Sunday, March 7, 2010

Upgrade from the WRT54G Wireless Router to Asus RT-N16

Ever since switching from RoadRunner internet (8 / .3 Mbps) to ATT U-verse (12 / 1.5 Mbps) I have been getting some intermittent connection failures. I suspect that my 7 year old Linksys WRT54G used as my primary Internet QOS router may be at its limits under the bandwidth load.



Upon recommendation from several folks in the forums, I have purchased a Asus RT-N16 router which I intend to install Tomato on.

Ill update when it arrives.

XBMC - HDMI audio too fast

Noticed a problem with the XBMC box I have in the family room that the audio / video appeared slightly too fast. I took out my watch and timed a minute of video and found it to off by almost 10 secs. Searching on the internet led me to find that the sample rate of the HDMI interface of 48000Khz was not being handled correctly by the default XBMC config.

Doing the following fixed the problem:
-Setup an ALSA plugin to resample the audio
- Create a file /etc/asound.conf file (make sure the card and device numbers are correct for your system.. Run aplay -l to find the right settings)

hdmi {
type hw
card 1
device 3
}

pcm.hdmiconv {
type plug
slave {
pcm "hw:1,3"
rate 48000
}
}


- In XBMC -> Settings -> System -> Audio -> Device -> Custom -> enter 'hdmiconv'

- Reboot
- Fixed!