Archive:Windows FAQ

XBMC for specific FAQs about XBMC running under Windows, Windows computer hardware, and Windows operating-system questions.

What Win32 ports are available ?

There are two existing Windows ports of XBMC

• XBMC.exe (build from the linux branch, using SDL/OpenGL)
• XBMC_PC.exe (build from the xbox trunk, using DirectX)

About XBMC.exe (SDL/OpenGL)

The SDL version is the Windows future of XBMC. The codebase is under development and is the base for the Linux, MacOSX and Windows ports. This FAQ will ONLY deal with the SDL version!
Note: The SDL win32 port still needs DirectX for the audio processing.

About XBMC_PC.exe (DirectX)

The DirectX version is only for skin and python development. You won't get support for it since it is only adapted to reflect the skin and python changes.

= Why is a OpenGL 2.0 compatible graphic-controller the recommended minimum for XBMC?

OpenGL 2.0 is not really the current minimum requirement to run XBMC for Linux, as in reality XBMC will today run with only OpenGL 1.4 + GLSL support (everything else has fall-backs to be runned in software on the CPU, slower than GPU hardware though), however to be sure to stay future-proof Team-XBMC have decided that the OpenGL 2.0 is the recommended minimum requirement.

Currently OpenGL 2.0 hardware is only needed for:

• Any deinterlacing that is not linear blending (which FFmpeg does in software)
• Video video post-processing filtering (bicubic upscaling, etc.)
• Non-power of two textures for the GUI (using NPOT saves a lot of texture memory)
• Hardware accelerated YUV 2 RGB conversion (actually GLSL is needed for this, and a few GPU hardware implementations as low as OpenGL 1.4 does provide GLSL as an extension. OpenGL 2.0 guarantees availability of GLSL).

In the future OpenGL 2.0 might also be needed for:

• More video post-processing filters to improve visual quality perception.
• Hardware Accelerated Video Decoding (using the GPU hardware to assist with video decoding)

How to install XBMC for Windows (SDL/OpenGL)?

XBMC for Windows is still in experimental stage, there are however install packages available for easy installation.

• Download XBMCSetup-Rev<xx>.exe from the xbmc win32 experimental section on sourceforge. Higher rev-number means a newer build.
• Run the downloaded setup to install XBMC for Windows.
• You can now start XBMC from the startmenu either in fullscreen or windowed mode.

What are the recent changes?

All changes to the repository can be seen here http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_name=xbmc-svn or here http://dn-0.com/xbmc-trac/log/

Note: branches/linuxport/XBMC/ is the repository for the Linux, MacOSX and Win32 port. trunk/ belongs to the Xbox repository.

What is the best way to post logs?

Take the xbmc.log out of the XBMC installation directory and upload it to http://pastebin.com/ for example. Post the link instead of the content.

How can I switch XBMC to full screen?

Start XBMC.exe with -fs

What are platform directories ?

XBMC uses the UserDir in the installation directory to store profiles, settings and other stuff. You can start XBMC with -p to force it to use the directory Documents and Settings\[user]\AppData\XBMC on WinXp or Users/[user]/AppData/Roaming/XBMC on Vista.
On Linux and Mac other platform directories are used like the user HOME.

What is the current development platform ?

We currently develop under Windows XP SP2 with Visual Studio 2003.

Why is my video screen smaller than my desktop in full screen?

We're still early alpha. Try to set the XBMC video resolution to your current desktop resolution.

How can I access the DVD drive?

DVD auto detection isn't working as of yet and therefore disabled. You can work around this by using advancedsettings.xml and set usepcdvdrom to true.