LinuxMCE Forums
General => Installation issues => Topic started by: krys on July 07, 2009, 08:37:42 pm
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Just wanted to let you guys know that I got my zotac board booted up as a MD yesterday and that I have started a wiki to show the steps necessary.
http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/ZOTAC_ION
I will post anything I come across both here and on the wiki page.
-Krys
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krys,
I have a 330 board myself with 1,5GB RAM (512MB allocated to GPU).
For the 330 you need to attach the included fan otherwise it become really hot.
If you have chosen MythTV as pvr in lmce you will automatically get mythtv 0.21 with vdpau if using avenard repository.
Does it work fine for you?
I experience some difficulties. Mythfrontend hang for no apparent reason. Might be because of bad dvb-t reception or some other bug in mythtv_plugin.
The other thing that you also get from avenard repo is mplayer with vdpau support.
So far I have no been able to successfully play any m2ts file using mplayer with vdpau under lmce.
We will probably need to recompile mplayer_plugin against it before it´ll work. (need to more test on this)
Have you tested any m2ts files in 1080P?
/niz23
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krys,
I have a 330 board myself with 1,5GB RAM (512MB allocated to GPU).
For the 330 you need to attach the included fan otherwise it become really hot.
If you have chosen MythTV as pvr in lmce you will automatically get mythtv 0.21 with vdpau if using avenard repository.
Does it work fine for you?
I experience some difficulties. Mythfrontend hang for no apparent reason. Might be because of bad dvb-t reception or some other bug in mythtv_plugin.
The other thing that you also get from avenard repo is mplayer with vdpau support.
So far I have no been able to successfully play any m2ts file using mplayer with vdpau under lmce.
We will probably need to recompile mplayer_plugin against it before it´ll work. (need to more test on this)
Have you tested any m2ts files in 1080P?
/niz23
We're using the Avenard repos too. We've not had any hangs in MythFrontend that I can recollect...but we do see some weirdness sometimes whereby the MythBackend just seems to not be communicating. We have not trued the mplayer + vdpau side at all yet. We have tested a lot of HD content from the BBC HD channel on DVB-S and this is working really very well indeed.
Andrew
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Here are my first impressions playing with this board.
1. the install was easy enough using the repos
2. UI2 both overlay and alpha-blending had noticeable tearing even on SD video with 10% cpu usage
3. Tested horrible with Hulu (understandable since flash doesnt use vdpau yet)
4. mt2s files will not play yet with 810 to my knowledge so I could not test anything with mplayer (might try opening from desktop tonight)
5. Optical audio worked automatically (not sure if this was because of the added repo)
6. I started out using the DVI connection, when i switched to HDMi and ran the AV wizard I had to select component to get picture
7. HDMI audio is not yet working, havent looked into it.
8. 720p videos sometimes play well, others are not watchable at all, stuttering even when CPU is @ < 60%
9. I only have 1 1080 video and it was also unwatchable due to stuttering and choppy video
10. SD video is smooth and plays well other than the tearing
Thats all I can think of for now. I really like the way the board is layed out, noiseless and small... I just hope we can get this thing dialed in and working as it should. I am concerned with the tearing, and would like to hear if others are experiencing the same. Maybe we need to get a common video file that we can all compare with to see if we get the same results.
-Krys
*** Also i was wondering is it possible to watch movies in mythTV to take advantage of its use of Vdpau? or does myth only recognize certain file types.
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Here are my first impressions playing with this board.
1. the install was easy enough using the repos
2. UI2 both overlay and alpha-blending had noticeable tearing even on SD video with 10% cpu usage
3. Tested horrible with Hulu (understandable since flash doesnt use vdpau yet)
4. mt2s files will not play yet with 810 to my knowledge so I could not test anything with mplayer (might try opening from desktop tonight)
5. Optical audio worked automatically (not sure if this was because of the added repo)
6. I started out using the DVI connection, when i switched to HDMi and ran the AV wizard I had to select component to get picture
7. HDMI audio is not yet working, havent looked into it.
8. 720p videos sometimes play well, others are not watchable at all, stuttering even when CPU is @ < 60%
9. I only have 1 1080 video and it was also unwatchable due to stuttering and choppy video
10. SD video is smooth and plays well other than the tearing
Thats all I can think of for now. I really like the way the board is layed out, noiseless and small... I just hope we can get this thing dialed in and working as it should. I am concerned with the tearing, and would like to hear if others are experiencing the same. Maybe we need to get a common video file that we can all compare with to see if we get the same results.
-Krys
*** Also i was wondering is it possible to watch movies in mythTV to take advantage of its use of Vdpau? or does myth only recognize certain file types.
We have so far focussed on the ability of Mythfrontend + vdpau to efficiently handle 1080i HD TV broadcast by the UK broadcasters - this it does very well in our experience on Ion based ATOM-330 & 270 mptherboards and on more traditional motherbaords fitted with nVidia 9400GT PCI graphics cards. We dont see tearing with is content in UI2 + Overlay mode (we dont use UI2 + Alphablending at all)
We are looking the code/work presented here when considering how to deliver the powerful capabilities of vdpau outside MythFrontend in media directly played back in the Orbiter.
https://launchpad.net/~brandonsnider/+archive/ppa (https://launchpad.net/~brandonsnider/+archive/ppa)
All the best
Andrew
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Andrew,
Any ideas why m2ts files wont play in 810?
-Krys
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There´s a lot of discussion re tearing on ION based boards with nVidia 180 series driver.
Many people say it is solved in their 185 versions.
Have not tried it yet so I cannot day for sure it is better.
Version 185.19 is available from one of Avenard repos.
Don´t remember the exact url for it. (think it is his "bleeding" repo hat have it)
/niz23
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krys, are we talking about lmce 0810 only in this post? cause I tried to install with 0710 and i have the unrecognized-nic-kernel-panic-problem
thanks
Roberto
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yes this is for 810 only, the NIC problem is well known with 710 and there are wiki pages documenting what you need to do. Search the wiki for "unrecognized nic"
-Krys
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I think in this case I will start utilizing 0810 from now on
Thanks for help
Roberto
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There´s a lot of discussion re tearing on ION based boards with nVidia 180 series driver.
Many people say it is solved in their 185 versions.
Have not tried it yet so I cannot day for sure it is better.
Version 185.19 is available from one of Avenard repos.
Don´t remember the exact url for it. (think it is his "bleeding" repo hat have it)
/niz23
We're using the 180.60 nVidia driver and have no issue with tearing on any of the Ion motherboards we have tested todate. The Avenard repos is here; http://www.avenard.org/media/Ubuntu_Repository/Ubuntu_Repository.html (http://www.avenard.org/media/Ubuntu_Repository/Ubuntu_Repository.html)
All the best
Andrew
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Andrew,
You aren't experiencing tearing on videos? or you just dont see it on mythTV?
I currently have not tested mythTV but I do see tearing in all of my videos, wheter SD or HD and across all UI's.
-Krys
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Andrew,
You aren't experiencing tearing on videos? or you just dont see it on mythTV?
I currently have not tested mythTV but I do see tearing in all of my videos, wheter SD or HD and across all UI's.
-Krys
To clarify we do not see tearing at all (ie not in the orbiter or in MythTV...or in vdr) on any of our Ion based MD's and we are using the nVidia 180.60 driver. We use UI2 + Overlay by the way.
Andrew
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I hope this is the appropriate place to post this. I have a Zotac Ion running ver 8.10. I have installed the 180.60 drivers without any difficulty. I have not been able to select the HDMI option and the 1080p option on the AV wizzard. Everything seems to work but the video seems to shudder for just a second intermittantly. Possibly due to increased motion on the screen. The screen does not seem to have any tearing it is like the whole frame just pauses for a few tenths of a second. Are there other things that need to be done to tweak the Zotac board. Same problem on different DVDs. This is not HD content but stored movies from the core. Same problem also exist when DVD is read off of DVD drive. Again, I hope this was the correct place to post.
Randy
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I hope this is the appropriate place to post this. I have a Zotac Ion running ver 8.10. I have installed the 180.60 drivers without any difficulty. I have not been able to select the HDMI option and the 1080p option on the AV wizzard. Everything seems to work but the video seems to shudder for just a second intermittantly. Possibly due to increased motion on the screen. The screen does not seem to have any tearing it is like the whole frame just pauses for a few tenths of a second. Are there other things that need to be done to tweak the Zotac board. Same problem on different DVDs. This is not HD content but stored movies from the core. Same problem also exist when DVD is read off of DVD drive. Again, I hope this was the correct place to post.
Randy
Hi Randy,
There are many possible explanations for what you are seeing. Do you see the video stutter on DVD's played back from a local drive or only on DVD's stored as rips? It could be a network issue when your accessing content stored on the Core or some attached storage or devices. Do you have another MD to compare against?
All the best
Andrew
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Thank you Andrew,
When I get off work tonight I will try connecting a usb DVD drive up and seeing if that makes a differenct. I have gigabit cards and switch so band width should not be a problem but the core might be. Thanks for your suggestions.
Randy
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Krys, have you done any more testing on these boards?
Can you update the wiki if so..... (so I don't have to re-invent the wheel)
I have 2 of these Zotac's coming in this week and will try to set them up and update my findings.
Richard
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Sorry that it took so long. I put a hard drive in the media director with a movie on it. Unfortunately for me there is still some studdering on the video. I have a 230 Zotac Ion with 2 gigs of memory. The only thing I can think of that is weird is that I could only get the AV Wizard to install using component and 720P like Krys. Is it possible that I am doing something wrong with the installation? Any help would be appreciated.
Randy
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If the movie is using a high bit-rate and/or a heavy duty codec such as h.264/x.264 and you haven't done the necessary work to integrate VDPAU with Xine, then yes video will stutter.
Even 720p using x264 codecs will be beyond the capability of the Atom CPU to process unless the bitrate is extremely low (to the point of being unwatchable quality, probably!).
You would need hardware acceleration from the nVidia chipset of the video decode, to get smooth video. And that mean integration of VDPAU.... which is not currently there yet with LMCE.
Whilst you are waiting for that, you can use lower codecs (MPEG1,2 and some 4, some WMV, Divx, etc) which form the bulk of media in the SD range.
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I just purchased this board and followed the wiki to load the avenard repos but when I go and try to set UI2 I just get a blank screen after boot up. UI1 worked but the device in xorg.conf was set to vesa. I changed this to nvidia with no luck. I have the Zotac 230. Am I missing a step?
Thx
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did you reboot after you changed vesa to nvidia?
I usually change the vesa to nvidia, and then reboot into the AV wizard
-Krys
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Got it working. The problem I ran into was that since the Zotac has both a DVI and HDMI you need to choose HDMI2 in the Wizard. For some reason when the xorg is set to vesa output works with hdmi1 in the wizard but as soon as you set it to nvidia you must tell the wizard to use HDMI2.
Krys you might want to add this to your wiki.
Also, how do I allocate the right amount of system memory to the gpu.
Thanks,
Kevin
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Got it working. The problem I ran into was that since the Zotac has both a DVI and HDMI you need to choose HDMI2 in the Wizard. For some reason when the xorg is set to vesa output works with hdmi1 in the wizard but as soon as you set it to nvidia you must tell the wizard to use HDMI2.
Krys you might want to add this to your wiki.
Also, how do I allocate the right amount of system memory to the gpu.
Thanks,
Kevin
Kevin,
Just leave the Bios setting for GPU memory on 'auto' (its default)... no need to change it manually.
All the best
Andrew
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jyfalcon,
Got it working. The problem I ran into was that since the Zotac has both a DVI and HDMI you need to choose HDMI2 in the Wizard. For some reason when the xorg is set to vesa output works with hdmi1 in the wizard but as soon as you set it to nvidia you must tell the wizard to use HDMI2.
Krys you might want to add this to your wiki.
Also, how do I allocate the right amount of system memory to the gpu.
Thanks,
Kevin
If you find something in a wiki page that can be corrected, extended, modified or...
Please update it with your findings.
It´s not like, in this case, that krys own the page an noone else is allowed to modify.
The whole wiki concept it built around the concept that everyone can modify a page.
If you do something wrong. No problem. We can revert the page to it´s previous version.
Feel free to extend all wiki pages you have something to contribute to.
/niz23
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totallymaxed thx.
niz, I understand didn't want to step on any toes.
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totallymaxed thx.
niz, I understand didn't want to step on any toes.
kyfalcon,
As Niz says the wiki is everyones to edit/update/improve... we need everyone to get involved in enriching it. So you dont need permission to change it ;-)
All the best
Andrew
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I will be ordering one soon to join in the fun. I will be getting the 3xx in hopes that the extra core will help with things?
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I will be ordering one soon to join in the fun. I will be getting the 3xx in hopes that the extra core will help with things?
Well an N330 based board will certainly do no harm and will work as well as the N230/270 based boards.
Andrew
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I tried to install LinuxMCE but it won't install. It says cannot detect the Hdisk. I have a 320Gb hdisk connected.
I was able to install XBMC and Ubuntu 9 without a glitch.
Also tried KnoppMyth and that failed to install. I tried to boot from a knoppix live Cd also and that also failed.
Really keen to try out LinuxMCE. Any ideas?
regards
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you mean you are trying to install the core/hybrid on one of these Zotac boards?
I think these are more suitable for an MD.
I have no problems with this Zotac board as an MD with linuxmce.
Richard
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Hi Richard
The problem seems to be the Sata hd. I will get a 16G usb stick and try to install linuxmce that way. Failing that, i guess there must be some options we can supply that would make linuxmce recognized and use the sata hd.
regards
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I tried to install LinuxMCE but it won't install. It says cannot detect the Hdisk. I have a 320Gb hdisk connected.
I was able to install XBMC and Ubuntu 9 without a glitch.
Also tried KnoppMyth and that failed to install. I tried to boot from a knoppix live Cd also and that also failed.
Really keen to try out LinuxMCE. Any ideas?
regards
As rperre says above these Zotac's are probably best suited to the role of MD's. However that is not to say that they could not perform as a Core too. Sounds to me like you have some BIOS configuration issues that are tripping up some of the LiveCD's. Look at the AHCI options and how the hard drive is confgured.
All the best
Andrew
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Please forgive a novice Linux user if this question has already been addressed. ::)
I noticed that a lot of users are forgoing the 710 for an 810 install. I tried the "official LinuxMCE 710" on my Zotac 330 (A-U) with no luck. The video does not work and when I tried to update the Nvidia drivers the NIC is not there. ifconfig gives me an internal IP. Is this a well known issue? Should I try the 810 alpha release, or should I be doing something more to get this stable release to work? I noticed that the 810 is a much smaller file compared to the 710. Is there something missing out of the 810? ???
I am not savvy as to Linux at all, and am a rather adapt Windows user. Maybe, I should keep that to myself here... ::)
Please help.
Thanks.
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If you'd like to install LMCE 0710 on the newest motherboards you should upgrade kernel to use integrated NIC - http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Upgrading_the_Kernel#LinuxMCE_0710
To install nVidia drivers just use USB stick. If you don't want to spent your time to tune 0710 you can use 0810. As I see it's quite usable. Just be careful when you upgrade it :)
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nite_man,
When I ifconfig, I get an internal IP of 127.x.x.x - doesn't that mean that the NIC is not recognized? If it is not then I cannot upgrade the kernel over the net. I do not know of the shortcuts in Linux. How can I download the latest kernel and drivers to a USB stick, change the directory into in in the Linux and upgrade the drivers that way? Sorry for too much of novice questioning, but I really do not know where to start.
Lev
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I installed 810 and using my VGA output I see the AV menu and the NIC card is recognized. However, I want to connect the computer to an HDMI out. How do I set up the PC directly connected via HDMI if I cannot see the A/V menu? Shortcuts associated with 710 (1,2,3,4,5,...) do not seem to work. Is there a way to connect "blindly"?
Thanks.
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Hello,
I followed the steps on the wiki to install a Zotac ION330 board as a media director.
After I completed those steps I had to run nvidia-xconfig to actually enable the nvidia drivers, but other than that it is working.
I still get some tearing however, so I was wondering if the people that have smooth video playback could tell me if they used any special settings.
(I'm just using the defaults set by nvidia-xconfig.)
Thanks.
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Sorry for the nOOb question, but could you please explain how to enable "nvidia-xconfig"?
Thanks.
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I started it in a root terminal by typing "nvidia-xconfig" and hitting enter :).
After the "sudo apt-get dist-upgrade" step on the wiki, I added an extra step:
"sudo nvidia-xconfig"
If this works for you too, I guess I should add it to the wiki.
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I was able to solve my problem by upgrading to the latest Nvidia driver. Thanks. Baby steps... Now to try to figure out the rest...
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Anybody have any luck getting hdmi sound to work? could you please elaborate on how to set it up, preferably in the Zotac Ion wiki.
Thank you,
Richard