For many of us, the holy grail has always been for Plex to properly support 24hz. (apparently the audio sync bug is only with ATI and Nvidia GPUs, since some reports say that Plex works with 24hz with Intel GPUs) But a little less known fact is that it is both 24hz AND 23.976hz we crave for, seeing that 99.99% of all DVD/Blu-ray releases are not true 24fps. (Technically DVDs are stored as interlaced 59.94fps before IVTC but don´t worry about it). Yes, I have been following the various threads for the Plex forum over the years with great anticipation...
After wrestling with SwitchResX to enable 23.976hz in OSX and failing miserably, I kinda lost my faith in both Plex (the OSX client), and OSX itself and began looking elsewhere. I´ve known that XBMC for Windows supported auto refresh rate switching but I didn´t want to abandon Plex entirely so I kept using Plex, and have been mentally trying to block out the judder. Luckily, Hippojay decided to make an addon to XBMC called Plexbmc that let XBMC access the PMS.
I decided to try this with XBMC for OSX and to my surprise is actually works really well. 24hz worked well too, I used this setup for a couple of weeks. Still, 23.976hz is nowhere to be seen. Now Plex might fix the 24hz issue somewhere down the line, but OSX itself does not support 23.976hz so there will be an extra frame each 40 seconds, although XBMC does kinda have a fix for that too. But it means dropping audio frames, and I do suspect true 23.976 would yield an even smoother film like experience.
Another problem is that the 2010 Mac minis and onwards force you to use YPrCr over HDMI instead of RGB when connected to a HDTV. (I have a Pio plasma 9G) That might not be a big problem by itself and COULD in theory even be a benefit when watching movies since the movies are encoded with YPbCb/YPrCr and not RGB (In reality it is NOT a benefit as the YPrCr output to the display/HDTV is converted from RGB anyhow). But the biggest problem is that OSX itself force you to use one of those built-in color curves instead of outputting the colours as-is. If you have calibrated your display to be neutral, then you will sometimes get too reddish fleshtones among other things. Really annoying.. The YPrCr conversion and forcing of built-in color curves will get you innaccurate colors.
So in the end I decided to install Windows on my Mac mini 2011, and set up XBMC with Plexbmc to enjoy the best of both worlds. In the next post i will go through it step by step.
The first thing you have to do is obviously is starting up boot camp assistant. Have a USB stick and a Windows ISO ready and Boot Camp assistant will make a USB stick you can boot from and install Windows from. Boot Camp will also download all neccesary drivers to a folder named Windows Support on the USB stick. Install Windows as normal and then install the Boot Camp drivers from the Windows Support folder.
The Boot Camp drivers for ATI does not include Catalyst Center so head over to ATI.com to download the latest drivers. Choose notebook graphics, Radeon HD, 6xxxM. Download the whole drivers package as the webinstall files will fail to work for unknown reasons. We need Catalyst Center to disable the default overscan in the ATI drivers whenever they encounter a connection to a HDTV.
After you have installed the ATI drivers. Start up Catalyst center. Choose “My Digital Flat-Panels” and then choose “HDTV support” Add 1080p60 (Which will also enable 59.94hz), 1080p24 (Which will also enable 23.976hz) and 1080p50.
Go back to My Digital Flat-Panels. This time choose Scaling options. Drag the slider to zero (for 60). Afterwards change the refresh rate to 24hz and do it again. And then finally to 50hz and do it again. Make sure your display is set to use 1:1 pixel mapping as this will give you a pixel perfect picture. The settings for 24 and 60 will also work for 23.976 and 59.94 so you don’t have to do it for these refresh rates.
In Catalyst Center. Go to Video, Video Color, Advanced Video Color. Turn off everything. Just leave Video Presets and Basic Video on the default “use application settings”. Go to Video quality, Other Video Settings. Turn OFF everything.
Also change the Pixel format to FULL RGB. You need to switch to advanced view to see this option.
(If you have a Pioneer Plasma, you might need to manually set the HDMI input to 0-255, as setting this on Auto, in my case, chooses 16-235 instead. Unfortunately there is no way to force the pixel format to RGB within OSX, it chooses automatically, so I have to change the TV settings on my plasma TV manually when booting OSX)
6.Install XBMC, preferably one of the nightlies. Then install the Plexbmc addon as described elsewhere on this forum.
7.Inside XBMC. Go to Settings, Video, Playback. Enable “adjust display refresh rate to match video” and the seconds XBMC will pause during refresh rate changes. (I use 2,5 seconds…this works for my display)
8.Go to Settings, System, Video Output. Disable “Use a fullscreen window rater than true fullscreen”. This will enable true fullscreen. Without true fullscreen the movies will be very very jerky whenever the is a refresh rate change involved. This is possibly a bug in XBMC that will be fixed later.
In theory you should now be all set to enjoy films in their native refresh rates. And indeed the colours will be more accurate as well. XBMC for windows also has the possibility of using external players that supposedly has even higher PQ. I have yet to try that yet. (And I dot know if it will work with Plexbmc either)
This guide was made for the Mac mini 2011 with the ATI GPU, but I guess 2010 mini models (and MB/MBPs etc) that use nvidia will also work. Just be sure to turn of all those “picture enhancements” that are ticked be default in the GFX drivers. Don’t know about earlier minis with Intel GMA though.
ps! If you watch mostly film and use the machine mostly for XBMC then you could set the refresh to 23.976hz in Windows before starting up XBMC. That way XBMC doesn’t have to change refresh rates when watching movies. Instead it will change when you watch stupid youtube videos instead
Also be prepared to find a new remote control solution as the Apple Remote is kinda useless in Windows.
Thank you for this article. Until Plex and Mac OS X catchup I suspect others will also be interested.
On a similar topic, do you know if it is possible to get Microsoft Media Center in Windows 7 (on the same machine as XBMC) to also do auto-refreshrate switching?
However, I have managed to make the PS3 remote work with XBMC, and to also start XBMC from the remote.
I did this with the program Eventghost. The program comes with the needed plugins, but it does not work without installing the latest PS3 Remote plugin (espescially) manually from the forums, also be sure that that the XBMC2 plugin is the latest version or just download and install the latest plugins manually anyways to be sure. Just try to install the plugins from inside Eventghost and you will get an info popup that also has an url to the forum threads with the updated plugins.
You only need these 2 plugins installed, but you will have to define your own events (what actions in xbmc/windows the buttons on the remote corresponds to, very easy)
I also use the Aeon Nox skin, seems to be the most flexible one regarding view options.
Of course games n sh*t also work better in Windows, although I reboot to OSX when I need it for music duties.
It might be little overkill to use a i5/ATI mac mini for XBMC when a low powered Atom board (with GPU accel.) will do the same…but what the heck…it works. That’s the beauty of XBMC, it works with almost anything. This setup even works with XBMC on my iphone 4
XBMC Live or Linux work as well, but Windows is a lot easier to work with.
why would you set the range to 0-255? you should set it to 16-235, macs have always used 0-255 until 2010 mini, if it detects a HDTV it outputs at 16-235, which is what you want in this case. at least this is my understanding, and i could totally be wrong
why would you set the range to 0-255? you should set it to 16-235, macs have always used 0-255 until 2010 mini, if it detects a HDTV it outputs at 16-235, which is what you want in this case. at least this is my understanding, and i could totally be wrong
Wow: Guess I'm answering over a year and a half late.. :)
That isnt quite true. Newer Macs will automatically output YPrCr, which itself is 16-236 but it is not the same as the RGB "equivalent". YPrCr is always 16-236 as YPrCr 0-255 doesn't exist.
The RGB format is the native/internal format to computers, and also for TV displays. The conversion to YPrCr isn't lossless so you should stick to RGB whenever possible unless you don't want the best picture.
RGB:
YPrCr coded MKV -> to RGB low (0-255) internally -> RGB low output -> RGB low input TV - RGB low output TV screen.
compare this to
YPrCr:
YPrCr coded MKV -> to RGB low (0-255) internally - YPrCr output (and some forced color curve) - YPrCr input TV which is internally converted to RGB low - RGB low output TV screen. Add inn some microstutter and framestutter each 40 second and there you have OSX in a nutshell.
XBMC (and now also Plex) when set up on Windows, looks absolutely god-smacking, the picture is so fluid that you won't believe. Without the microstutter and framestutter each 40 seconds, the involvement is just on another level. It sounds like a small difference, but once experienced, I don't think you want to go back.
