XBMC 12.04 on Zbox

Upgrading the previous 11.10 release on this machine was a disaster.  A fresh install was necessary and 12.04.2 LTS installed fairly easily on the same Zbox unit.

Original setup on Zotac System ZBOX HD-ND02 Atom 330 (IONv1) : http://yabbdt.blogspot.ca/2011/02/mythtv_08.html

NVIDIA drivers were installed and activated without any intervention.  From previous mythtv related posts the usual sound and video woes are still present but with some new twists (of course ;o).

The biggest pain is overscan by about 30-40pixels in every direction.   Possibly a combination of my Pioneer tuner and Panasonic TV which are both quite old now.

• Auto-selects 1280x768 when 1360x720 worked previously (720p) and isn't a choice in the available resolutions.
• Can't get xorg.conf file to be used/read by NVIDIA 304.64 driver
• No overscan option in NVIDIA settings utility, apparently removed possibly because of artifacts being introduced.  Now convoluted way of reducing overscan.
• HDMI S/PDIF 1 channel muted on initial Ubuntu install... have to unmute uses ALSA tool

Apart from that installation was fairly straightforward and the latest "startup-disk" creator created a USB stick which would boot first time.  Last attempt was less successful circa Ubuntu 10.10.

XBMC fortunately has overscan adjustment and VDPAU settings and so tearing and cutting do not seem to be a problem.  I did add the Composite Disabled fix to the xorg.conf anyway but as mentioned above the xorg-conf file changes dont seem to be applied.

Haven't tried MythTV yet.  There's very little to watch on OTA and I have another system that is working fine with MythTV, minus some audio problems.

(Other zbox system: http://yabbdt.blogspot.ca/2012/06/zbox-hd-id33-with-bluray.html)