I followed a german tutorial on how to install VDR with xine. It had some patches for better h.264 playback, but when I tune to BBC HD, it's still painfully slow, and the image is quite bad, too!
Try to cheat decoding in ~/.xine/config:
video.processing.ffmpeg_choose_speed_over_accuracy:1 video.processing.ffmpeg_pp_quality:0 video.processing.ffmpeg_skip_loop_filter:all video.processing.ffmpeg_thread_count:2
I have tried this options, but they don't help me on my slow CPU (P4 3GGz for 1080i)
Regarding image quality: you'll have to use a deinterlacer
xine ... -Dtvtime:method=Greedy2Frame,cheap_mode=0,pulldown=0,use_progressive_frame_flag=0
how is it possible to disable deinterlacing at all on xine for 1080i ?
Using use_progressive_frame_flag=1 will disable the deinterlacer for progressive images automatically and save some CPU cycles but broadcasters often do not set this flag correctly in the images especially when there is only a little area with heavy movement (e. g. a football). Hence, those images do not get deinterlaced and look awfully.
I compiled xine with the ffmpeg option (external ffmpeg or something) but I never installed ffmpeg nor are there any instructions on how to do so.
configure ; make ; make install
I mean, I could compile ffmpeg eventually, I just need to know if I need to apply any more patches or so ... I installed ffmpeg from the repository, but it doesn't seem to have any effect.
Optimize your FFmpeg for your hardware, e. g.
../ffmpeg/configure --prefix=/soft/ffmpeg-video --arch=i686 --cpu=pentium4 --enable-pthreads --enable-shared --enable-gpl --enable-postproc --disable-stripping
Similar optimization for xine-lib / xine-ui:
CFLAGS='-g3 -O3 -pipe -march=pentium4' ../xine-lib-1.2/configure --prefix=/soft/xine-lib-1.2-video --with-external-ffmpeg --disable-dxr3 CFLAGS='-g3 -O3 -pipe -march=pentium4' ../xine-ui/configure --prefix=/soft/xine-ui-1.2-video --enable-vdr-keys
Last but not least: make sure that you use a graphics board which supports hardware color space conversion and image scaling. Use an appropriate output driver, e. g.
xine ... -V xv