My Humax Forum » Freesat HD » FOXSAT HDR

Smooth playback of 1080i files from the Humax?

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    zeke

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    Hello there!

    I'm new to the forum. Borrowed a Humax Foxsat HDR a few days ago as a possible replacement for my Virgin Media TiVo. So far it's shaping up very well indeed.

    I'm looking to record the odd show or film in unencrypted 1080i50 HD format, with the intent of playing them back on my Acer Revo R3610 which has sufficient GPU power to hardware decode. Problem is, the handful of options I've tried have been flawed in one way or the other.

    I'm working with a 50m test file of a BBC HD Preview with various excerpts from broadcast programs. Here is what I have found so far.

    XBMC: Video/sound work, video is choppy on fast motion/quick cuts
    VLC: Video/sound work, video is unbearably choppy, no GPU decoding
    MPC: Video/sound work, video is smooth but with poor/no deinterlacing
    Win MP 12: Video works, no sound, deinterlacing good, slightly high CPU

    Ideally I'd like to get smooth playback via XBMC (which can sync screen refresh rate to source video) but failing that any alternatives would be fine for now.

    I've eliminated the network as a suspect because the same problems occur whether the file is streamed via SMB/FTP from the Humax or from the HDD on the Revo directly.

    Anyone who's been there, done that, I'd appreciate some tips! Thanks.

    | Wed 26 Sep 2012 12:58:39 #1 |
  2. REPASSAC

    REPASSAC

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    What power saving options is the Laptop set to?

    | Wed 26 Sep 2012 13:18:26 #2 |
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    zeke

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    It's a nettop running Windows 7 (32-bit), and there are no power saving options set - it's all either off or on high performance.

    Everything else plays perfectly on XBMC 11 (Eden), and quite well on MPC. Just 1080i50 .TS files from the Humax that seem to be causing problems.

    Oh, the XBMC team mentioned that XBMC 12 alpha builds have a newer version of FFmpeg. I tried the 25th September build and my test file works perfectly. I'd still like to try and get the other three players working though, for completion.

    | Wed 26 Sep 2012 14:03:30 #3 |
  4. REPASSAC

    REPASSAC

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    I mentioned the power saving as the default is "Balanced".

    From your origional post the problem seems to be on the laptop (as the problem exists when you play the file from laptop's hard disk).

    It might also be worth checking the display device driver to see if hardware acceleration in on.

    | Wed 26 Sep 2012 15:00:39 #4 |
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    zeke

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    Nah it's all good, power saving is completely off. I fine-tuned this little nettop myself when I got it a few months ago, it makes a good media centre set top box as it's quiet, fast enough and draws very little power even when pushed (35w or less). The short of it is, Acer Revo boxes are cheap enough to deploy under any TV and also function well as light desktop machines... I've barely used my laptop/main desktop since I got it.

    Problem definitely isn't the nettop because as mentioned this playback choppiness occurs when streaming from the Humax drive as well, plus moving to XBMC 12 beta fixes the problem. Interestingly I can also back up recordings to my EXT3 formatted external drive and play them through my Samsung LE32C530 without issues as well.

    | Thu 27 Sep 2012 20:39:43 #5 |

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