Plugin Support for OSD and MediaPlayer? - Page 2

jptaz · #21 10-14-2004, 10:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stanger89

There will almost certainly be overscan, and if it's because of your TV, then the sides will still be blurry. It should essentially be the same as if you set your Radeon to 1920x1080 or 1280x720.

OverScan is not an issue...or least I don't think so. Overscan is fine on Video Material, in fact without overscan you will see things that you are not meant to see since broadcasters count on overscan.

The issue of blurring is more a question of wheter when given a proper HD Source, for example an HD DVD Player or the HD output from an OTA or Cable STB has this issue. If you do not see it when given a good ATSC Source then I doubt you will see it with the XCard since the outputs on the XCard match more closely that of an HD DVD or HD STB than a Video card.

If you do not have another HD Source to compare to I agree that if the Radeons at 1920x1080 or 1280x720 ATSC signals are blurry at the edges it is a defect with your TV.

I personally use my DVI input at 1280 x 720 and use the OSD Over Scan Adjustments in SageTV to make the OSD fit the Visible portion of the screen, but then again I never use my computer on the TV for anything except SageTV so losing edges of the desktop doesn't matter to me.

stanger89 · #22 10-14-2004, 11:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jptaz

OverScan is not an issue...or least I don't think so. Overscan is fine on Video Material, in fact without overscan you will see things that you are not meant to see since broadcasters count on overscan.

I guess that was somewhat my point, with the Xcard it's running 1920x1080 (or whatever) but with a video card and powerstrip and no overscan you're probably running something like 1776x1000, or maybe even 16xx x 9xx. It's possible the timings got thrown off by doing that causing some blurring.

Of course CRT RPTVs are definitely not the sharpest displays (being convergance and focus come into play). But on my Mits, text is actually readable at the 1080i based resolution I run. Not easily readable, but plenty for maintinence and better than I'd expect.

DFA · #23 10-15-2004, 06:08 PM

WOW.

Great to hear there is some XCard progress. Hope it does not meet with a "chicken or the egg" dead end. I too would be willing to $ for a XCard OSD plugin.

DFA

RobDMB · #24 10-18-2004, 08:22 PM

Just wondering if there is any new development with this card. Not trying to rush cause I appreciate all the hard work that is going into even looking into this just wondering if it will be possible.

sub · #25 10-18-2004, 11:09 PM

I havn't started anything yet. I've exchanged a couple of PMs with Narflex, and understand what I'd need to do, but have been busy doing a release of my own software over the last few days which takes priority. I'll hopefully start looking at it later this week.

kny3twalker · #26 10-19-2004, 12:32 AM

can you take I look at the MVP
I will help donate for that

chrisc16 · #27 10-19-2004, 09:12 AM

Yes! MVP Please!

I'd easily pay $10 for a Sage MVP interface.

-Chris

mikejaner · #28 10-19-2004, 12:28 PM

Me too....

JasonJoel · #29 10-19-2004, 04:36 PM

Heck, I have said from the beginning, I would be willing to pay a normal Sage Client license fee for an MVP client.

Honestly, I don't see how it is even in Frey's best interest to support/make a Media MVP (or other hardware device) client unless they are going to get some client licensing cash.

But that is my opinion.

Jason

White94Cobra · #30 10-19-2004, 04:55 PM

JasonJoel - True... But I would like the option of applying one of my current client licenses towards the Media MVP (if the situation ever came about).

JasonJoel · #31 10-19-2004, 05:18 PM

No argument there! I would think that is completely fair. If that is even what happened with the licensing in the first place. No use getting to excited about speculation at this point.

Jason

Quote:

Originally Posted by White94Cobra

JasonJoel - True... But I would like the option of applying one of my current client licenses towards the Media MVP (if the situation ever came about).

x[corwyn] · #32 10-20-2004, 10:54 PM

If someone other than sage makes the code though and we wind up having to pay for the client still, I would hope the author would see cash from it.

As for the OSD I am more than happy to put money in for it.

Crowdx42 · #33 10-21-2004, 07:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sub

Jeff has got back to me with the description of the interface. The interface it self is pretty straight forward, but there is one problem. Sage already has the XCard directshow filter in use, so I'm not able create an instance of it. I could implement this plugin, but it would require Sage to be set to not use XCard - meaning you'd have a choice of video with no OSD, or OSD with no video...

I've PM'd Jeff to ask him if there is any way for me to get a reference to the instance of the filter that Sage is holding.

Is there no way that folk can have the XCard switch between the menu and video? i.e. when I select the menu I get the menu without background video and transparencies? It would also mean no time indicator for fast forward and rewind .. BUT is better than the present setup which I have used by which I have to physically switch between amp inputs from video card out to XCard out.

From my viewing of TVedia (formerly Joveplayer) they seem to be running a passthrough system with the XCard, i.e. they have managed to route video etc through the XCard "WITHOUT" the actual decoder hardware of the XCard being used. (Is just my opinion). How I come to this thought is becuase the XCard can play pretty much any file regardless of the format (XCard supports MPEG1,2,3,4 ) and there is a preference in TVedia which can be set to let the app decide whether to use XCard decoding or not, so in my view then there must be a passthrough of the video out through the XCard's video out. Make sense?
Patrick

sub · #34 10-21-2004, 10:14 AM

No, there is no way to bypass the XCard hardware decoder. Yes, the OSD hardware is limited to 256 colours.

TVedia (Joveplayer) spent nearly two years as software targetting only the XCard. Thats a lot of time to focus on making things as nice as possible for one piece of target hardware. They did a good job at this.

For movie types that are configured for software playback, they transcode the resulting video into mpeg format before sending it to the XCard. In theory SageTV could do this for the XCard or the PVR350 to allow all sorts of AVIs etc, but its hell of a lot of work and pretty ugly. I've had GB-PVR playing DivX files on the PVR350 using this approach in the past.

The have also come up with a good dithering algorithm for converting their OSD images into 256 colours (which BTW they're trying to patent). In GB-PVR I use a pretty primitive algorithm. Its fast but not quite as good as the TVedia scheme. It doesn't help that my default skin uses heaps of colours, so is never going to translate well into 256 colours. In the past I had an experimental version that did a really good conversion, with optomized palette for each screen, but it was way slow and this wasn't an area I want to spend very limited available project time.

Lastly, along the same lines as the transcoding I mentioned earlier, they also came up with a photos module that will make a mpg movie out of a photo, meaning they could show a photo in full color (on a black background).

sub · #35 10-21-2004, 10:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Crowdx42

Is there no way that folk can have the XCard switch between the menu and video? i.e. when I select the menu I get the menu without background video and transparencies? It would also mean no time indicator for fast forward and rewind .. BUT is better than the present setup which I have used by which I have to physically switch between amp inputs from video card out to XCard out.

You're taking my comments about 'video with no OSD, or OSD with no video' the wrong way. What I was saying was "this is all that the current SageTV OSD API allows". To implement a nice solution with OSD graphics overlaid on the video etc, Jeff is going to need to make some more changes.

Crowdx42 · #36 10-21-2004, 10:24 AM

Well the Sage UI still looks pretty decent in 256 colors, I have converted it in photoshop and it looks fine, I did try GB-PVR but had a lot of problems with it for some reason.
Personally I think someone could make a nice amount of money making a plugin for ALL the HTPC software (Meedio, Sage, BTV, etc) so that the OSD could be displayed on as many hardware decoders as possible. Image being able to output everything from MCE 2005 straight through to Sage on an XCard.

BTW, I too would pay money to have OSD on the XCard

Patrick

sub · #37 10-21-2004, 10:29 AM

A real time conversion of every OSD frame is never going to look as good as photoshop (with is about the best dither and colour quanitization ever), but I agree that 256 colours is an adequate number of colours.

DFA · #38 10-26-2004, 04:34 PM

So where is this going? Is there hope? Money talks BS walks? Do we need to put together a little capital to help promote the cause? Cash up front also works for me on this one.

The part that scares me is that Sub said Jeff had more things that had to be done on Sage side to prepare for an XCard plugin (or any other OSD plugin I assume). Depending on the degree of diffiiculty, that could spell many moons.
Tell me it ain't so.

DFA

sub · #39 10-26-2004, 05:35 PM

Basically, I havn't started. I've been busy with my own software, and I also havn't got around to downloading any java development tools. I'm in short supply of time, which is already spread pretty thin.

Once I start it should take about a day to do my part. This will be an OSD plugin which will be able to display the sage tv menus on the XCard. It wont be able to play any video. Jeff will need to do some more changes to support video (but these should be pretty minor changes).

Just so people know where my thinking was at - I was thinking about charging a license fee for people to use this XCard plugin. Frey may also want to charge a margin on top of this, or if they dont want users being charged they'll also have the final say if this will ever see the light of day. Dont take this the wrong way folks, its just nice to get a few dollars for the work I'll need to put in.

DFA · #40 10-26-2004, 05:53 PM

Not a problem for me and I'm sure I speak for most others. It's difficult to be a one man charity, especially if married (Smiley here).

So, one or two days on your part and some minor work on Jeff's side. Really does not sound too bad. I and others do not want this to slip through a crack. This little bit of software will finally close the loop on a few things once and for all.

DFA

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