Quote:
Originally Posted by
srauly 
So I finally decided to upgrade my old Panasonic PT-AE700U (720p LCD) projector. I first tried an Epson 3010 (1080p LCD w/3D), but had mixed feelings about the 3D and was unhappy about the lack of lens shift (I guess I'm just lazy, because I didn't want to have to reposition my current ceiling mount). I then tried an Epson 8350 (1080p LCD, no 3D) and have been quite happy with that over the last week, but I'm still considering returning that and trying one or two other projectors. In any case, the upgrade caused me to make 1080p content a higher priority in my life, so I've been rethinking my previous plan of using Handbrake to convert all of my straight 1080p MKV Blu-ray rips to downscaled 720p MP4 format. I may still use Handbrake to convert them to 1080p MP4's, keeping quality quite high, just so that I can still maintain backward compatibility with my jailbroken ATV2's (with XBMC) for other rooms in the house. Ideally, I'd have the movies in a 1080p MP4 format that could be played from the stock ATV2 interface for these other rooms, but my previous attempts at doing so resulted in non-smooth playback on the ATV2, and I suspect that even if I could get it to work, I'd have to sacrifice quality (i.e., over-compress them) which would then be more noticeable on the Revo hooked up to my projector.
That's a lot of background leading up my main reason for bumping this thread, which is to say that I upgraded my Win7 Revo to the latest beta of XBMC yesterday, and it looks like it's working quite nice. My straight MKV rips seem to be playing very well, and even forced subtitles seem workable (my old Avatar rip plays them by default, but leaves them on the screen too long, and my Iron Man rip required me to select a different subtitle track to get *just* the forced subtitles to show). It's possible that one or both of these issues may be fixed by re-ripping Avatar (i.e., the version of MakeMKV I used at the time may have caused me some problems), and the Iron Man issue may just require that I re-mux the forced subtitle track (and only that track) back into the MKV.
I did encounter some poor playback initially, but that seems to have been fixed by me changing some of the settings inside XBMC (e.g., true fullscreen mode, not windowed, and some other default setting that I needed to change - I think related to DXVA). It's also possible that I was encountering some issues due to having recently rebooted the Revo, so perhaps some background processes were still running. I did still encounter a pause in Avatar when the Navi started speaking and the forced subtitles displayed, but it didn't seem to be a deal-killer. We ended up watching two movies in their entirety (Iron Man 2 and Cars 2) and I don't recall seeing any playback issues or non-smoothness, so it looks like I won't have to resort to buying a WDTV Live, though I am still intrigued by that since it's fanless, very portable, and should be able to play all of this high-bitrate content as well.
Glad to hear.
Make sure you load Nvidias drivers versus the stock MS drivers. The GPU Driver actually contains the HDMI audio driver too now.
The following really helped me with getting rid of disk trashing and misc background BS which just bogs down the poor Atom and slow HDD that comes in the revo.
no virus scan
no security essentials
no defrag
no swap file/VM disabled (i have 4G RAM)
no restore points
no windows search service
no MS UPNP
turning off all this BS really helped the responsiveness of XBMC by getting rid of a bunch of BS background IO that was slowing the system.
Adding a $40 32G SSD made a big difference. That same drive with a Sandy Bridge CPU/Mobo combo boots XBMC in 18 seconds!
I am trying the new beta as well and it has issues... like the stock new skin
but BTW: Check out the NEON Skin
much better on Sandy Bridge than Atom/Ion but its by far the coolest skin I've ever seen......
and BTW: I like my 8100 which was $1100 2 years ago.Bought the 8500UB first and liked so much I couldn't resist trying the 8100 as a 50" plasma killer (which it is) but I still like my 8500UB much better but it costs 2x the price for better color and blacks... If you can afford it up the ante to a $3K budget and its get more interesting especially with JVC in the low end now. The 8100UB is used with a 92" screen in main liviing area in california and the 8500 in the UT basement theater. I dont like the adjust wheels on the epson compared to my previous Sanyo. The Sanyo's had a locking mechanism so they didn't constantly move around (PITA). I am constantly having to tweak the PJ from the bass I guess. I would not buy a projector without decent zoom and lens shift which eliminates a lot of the value leader DLPs.
BTW: Great service experience from Epson. bulb died less than 1 year in and they sent me a brand new bulb free. said they had some issues with premature failure and they would cover it. I was quite suprised and very happy. The 8500 developed a known red blotch issue 1 year in and they fedex'd me a new unit and a label to return the old one. again no bs.
