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XBMC AT3IONT setup

This post is more of a reminder for myself than a full intstruction on every configuration detail of XBMC and AT3IONT-DELUXE motherboard. There is some magic which needs to be done when using the HDMI output with XBMC. To avoid some slight graphic glitches a proper modes must be listed in the xorg display configuration, additionally the provided remote controll does not fully work and is not customisable with the default driver. Lets go with all the details one by one.

Installing the system

For HPTC I use arch linux - its fast, sleek and small and gives a needed flexibility. I wont describe the installation itself since its obvious - one thing that needs to be said is to choose a minimal number of packages. After the installation has been finished we need to do:

1. adduser player
2. add player user to groups: disk, wheel, network, video, audio,optical,storage,power,users,dbus,usbmux
3. pacman -Suy # update the system
4. pacman -S xorg-server xorg-utils xorg-xinit xorg-xclock xorg-twm
5. pacman -S nvidia # valid only in my case
6. pacman -S xbmc vlc mplayer
7. pacman -S udisks upower consolekit dbus vdpau-video libvdpau udisks upower acpid alsa-plugins alsa-tools mesa freegluts sdl libxv libsamplerate ffmpeg openssh
8. Setup networking in rc.conf (I use static IP to speed up the booting)

And add a DNS in resolv.conf

1. Setup nfs client (since the network media shares will be mounted from external server)
2. pacman -S nfs-utils
3. Edit fstab and add all Your network shares + create mountpoints for them
4. Add rpcbind and netfs to rc.conf daemons

XBMC autostart

At this point we have the system prepared, lets proceed and configure the xbmc itself. In order to make xbmc start just after poweron we need to make the "player" user autologin and launch the X session automatically. To achieve this:

1. Change the runlevel to 5 in inittab
2. Modify a console getty entry in order to autologin the "player" user. Example bellow

I use tty2

c1:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -8 -s 38400 tty1 linux
c2:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -a player -8 -s 38400 tty2 linux
#c3:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -8 -s 38400 tty3 linux
#c4:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -8 -s 38400 tty4 linux
#c5:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -8 -s 38400 tty5 linux
#c6:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -8 -s 38400 tty6 linux

To automatically startx entries in .bash_profile are needed

if [[ -z $DISPLAY ]] && [[ $(tty) = /dev/tty2 ]]; then
  exec startx
  # Could use xinit instead of startx
  #exec xinit -- /usr/bin/X -nolisten tcp vt7
fi

Finally an .xinitrc for user player must be created

exec ck-launch-session xbmc --standalone -fs

Additionally an empty file called .hushlogin may be create in /home/player in order to minimise the message produced while autologin

cd /home/player

touch .hushlogin

After a reboot we should have automatically launched xbmc. We are almost finished

Setting proper video modes

On some TV when connected directly via HDMI port you may suddenly start to observe some small glitches (the video freezes for a milisecond after some period of time). It is caused by wrong mode selected by Xorg server and the one supported by the TV. Some tweaks must be done in order to avoid such problems. Lets run X manually and determine all the modes supported by our TV

X :1 -verbose 6 > output.log 2>&1

Lets let it run for a while and the kill it. Lets search for all the modes queried by X through EDID:

grep EDID output.log | grep 1920x1080

For my TV those are

(II) NVIDIA(0): "1920x1080"          : 1920 x 1080 @  60.0 Hz  (from: EDID)
(II) NVIDIA(0): "1920x1080_60"       : 1920 x 1080 @  60.0 Hz  (from: EDID)
(II) NVIDIA(0): "1920x1080_60_0"     : 1920 x 1080 @ 59.94/60 Hz (CEA-861B Format 16) (from: EDID)
(II) NVIDIA(0): "1920x1080_50"       : 1920 x 1080 @ 50 Hz (CEA-861B Format 31) (from: EDID)
(II) NVIDIA(0): "1920x1080_30"       : 1920 x 1080 @ 29.97/30 Hz (CEA-861B Format 34) (from: EDID)
(II) NVIDIA(0): "1920x1080_25"       : 1920 x 1080 @ 25 Hz (CEA-861B Format 33) (from: EDID)
(II) NVIDIA(0): "1920x1080_24"       : 1920 x 1080 @ 23.97/24 Hz (CEA-861B Format 32) (from: EDID)
(II) NVIDIA(0): "1920x1080_60i"      : 1920 x 1080 @ 59.94/60 Hz (CEA-861B Format 5) (from: EDID)
(II) NVIDIA(0): "1920x1080_50i"      : 1920 x 1080 @  50.0 Hz Interlace  (from: EDID)

Those must be added to the xorg.conf in order to force XBMC to use them. The most relevant ones are those with fractional refresh rate. My final /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-monitor.conf will look the following way

cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-monitor.conf
Section "Monitor"
    Identifier    "Monitor0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier    "Device0"
    Driver        "nvidia" #Choose the driver used for this monitor

    Option  "NoLogo"              "true"

    Option  "DynamicTwinView"     "false"
    Option  "NoFlip"              "false"
    Option  "FlatPanelProperties" "Scaling = Native"
    Option  "ModeValidation"      "NoVesaModes, NoXServerModes"
    Option  "UseDisplayDevice"    "DFP-0"
    Option  "ModeDebug"           "true"
    Option  "HWCursor"            "false"

EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier    "Screen0"  #Collapse Monitor and Device section to Screen section
    Device        "Device0"
    Monitor       "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth  24 #Choose the depth (16||24)
    SubSection "Display"
        Depth     24
        Modes     "1920x1080_60_0" "1920x1080_24" "1920x1080_30"
    EndSubSection

EndSection

Additionally configuration inside XBMC must be adjusted, you want to set "Render method" to Auto, "Use pixel buffer objects" to On, "Adjust display refresh..." to On, "Sync playback to display" to On, A/V sync method to "Audio" and "Vertical blank sync" to Always. Inside the nvidia-settings also some adjustments must be done. Find and enable those settings:

• SyncToVBlank
• Allowflipping
• FSAAAppControlled
• OpenGLImageSettings=3
• GPUScaling[DFP-0]=1,1
• Disable the LogAniso

This can be also adjusted through the command line

export DISPLAY=:0; nvidia-settings -a "SyncToVBlank=1" -a "AllowFlipping=1" -a "FSAAAppControlled=1" -a "OpenGLImageSettings=3" -a "LogAniso=0" -a "GPUScaling[DFP-1]=1,1"; nvidia-settings -r

To test if everything is working fine use the following script in the X session

for i in 24 60; do xrandr -r $i; nvidia-settings -q RefreshRate | grep -o "[0-9][0-9].*Hz"; done

If it will display correctly 23,97 and 59,94 then we are good to go, otherwise the configuration must be revised again

We are almost finished, additionally the HDMI sound must be configured and the remote control in order to use the additional buttons.

Setting HDMI sound

By default the sound is routed via analog output in order to set it via the HDMI we must get our hands dirty in some mixer settings.

1. In alsamixer unmute the SPDIF/1 output
2. Save alsa settings in order to make them persistent: alsactl store

Now the sound configuration should be adjusted inside XBMC. Output device: hdmi, passthrough device: hdmi

Setting the remote controll

By default the remote is visible as a standard hid device and some of its buttons are mapped to the keyboard keys. Not all of them work unfortunately, like powerbutton etc. Thanks to the community there is a driver available which lets you customize the remote buttons and utilize them all. It is available as a deb package

In order to use it in ARCH we must unpack it:

ar xv asus-at3iont-i-deluxe-dkms_1.0.1_all.deb

a file called data.tar.gz should be available now, lets unpack it and go to the driver itself:

cd usr/src/asus-at3iont-i-deluxe-1.0.1/drivers/hid-philips-asus

There is a file called mapping.h which must be adjusted accordingly to Your needs, after this is done the driver needs to be compiled to do this we need linux-headers and gcc of course:

1. pacman -S gcc make linux-headers
2. make
3. make install

DAEMONS=(hwclock @syslog-ng dbus network rpcbind @netfs @nfs-common @philips-hid @crond @sshd @alsa @acpid)

# /etc/acpi/events/power

pacman -Rc gcc make # since they wont be needed anymore

pacman -Scc