The Ultimate HTPC - Acer Aspire Revo - XBMC, Alaska skin @ 1080p

[theProdiKalSon]

can i get full 1080p in windows xp?

[krystian1333]

Do the movies come with it or what?

[tworoelio]

Awesome movie ! But does it pass trough DTS HD MA audio ?

[tonybeccar]

Nice video! Hey one question.. did you make the "now playing widget" to show the text to the cover art's right? Did you download it? If so, from where? Thanks!

[Groove996]

@tonybeccar Thanks! That's actually not a mod or anything, i think that was the default behavior in that older version of Alaska, and Hitcher changed it. I actually like that older version and I'm still using it. I don't know exactly what revision it was, but it was recent when i posted the vid.

[Groove996]

samba works best imo

[Groove996]

@MJLG5 no problem, feel free. If you're gonna use windows i suggest you do a fresh install or uninstall all the Acer bundled software - all the junk they install really slows down windows until you get rid of it.

[Groove996]

@MJLG5 cat /proc/acpi/wakeup - check the output, figure out which USB your remote is on, ex: USB0. then sudo sh -c 'echo "USB0" > /proc/acpi/wakeup' . i had to put my keyboard on a different USB hub so that only the remote would wake it. And these days i'm using win7/DXVA so the vid is a bit outdated - but i did like ubuntu for its quick boot times, and VDPAU has some sharpness/noise reduction settings that i miss with DXVA :(

[experimental0000]

@Groove996 that's a handy bit of code for linux to wake it up when the remote is pressed :) would it sleep on it's own based on settings on xbmc or would that also be through the remote or keyboard? I've been curious about these setups for a while and figured I'd ask.

[3RalphD]

what codec things did you install?

well i got 1080P working in my acer revo.

but its always like 80%~100% CPU usage.

[Groove996]

no codecs, just select VDPAU as your default render method for hardware acceleration (if you're running linux). if it's windows, get a recent build of XBMC and select DXVA

[corolarb]

Hey. how noisy at full load?

[Groove996]

almost completely silent. let's put it this way - the hard drive in my PVR is way louder than the Revo

[fataldesain]

I have a acer 1600 win 7 x86 modded and also a broadcom crystal hd card to do video decoding and it kicks ass.

Screw XMBC because boxee kicks it's ass in so many ways. I thought about going linux but win 7 just has so many advantages. Total I have only spent 220 dollars all for this.

[TDDeadlyData]

@fataldesain except for the fact boxee is built off the XBMC core... not "XMBC".

I prefer using linux over windows 7 as well.

[fataldesain]

hey I just got a revo 1600 already overclocked it to 2ghz,

hey can xmbc play movies off of a nas.

[Groove996]

yes, absolutely! all my media is served from a win7 fileserver but a NAS would do the job just as well

[shap3y]

Excellent run through of the features in XBMC and how the Revo handles it all.

Definetly picking a Revo up this weekend after being stuck with a realtek based device it will be a godsend.

[Groove996]

You won't regret it - i don't think i could live without my Revo ;)

[gas0line7]

Just set up my Revo 1600 with XBMC 9.04, alaska skin too. Plays 1080p wonderfully. Now I need a huge hard drive to store all my digital media, so I will no longer need to watch my physical media!

[fropply]

Nice..I just installed XBMC on Jaunty...works pretty good from what I can tell so far... it even fetches media info from the net...this is what I`v been looking for..I`l have to try that Alaska skin out. Only complaint I have is the deblocking seems sub-par for H.264 compared to totem movie player, but I`m sure there`s a setting I havn`t found yet..Im just using the restricted modules for totem and grabbed w/e XBMC uses by default..

[Groove996]

I've never used totem so i can't comment on the quality, but i find XBMC is a lot sharper than say, VLC or WMP. I'm still a linux newb but I'm learning fast - if you have questions about XBMC they have a great forum with a lot of helpful posters - you can also find Alaska there. I also highly recommend Aeon, another really nice skin.

[fropply]

Wow nice setup... So ur running Ubuntu 9.10 for a media center? I was wondering if there`s a linux build strictly for a media center. something lightweight. BTW that file browser looks nice that u have. What size are ur movies ? I found I can squish h.264 to about 500meg size per movie. Also what OS r u using for ur file-server? I was thinking of using freeNAS but wasnt sure about the UFS filesystem and its reliability. Anyways, sweet setup u got there.

[Groove996]

The media center interface you're seeing is XBMC with the 'Alaska' skin - XBMC is open source and will run under pretty much any OS, but im using Ubuntu for its h.264 hardware acceleration (VDPAU) and quick boot time. Files are served from a win7 box for now but i'm looking into a NAS as well.

[DtCKclan]

i have a question about hardware acceleration does it take some of the load off of the cpu's by making your graphics card more useful

[Groove996]

Yup that's exactly what it does!

[DtCKclan]

thanks =]