Hardware for a FAST, RESPONSIVE user experience?
#31
poofyhairguy

Thanks for the info. I am considering a HTPC, but I haven't decided what is important to me. I need to figure out if xbmc can do everything that I want it to.

Chris.
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#32
poofyhairguy Wrote:AH HA! I figured it out!

What you are experiencing is not the limitations with the ION, its the limitations of XBMC's underlying playback engine.

I promise you everything you experience- the "slow start," the "initial stutter after play/pause," and the "random stutter after scene change."- happen no matter what platform you use.

In fact, VDPAU handles it MUCH better than the alternatives. With CPU decoding, after the initial start on a Blu Ray rip you see visual tears that make VDPAU's slight slowdown seem mild in comparison. With an AppleTV + broadcom the slowness after play/pause lasts twice as long. Actually as far as covering XBMC's flaws, ION does pretty good.

Hmm that's good info - I had figured it was ION but there you go. My gut feeling is that a lot of the smooth video syncing stuff is causing the stuttering as there are little error jumps to 100%, and there's quite a bit about timestamping causing issues as well. I am sure that it will get better and better over time, and as I say - certainly not enough to hold one back from the system as a whole.

Thanks for the input, I clearly don't have enough systems to play with Smile
Addons I wrote &/or maintain:
OzWeather (Australian BOM weather) | Check Previous Episode | Playback Resumer | Unpause Jumpback | XSqueezeDisplay | (Legacy - XSqueeze & XZen)
Sorry, no help w/out a *full debug log*.
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#33
poofyhairguy Wrote:If you want:

-Quiet

-And guaranteed futureproof

Then your only real option is a Micro ATX setup. I will tell you right now it won't play the files better than an ION box can today, but with a Micro ATX setup you can add in a new GPU at some point to take advantage of future GPU technologies (3D, HD bitstreaming, etc.).

Micro ATX is also good in that if you do it right (doing it right is getting a case with no fan smaller than 120mm) it can be more quiet than smaller boxes by a lot.

My last main HTPC was Micro ATX based and was silent. I gave it up because of the one disadvantage of Micro ATX - size.


What has your experience been with poorly encoided MKV or AVI files on the ION platform? My assumption (which my be wrong) has been that if it's not encoded properly a higher end CPU/GPU combo can crunch through the issue and still play the file back with few hiccups, while a less powerful machine would be struggling to play the content back.
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#34
CrashnBrn Wrote:What has your experience been with poorly encoided MKV or AVI files on the ION platform? My assumption (which my be wrong) has been that if it's not encoded properly a higher end CPU/GPU combo can crunch through the issue and still play the file back with few hiccups, while a less powerful machine would be struggling to play the content back.

I will talk about XBMC Live here, as I think that applies best to understanding what works and why.

Well Avi/Divx on ION just uses the Atom CPU, just like everything else. Divx upscaling for ION2 is currently not working in XBMC. So that is no different between platforms, the Atom is more than enough for divx. Which is good, as there are more terrible divx encodes out there than anything.

For x264, mkvs and m2ts files, as you know there are many different kinds. The professionally encoded ones (straight Blu Ray rips) work on ION as well as anything else with VDPAU, and better than CPU anything.

With poorly encoded stuff its a mixed bag. ION will play everything, unlike the Broadcom card that has many displace artifacts with those rips. In fact, ION does amazingly well: playing pretty much every encode I throw at it with more ease than any CPU setup (and I've thrown a quad 3.0 GHZ Intel at it) I have seen. VDPAU works amazing for poorly encoded stuff, and shows that Nvidia really has a good decoding backend. I have tons of rip (like 1000+) and 99% work great.

The ONLY place I have seen a CPU setup provide a superior decode (the 1%) is when the x264 video is more than encoded poorly- when its a bunch of x264 videos spliced poorly. One place this is often seen is with OTA HD videos of older stuff where the movie has the commercial breaks crudely taken out.

In these cases the VDPAU backend stops the movie at those points, while in some cases a CPU decoding setup will "power through." Yet for me these rips are so rare that when I encounter them I just remux the mkv for good measure. That usually fixes the problem.

Seriously, GPU based decoding as provided by ION and NVidia really work well. I used to be REALLY against hardware based decoding (based on inadequacies I know hardwired boxes like PCHs and AppleTVs have), but VDPAU has convinced me.

One final note: When VDPAU is enabled, it barely needs any extra CPU. A single core Atom can honestly do the job. So there is no way extra CPU helps, the only really to have extra CPU is for menus and when VDPAU doesn't apply like with Flash content.

That is why I think the ION is such a safe play. And it gets safer as time goes by:

http://www.linuxtech.net/news/VDPAU_Supp...lugin.html

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#35
^^^ Thanks so much for the awesome reply, I'm learning so much from reading your posts!
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#36
Seriously great posts, thanks so much!

So it sounds like for loading up the music/movie libraries and navigating a graphic-heavy interface, the SSD makes the biggest difference? That helps a ton!

What about operating system? I'm a Windows user, not a fanboy, I just really don't feel I have the time or the inclination to familiarize myself with another operating system (this HTPC/network project is taking all my free time)!

If I go with a powerful i-series processor, a good graphics card and a SSD, will I be shooting myself in the foot by loading Windows 7 and XBMC together? Or can I achieve similar results to a LIVE installation by tweaking processes, etc?
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#37
jaydash Wrote:Seriously great posts, thanks so much!

So it sounds like for loading up the music/movie libraries and navigating a graphic-heavy interface, the SSD makes the biggest difference? That helps a ton!

What about operating system? I'm a Windows user, not a fanboy, I just really don't feel I have the time or the inclination to familiarize myself with another operating system (this HTPC/network project is taking all my free time)!

If I go with a powerful i-series processor, a good graphics card and a SSD, will I be shooting myself in the foot by loading Windows 7 and XBMC together? Or can I achieve similar results to a LIVE installation by tweaking processes, etc?

If I can quote poofyhairguy

Quote:An i7 has enough CPU power to rip through anything on just the CPU. Heck, so does an i3.

But for most of us, we don't want to use CPU power- we want GPU power.

The only reason to go the CPU route is if you are doing something other than XBMC, such as Netflix streaming or whatever.

From my understanding with an ION machine, Linux or XBMC Live will be the way to go due to the VDPAU decoding. I'm in a similar boat, I'm a hardcore Windows guy, but will definitely take the plunge to Linux and ION when XBMC 10 comes out

I don't think you will be shooting yourself in the foot but doing Win7 + XBMC, but if you are just looking for a XBMC machine, that box will be overkill, as an ION machine can do the same.

On a side note, from the posts that I have read, depending on the computer you build getting everything setup in Live may require a bunch of reading and tweaking.
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#38
I am a big XBMC Live (aka Linux fan). For me Windows 7 is not as good because:

1. The price of the license

2. (Most important) Its easier to make a Linux XBMC box feel more like an appliance. That means it will be easier for guests to use (especially if you spring for a Harmony), and will seem more "store bought."

Either OS technically works fine though.

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#39
But...........


If you got like a € 1000,- euro's to spend for a HTPC ?


Would that influence your hardware pick, for a quiet and fast system ?
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#40
poofyhairguy Wrote:especially if you spring for a Harmony

Why is that? What does the Harmony do that the MCE remote doesn't?

TIA
Steve
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#41
Control the whole setup, rather than just the PC.
[i.e. TV, Amp, other set-top boxes etc etc]

Plus you have a lot more scope for mapping buttons to extended functions within XBMC - more than just the basics that MCE caters for - plus you can string processes together in a `macro` type idea
[e.g. Power on TV, PC, Amp, switch input/output channels on each with a single button press]
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#42
kurai Wrote:Control the whole setup, rather than just the PC.
[i.e. TV, Amp, other set-top boxes etc etc]

Plus you have a lot more scope for mapping buttons to extended functions within XBMC - more than just the basics that MCE caters for - plus you can string processes together in a `macro` type idea
[e.g. Power on TV, PC, Amp, switch input/output channels on each with a single button press]

yup - that'll make it a much nicer experience! Smile
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#43
Just want to thank this thread for the information - I am on the brink of clicking that submit button on an order based on some of the responses here...its helped a lot to get my head around the HTPC soup!

Its going to be a linux based Athlon II x2 250 with a silent Nvidia GT220 (or 40) GPU and a small SSD for the OS in the Silverstone GD05B box... more details later, I guess I'll start a new thread to do a quick spec check and ask some dumb questions before I pull the trigger; but no rush, I still have some time to read up some more before pay day Wink

so: THANKS Big Grin
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#44
Is there really an advantage to go ION 2 vs ION 1?

Also, is "NVIDIA® Next-Generation ION" the ION 2?
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#45
As far as i heard, main hit of the ion2 is ability to automatically switch ION on/off. So if you don't need ION in the moment, it will switch to intel chipset to save power.

And i also heard that ION2 is actually slower than ION.
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Hardware for a FAST, RESPONSIVE user experience?0