet Earth floating around. The ones that have wacky encoding ([email protected] with 16 ref frames) will give any system fits, CrystalHD is no exception.

I have heard of users playing the actual Planet Earth bluray (decrypted of course) without problem.

Davilla,

Thanks for taking the time to respond. All of my Blu-ray content is ripped by me and stored in .mkv format. Typically I store the (original non-transcoded) video file, uncompressed HD audio file and a converted AC3 audio file and finally a subtitle file.

If I've been reading the threads correctly, these .mkv files should stream and play (with video at 1080p/24 or 1080p/60 of course) without frame drops, etc, over a 100MB LAN due to all the work you and others have done.

I am currently comparing getting Apple TV or an Acer AspireRevo for this job. The Revo is more powerful but a lot less elegant than the AppleTV (not to mention no integrated IR, etc).
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#21
voip-ninja Wrote:I am currently comparing getting Apple TV or an Acer AspireRevo for this job. The Revo is more powerful but a lot less elegant than the AppleTV (not to mention no integrated IR, etc).

I have both. The Revo is in my home theater, the ATV is in my bedroom. The Revo gets a lot more use. Primarily because I use boxee for their mlb.tv app and they don't support the CrystalHD card.

The ATV does look nicer (physically), but I don't find the Revo to be out of place. Neither does the wife.

I build my own XBMC and am running the latest SVN build on the Revo and the one before the merge on the ATV. The ATV playback still has a few issues (first play mostly, also an occasional hickup during playback). I haven't tried a new build on the ATV in quite some time... Davilla (if you're reading this) has that stuff been changed in SVN? Would it be adventageous to svn up? Running ubuntu on the ATV.

I do find the Revo to be a bit more versatile. I dual boot Ubuntu and Windows 7 so I can always boot into Windows and watch online flash videos accelerated (which works pretty well when our DVR misses something). But for the most part they both sit at the home screen of XBMC ready to go whenever.
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#22
Thanks for providing the extra feedback. I have PCH A200 right now and it fits most of my needs but of course has its own issues primarily due to the eternity it takes for Syabas to fix bugs or add features.

In current A200 firmware VC1 mkv playback is busted which is really annoying. They also have issues playing 1080 resolution .sub files.

All in all I like XBMC better (but like PCH convenience) ... just trying to find a cheap platform for XBMC to tinker with but would need to get relatively good playback performance or the wife will shoot me. Nod
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#23
Will it also play bluray ISO files? I have not been able to do that, it tries to play then ends without saying anything..
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#24
eelco69 Wrote:Will it also play bluray ISO files? I have not been able to do that, it tries to play then ends without saying anything..

XBMC has no support for BD ISO. It is possible under Windows through some image mounting tricks, but not possible on other platforms from what I'm aware of.
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BD Rip Support for ATV + Broadcom Card0