Just bought the Acer Aspire Revo 3610 nettop

[Wolfie351]

Acer AspireRevo 3610

An additional TV required a new link machine. A local store had one left in stock and I got it for $329. I was surprised to see it came with the 64 bit version of Win 7. The only thing that gave me problems was the Firefly install, but a quick search on this forum gave me the fix. OTA and cable HD playback is fantastic. The BTV menu system and FF and RW were quick to respond, a lot more so than my other Link machine.

As expected, it isn't quite capable to stream online HD. There aren't any provisions in the BIOS to overclock, well none that I could find anyways. I haven't paid much attention to Vista and Win 7 posts here, but is it correct that HD-PVR recordings are NOT hardware accelerated in Vista or Win 7? Or is it a 64bit issue? I'm actually really liking Win 7, I'd hate to have to revert to XP. But, I think I will have to since a lot of my recordings are done with the HD-PVR

[HomeyFour]

Originally Posted by Wolfie351

Acer AspireRevo 3610

An additional TV required a new link machine. A local store had one left in stock and I got it for $329. I was surprised to see it came with the 64 bit version of Win 7. The only thing that gave me problems was the Firefly install, but a quick search on this forum gave me the fix. OTA and cable HD playback is fantastic. The BTV menu system and FF and RW were quick to respond, a lot more so than my other Link machine.

That's very interesting! I am building essentially the same type of machine... the parts should be delivered by Newegg tomorrow. I'm disappointed that you're having trouble with HD playback (HD-PVR) but hopefully its something I won't bump into!

[ladlenits]

Thanks for the review and details. What local store did you find it at? I've been looking everywhere and all i can find are online dealers and they are all out of stock. I've been excited about this for a while and dont think i can wait for a backorder .

[Rich A]

There is a new on-going discussion about these computers over at the Home Theater Forum

Link PC - Acer Aspire Revo AR1600

Both Nick and I have the smaller 200 dollar unit. I'm just getting around to putting mine together later today, but Nick reports he isn't having any trouble using it as a BTV-link machine. Seems to play back everything. Most people who do have these machines strip out all the "bloat-ware" and that seems to make a big difference in it's playback capability. Of course remember, we are both using the single core 199.99 unit.

[opilion]

Anyone tried to use one of these as a dedicated BTV server - Add a couple of USB ATSC tuners and an ESATA drive? The N330 is a dual core processor. Overall, I can't imagine it would be that much less powerful than my AMD BE2350 with 2GB RAM. Power consumption, on the other hand, would be minimal in comparison.

[Rich A]

An update on my own Acer Revo 1600. This is the 199 dollar cheaper model. I have been testing it and I have to say THIS is the media extender we've been waiting for. 200 bucks and it plays everything BeyondTV Link can play.

I'm running it using a wireless USB dongle (D-Link DWA-160). It plays ALL BTV HD transport streams perfectly. And I've just confirmed it also plays the h.264 videos perfectly too. Both 1080 and 720.

A BIG tip .. This unit came with a Cyberlink DVD player which was one of the few bundled software items I did NOT blow away. And the h.264 Cyberlink decoder is recognized as a playback codec by BeyondTV Link. That's what you want to use. The SnapStream h.264 decoder would not play back the h.264 videos without a lot of stuttering.

SnapStream h.264 decoder ... stuttering and 95 to 100 percent CPU use.

Cyberlink h.264 decoder .. perfectly smooth playback and 40 percent CPU use.

And since it is a full blown computer we shouldn't have any problems adding applications to let it work as a full feature media extender, with BTV-Link providing the connection to the BTV DVR Server.

[jrandeck]

Rich,

Which version of PowerDVD comes with the Acer?

I've got the OEM version of 7 on my main BTV server and 8 on my link box, and both work for Blu-Ray playback, but neither shows the H.264 decoder in BTV. I can select the Cyberlink MPeg decoders and they work fine (In fact I use those for normal playback.)

I thought I had selected Cyberlink's decoder on my Link box when I first set it up, but it's not giving me that option now.

[Rich A]

The version PowerDVD that came with the 1600 I have is version 8.0.2705b.5

I've also run my NetFlix streaming through this thing and it does that just as good as the server does.

[ciuyidf]

An additional TV required a new link machine. A local store had one left in stock and I got it for $329. I was surprised to see it came with the 64 bit version of Win 7.