XBMC for PC out now!

[sj33]

Posting this because I know a fair few people here uses modded XBoxes for XBMC. The first beta for Windows, Linux, Mac and self-booting on PC (ideal for a dedicated HTPC) is available! It's also available in standard XBox flavour.

http://xbmc.org/blog/2008/09/18/xbmc-atlantis-beta-1-released-now-serving-all-common-platforms/

Initial impressions are positive! Has all the impressive features and functionality people are used to with XBMC, without being limited by the hardware. Tested a few videos and it played them fine, codec support is obviously excellent because it uses libavcodec/ffmpeg.

For a challenge, I tried a really awkward video I have, a .avi 960x1080i file, with the aspect ratio forced to 16:9 in the header. Media Player Classic HomeCinema plays this fine, Winamp fails to get the aspect ratio right. XMBC gets the aspect ratio right... but doesn't seem to deinterlace the file properly (XviD-compressed interlaced video is very rare). Impressive for a first beta, however.

Also partially supports the media remote for my Dell m1330 laptop out of the box. Menu functionality works fine, though it must use non-standard playback control hotkeys because this does not work.

Requests for the future -

1) Remap hotkeys, so 100% functionality with all media remotes can be achieved.
2) ASIO sound! Currently Winamp is the only video player that supports this!

EDIT - I just took a quick pic of it in action on my laptop -

[charlesr]

Forgot about this. Was going to try it out. I'll give it a shot, see if it plays .m2ts HD files straight off my pany hD vidcam.

[charlesr]

Didn't load properly (was trying the boot image CD). I'll try burning another one, but the it verified the data first time

[charlesr]

Oh well, didn't work on my PC or my laptop. Did a little booting on both and then blinking curson on the PC and xbmcLive login on the laptop, but I couldn't type the login. Not so much beta as alpha?

[sj33]

I've actually not tried the LiveCD version. Have you tried the Windows version?

It'll play .m2ts files if libavcodec/ffmpeg have the relevent codecs (which it should) and a splitter for the container (which it may or may not). Be useful if you could get it to use DirectShow splitters.

[charlesr]

Is there any chance of it screwing with my current codecs? If so then it's going nowhere near my PC. I once installed ffdshow and I couldn't get corecodec working after that. Big pain. At least at the mo I can watch m2ts in media player classic homecinema....

[charlesr]

I've even not installed Nerovision/showtime because of the same problem. All codecs should have a proper interface built into the OS that you can set priority in once installed. Like fonts.

[sj33]

To get CoreCodec working, you just need to disable the H.264 support in ffdshow. But I'm 99% sure XBMC uses it's own internal codecs.

[charlesr]

Had a go and everything still works fine in mpc. m2ts are slow and have a weird interlacing effect in xbmc though Like it's tearing every 1mm.

[sj33]

You could try disabling VSync, as I find this plays havoc with videos. It's bizzarely enabled by default in XBMC.

Also, I've yet to find any configuration for enable/disabling deinterlacing

[charlesr]

Looked on the forum. ffmpeg isn't up to it yet according to the devs, but hopefully will have caught up with coreavc at the start of the year. Will try installing again then.

[sj33]

Depends what specification machine you're running it on. ffmpeg should be fine for most modern machines, though CoreAVC is a real advantage on older machines.

[charlesr]

3800+ dual core 2ghz. So not really up to the job. But surely the ffmpeg should just be slow and jerky. Not look completely rubbish. Every time the camera pans left or right, it smears in a really werid way. Like someone's drawing a comb across it. It's fine with coreavc. It looks great when played back via the camera on to the TV direct too. Perhaps a deinterlacing thing (i tried the vsync which made no difference).

[sj33]

I suspect the deinterlacing must be very much WIP. The file I tested in the opening post (a weird 960x1080i XviD file, AR forced to 16:9 in the header) fails to deinterlace. My .VOB files do deinterlace, but not to the calibur that ffdshow does it. I guess this should be taken as beta, and hopefully the various issues we've found and mentioned will be sorted.

[charlesr]

Yeah. Fingers crossed.