Has anyone upgraded their Acer AspireRevo to XBMC 9.11?

1. I want to put together an update for my guide over at Lifehacker for building a silent, standalone XBMC media center on the cheap, but so far haven't had a lot of luck finding the right tweaked installation to do the job. Anyone who followed my original guide or covered this ground themselves know how to find the right upgrade installation?

   (Also, when will the NVIDIA Ion chips get native support so we won't need custom builds???)

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   adampash
   

   Reputation:18

   Posted 1 month ago

2. I am running XBMC 9.11 under Ubuntu 9.10 64-bit on my AspireRevo. It works great! It plays back HD and SD content no problem and it is MUCH more stable than the Boxee beta on the same platform. I didn't have to download any custom builds. I just made sure that I updated to the latest NVIDIA driver available (Version 185). Also, I run uTorrent and XBMC using the 'System'>'Preferences'>'Startup Applications'.

   This was a clean install since I just bought the system a month ago. So I'm not sure about your upgrade options. I would just go with a clean install and deal with having to mark a whole bunch of shows watched manually.

   I should note that this is the first step in a multi-step home theater upgrade. I am not running sound or video through HDMI. The sound is piped into my stereo via the headphone jack and the video is coming out of the VGA port through a converter box and into an S-Video jack on my old SDTV. Like I said, its a work in progress... I am also storing my media on an external 1TB drive in an e-SATA enclosure.

   My biggest complaint is that I can't use TightVNC to login while XBMC is running because the picture never updates on the client end. I have to shut down XBMC via my remote before running any maintenance or checking downloads using TightVNC. I'm pretty sure its a (well documented) problem with vino and not TightVNC.

   I'm still considering updating to Win7 and Boxee so I can get accelerated Internet video, but until I have the cash this is working well. Besides, I'd rather save that ~$100 toward a decent HDTV.

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   Phynaeusclaw
   

   Reputation:5

   Posted 1 month ago

3. My brother did the update because I was too lazy to. It works fine so far; it fixes that annoying mkv subtitle issue with anime and the new skin Confluence is very nice, replaced it with Aeon. Just a note I also have the sound piped into a surround sound stereo via the headphone jack, but I use the HDMI cables for the video.

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   ShadowVariable
   

   Reputation:2

   Posted 1 month ago

4. I really like running XBMC Live on my Acer because it's sooo standalone, but I guess maybe if I don't want to worry about the driver issue each time XBMC updates, just using an updated Ubuntu with the right drivers is a good alternative.

   Also agreed that Boxee—at least as an option—would be nice. I do worry that the nettop I used (Acer AspireRevo R1600) is just a small shade too underpowered for Boxee, which is too bad. Luckily I imagine the higher powered nettops coming down in price in a relatively short time.

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   adampash
   

   Reputation:18

   Posted 1 month ago

5. I was inspired by your original article to buy the Revo and I just received it from Newegg yesterday. I was disappointed to find out that I can not simply use a VGA to S-video cable to hook it up to my older non HD CRT TV. Apparently the Ion LE is not capable of sending the proper NTSC signal to my TV. I ordered a converter box that will hopefully do the trick. I would love to have a HD Plasma TV but its hard to justify the expense when I have a perfectly good working CRT.

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   tittlek
   

   Reputation:1

   Posted 1 month ago

6. @titlek This is the converter I bought to hook up my old TV. It runs off of USB power and is pretty inexpensive. Its certainly NOT HD quality video.

   http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815260011

   @adampash
   I worry about having the power to do all I need it to do right now. It is both a media server (SAMBA share) AND my media front-end. I definitely think any of the Atom 330 machines could handle it easily.

   It might be wise to stick with 32bit Ubuntu. Flash 10.1 is in beta for 32bit Ubuntu, but is not even in existence for 64bit. On 64bit Ubuntu you have to use the Flash 10 alpha.

   Evenutally, I would like to make it a dedicated front-end and relegate the server duties to another machine.

   QUESTION: Has anyone seen worthwhile performance improvements by upgrading to 2GB (or more) RAM?

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   Phynaeusclaw
   

   Reputation:5

   Posted 1 month ago