[joelgoodman]

I have the same Foxconn unit. Two questions:

1) Does SSD makes a difference compared to running it from a SD card? I took the harddisk out and installed everything on a 8GB SD card.

2) Anyone tried the Bios upgrade without Windows? Does it work with the link provided in one of the posts?

@Ninjahblu is right. I did an update at the bottom of my post here.

[Hannes The Hun]

1) Does SSD makes a difference compared to running it from a SD card? I took the harddisk out and installed everything on a 8GB SD card.

pro: an SSD will increase the overall speed of the system a lot compared to the SDCARD, not only boot times but also navigation in library etc.

con: running the system without any SATA disk installed dramatically improves airflow and cooling of the system so you *might* notice a somewhat increased fan noise.

as for the con: the BIOS update vastly improves the thermal management of the netbox so this shouldn't be a big issue anymore. to make sure, you can either get the small kingston 30GB SSD and only install the very small PCB inside of it, or have the netbox running with the lid open. I have to add that neither of these measures was necessary for my netbox with an intel 40GB SSD inside after the BIOS was updated.

all in all, the foxconn is one of the smallest and most ideal barebone ion systems out there IMHO. love the little sucker.

[sebj]

can't get 512mb of vram so I can't get my mythtv hdpvr recordings to play at speed or files from my cannon 7d for that matter....

Sucks big time....

Probably cheaper to get a broadcom crystal hd card than pay restocking fees, and buying 4gb of ram to get the 512 mb of vram is pretty ridiculous

It's better in maverick but come on.... the bios sucks

[Hannes The Hun]

sorry to hear that, can only say that the allocated 256MB are enough for the "usual" 1080p mkv ripz or even untouched material while I really don't understand why foxconn just won't have the additional 512MB option in the BIOS

for "special" files such as yours it might be worthwhile to use Ion2 which has 512MB dedicated GPU RAM or build a custom HTPC

[sebj]

Yep,

I can play a 1080p mkv rip on the box@256mb, but only if I set XBMC@720p.

I can play back(xbmc@720p) 23.98fps files from canon dslrs, which is pretty brutal constant 45mbps, but can't seem to reliably get 720p@60fps from my hdpvr mythtv backend to play. Tops around 40-50fps, but I did get them to play, must have changed a setting or something.

Anyways, just throwing it out there for people contemplating the box, Like you said, if I would have known, I would have gotten an ION2 (which was like 20 bucks extra)

[Ninjahblu]

sorry to hear that, can only say that the allocated 256MB are enough for the "usual" 1080p mkv ripz or even untouched material while I really don't understand why foxconn just won't have the additional 512MB option in the BIOS

for "special" files such as yours it might be worthwhile to use Ion2 which has 512MB dedicated GPU RAM or build a custom HTPC

Hannes, can I ask you what your specific configuration settings are for XBMC? I'm able to play 720p mkv rips, but a 1080p file has noticeable frame skips that make the movie almost unwatchable.

I'm sure increasing a the VRAM in the BIOS would help if the machine allowed it, but this shouldn't be an issue as a Revo 1600 can play 1080p files with only 1gb of ram and a single core Atom, correct?

[sebj]

has noticeable frame skips that make the movie almost unwatchable.

I know the question wasn't addressed to me but I though I'd share a couple ideas.

The 330i@256mb of vram can play about anything I can throw at it provided I set the video scaler to either auto or bilinear. I liked lanczos3optimized on my other machine but this one doesn't seem to like it.

But the kicker is this : XBMC has to run at 720p.

My hypothesis is that, because of bios limitations, you would have to put a 4 gig stick of ram to get a 1080p xbmc gui, and thus, 1080p playback.

This bios option is so effing retarded, every other ion box seems to have it so didn't think twice when buying it.

I guess it's 720p XBMC until/IF Foxconn releases another bios. They apparently are witholding the bios for stability reasons. I'd give it a shot, ain't running windows, so that helps right of the bat.

[Hannes The Hun]

no special settings whatsoever, just standard XBMCbuntu lucid64 installation with current nvidia drivers from x-swat repo. scaling is set to bilinear and XBMC running at 1080p@50hz, smooth playback, 2GB RAM and 256MB assigned to Ion. no dropped frames, smooth 1080p sailing. honestly I'd love to help you but with my box "it just works"

[sebj]

Hannes,

thanks for clearing that up. I'm running 32bit xbmc live.

If you wouldn't mind, can you try playing a couple clips?

http://www.steventoth.net/blog/products/...ecordings/

try the 720p 5.1 clip, that's basically what my mythtv records at.

If you can play this no drops, I might have to try it your way rather than xbmclive/freak.

I get a drop frame every couple seconds it seems pc:none->pc:1= drop

thx

[Hannes The Hun]

I'll give it a try this evening. do you see the dropped frames when pressing "o" or is it your impression?

add.: well, there's definitely something wrong here. might be some incompatibilities between your recordings and VDPAU as I can see absolutely no cause why the box should be dropping frames like mad. I have demo material here such as the samsung BD sound helicopter m2ts in 1080p and this stuff runs smoothly!

case in point, we need mediainfo for the files and some more experienced mythtv/xbmc devs to see what's going on there. interesting bit: with my notebook, the windows media player has the exact same stuttering and frame dropping while VLC playback is smooth. there's some codec problem going on here, not related to netbox performance.

@ninjablue: when talking about "frame skips", do you actually see dropped frames in the counter?

[sebj]

Ok so I'm obsessively working on this at the moment, and yes I think I'm progressing here. Your idea about a codec issue really go me thinking so I tried 1080p xbmc again. The more likely fact that I switched of lanczos3optimized, means that I can play my canon files (45mbps h.264) and a bad ass Avatar rip no problem.

we need mediainfo for the files and some more experienced mythtv/xbmc devs to see what's going on there.

If anyone wants to take a look that file is basically what I'm struggling with here.

Been using xbmc for a while, and it took a while for the hdpvr mythtv files to play correctly, and there were some regressions from time to time. Recent releases were solid though, and I don;t even install mythfrontend anymore.

There seems to be a thread about pc:none http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=77014

Don't want to hijack the thread though. Appreciate you taking the time to peek though

Basically, I think the main culprit was using scaling options, the xbmc home screen is smoother at 720p than 1080p but it's definately good enough.

That mythtv stuff is perplexing though, @720p xbmc that 720p@60fps play at 60fps but it skips a frame ever 1 or 2 seconds, but @1080p playback tops out at 48ish frames a second.

[joelgoodman]

@ninjablue: when talking about "frame skips", do you actually see dropped frames in the counter?

Like Ninja, with standard XBMCLive (Dharma b4) I get for real dropped frames in the counter - though it's only some 1080p files - others are fine. Might need to use your XBMCbuntu tutorial thread to see if that works out better for me.

[Ninjahblu]

Hannes, yes. The counter showed frequent drops on the 1080p mkv. I was playing a 720p h264 encoded movie earlier, this played fine with maybe one or two hiccups during the entire film. I'm sure the nettop can definitely do better.

I'm using XBMCFreak beta 3. Dharma beta 4 gave me several issues with mkv playback in general.

It looks intimidating, but I'll try XBMCbuntu guide in Hannes signature when I have a chance. I'm not giving up on this puppy yet!

[Hannes The Hun]

the thing is that we had serious problems with only 256MB assigned back in the old camelot (9.11) days but that was fully fixed in the meantime though with some files you can actually reach the limit of what VDPAU can do with the assigned RAM. I'm just curious as there are absolutely no performance problems the way I installed XBMC on that machine.
granted, the foxconn guys should just pull their heads out of their asses and give us the 512MB option just like any other Ion system.

the dropped frames sebj is experiencing have nothing to do with the limited GPU RAM, I bet he'll experience this also with XBMC on Ion2, there's some codec problem going on. my very potent notebook did exactly the same frame skipping in windows media player while VLC had smooth playback.

[sebj]

Hannes,

by any chance, did you try the sample on your 330i?

If it works, I'll XBMCbuntu the box for sure

thx!