Acer AspireRevo w/XBMC - Page 11

Yes, DTS light turns ON.

I have not tried any high-def audio content. Is there any sample high definition video with high def audio I can download and try it out? My receiver is capable of decoding bitstreamed high def audio.

I don't think bitstreaming of high def audio would be possible in revo due to PAP (Protected Audio Path) issue. But it is entirely possible to decode high def audio in XBMC and output it as multichannel audio on hdmi or even downmixing it if XBMC have implemented it.

I'm not exactly sure where I pulled it from but I will go back to your original post and verify. The build I'm using though is 1.3.1249.0 if that makes a difference.


It plays fine under PowerDVD8



Initially I had this at the default (which works fine with DVDs) but I did change this to 256 to see if it matters and it didn't.


I've tried both remote and local because I was unsure what it would do and got the same results.

David

Okay hold on. I tried using the MPC directly to open and play both files and it worked fine. It would seem that I somehow do not have the player hooked up correctly inside of XBMC ... :-(

I'll have to dig through the notes and figure out what I did wrong.

But the upside is that I now have more confidence that this will work.

Here is where I am so far. Bought the Revo yesterday. Downloaded and burned the Live XBMC CD. Then I made the USB drive and booted from it. It seemed to boot super quick and ran fine for a little bit. I was using the iPhone XBMC remote application and that started hanging and XBMC started freezing. That happened twice. Each time I had to reboot. Seems like such a shame since it worked well on playing HD content. I tried a 1080p mov slideshow.

I added the mythtv source as a uPnP server and it showed the content but would not play anything. Weird!

Then I tried playing the same file in Windows XP. Cyberlink PowerDVD played it fine. And it played some AVCHD files too. I then installed MPC-HC and XBMC but XBMC was complaining about some directx dll so I installed directx9.

XBMC started up ok after that but the high-def files were played with stutter. I have not had a chance to play with the mpc-hc tweak within XBMC yet. If that works, and XBMC is stable, I will be installing Windows 7 and re-doing the whole setup. I need to also order a remote and the one I like from ebay comes from Hong Kong and takes a while to arrive. So I will be using the iPhone remote for a while.

I just placed my order with Best Buy using the 5% Bing Cashback and $20 Paypal promotions and will begin setting it up this weekend. Thanks to everyone that posted their experiences since that will make the going that much smoother for me!

Will Wubi run on Win7 64bit?
Just noticed this mention & became interested in installing the linux XBMC using this app.

I just bought an AR1600 and this had to happen

Without going too far off topic...

I saw the Zino from Dell and it definitely looks attractive. I wonder how the processor in the base model compare to the Atom in terms of actual real world gain?

Biggest advantage to the Revo is the VDPAU support that can accelerate 1080P. Wonder if the Zino can do the same. It's definitely an attractive pricepoint and a good form factor IMHO. Especially when compared with the other popular XBMC box, ASRock ION.

Looking forward to seeing how this play out.

The Zino has an ATI graphics card which doesnt support VDPAU. Thats the big downfall I see with it.

I don't have one of these specifically, but I do have an HP Mini 311 with basically the same chipset (1.6GHz Atom and ION LE - comes with XP)

You guys might want to check here
http://myhpmini.com/forum/viewforum....eb8c01a321d575
specifically for
1) Drivers that enable the full ION. Apparently the ION "LE" is not different hardware from the regular ION graphics chipset. It's a designation to keep costs down by using XP with it. If you put Windows 7 on the Revo, you get full DirectX 10.1 support and Windows 7 accelerates video much better than XP according to these guys. You buy some better performance - not sure if it's only in gaming or applies to 1080p video.
Discussion here: http://myhpmini.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=2580
and here: http://myhpmini.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=2571

2) MPC-HC HD video playback guide. Apparently, you're not supposed to add any codecs on Windows 7 - just use MPC-HC and whatever is built into Windows. Again for the HP Mini 311 but the same thing as the Revo.
Discussion here: http://myhpmini.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=2331

Not sure how XBMC plays into the above, but it might help for those trying on Windows that have Windows 7 they can put on their Revos...

I'm in the "looking for a Xbox XBMC replacement" boat. I like this option, but my problem is that my receiver does not accept audio over HDMI, nor will the plasma pass it on. Any ideas how to get coax or optical out of the Revo? Gracias.

I like it a lot. Can't wait until we get Adobe Flash 10.1 with GPU acceleration. It will pep the laptop up even more. I put Windows 7 on it immediately and use it for light duty. Small fan issue with Windows 7 that will require an HP BIOS update - messes with hibernation so I have to keep the "Fan always on" to enabled instead of letting Windows cycle it when it needs it. Noise isn't too obnoxious though.

Best bang for the buck netbook out now. Probably better than a ULV Celeron with the 4500MHD graphics chipset. And $399 for the XP version - Windows 7 + a 2GB stick of RAM and it's working great.

Okay, so I worked through the issues and now have the BD content streaming through the external player very smoothly.

I first ran into a problem that my playercorefactory.xml that I edited was in the wrong directory and not in the users directory (which for the new folks, which I am one, it is in C:\\Documents and Settings\\\\Application Data\\XBMC\\userdata). Then I realized after looking at the wiki that I didn't have any rules setup for when to use the external player. So now my playercorefactory.xml looks like this:

(srauly, I would suggest that you update your front page article to include the outline of the playercorefactory.xml changes needed... it might save someone later a bit of time)

Then I ran into the next problem that srauly had below:


The solution was in this thread if you are using Camelot (which I am). The problem is that you need to grab a newer svn build and edit advancesettings.xml to have the following:

I grabbed SVN 24368 installer from here and now it seems to work well (yes I know this is a pre-alpha... but life on the bleeding edge can be fun).

next is to configure my logitech controller to control the IR I just got in and to clean up the boot up to autorun XBMC... then it is time to get back to ripping DVDs and Blu-Rays.

David

"Couple of more questions before I pick up a Revo.

My movie library on my Nas is over 800 movies, all with thumbs and many with fanart.

Using XBMC on my xbox when I click the movie tab it takes almost 60 seconds to show the movies on the screen. Then if I watch a movie, click stop, again it takes about 60 seconds for my movie library to show again.

Also, .jpgs from my Nikon camera come out to over 1 meg in size. They wont even show up on the xbox unless I downsize them to smaller than that.

This is all with PM3-HD.

My question is is the processor in the Revo enough of a difference to alleviate these issues somewhat?"

Thanks in advance!

I cannot get XBMC to pass through the Dolby Digital or DTS track via HDMI to my receiver. I have gone through some of the recent postings in this thread and someone confirmed it working using the XBMC Live version but not the Windows version.

I have set the Sound to Digital, checked the AC3 and DTS checkboxes (tried them unchecked too) and finally I have tried all three settings in the sound output box: primary audio driver, nvidia and realtek.

Nothing gives me Dolby Digital audio. Unchecking the AC3 and DTS checkboxes gives me PCM sound but I don't want that. I want my Harman Kardon receiver to do the decoding.

I will try the Live version tomorrow.

Also, how can I tell whether or not mpc-hc is being used for a video? I added the hack but still got stutter in some avchd videos.

Finally, I had decided to stay with Windows 7 since the install was getting very tedious (no DVD drive) and there were too many drivers to hunt down. Especially the nvidia control panel which let me easily adjust the overscan on my TV. And I am not sure about getting audio drivers either. But since someone posted above that W7 mayb help with video acceleration, I am thinking about giving it a try. Has anyone noticed any difference with Windows 7?

Thanks in advance.

Helps when you have time on your hands (I'm in early startup mode... which means I have time).

My Home Theater system has the following:

Pioneer 60inch Plasma Kuro (PDP-6060FD)
Sony DA3400ES AV receiver hooked to nice speakers

So my test today was a rip of Batman The Dark Knight Blu-Ray streamed over to my new XBMC Revo platform. It worked beautifully. Full HD video and full HD stereo. My AV receiver scrolled a message saying it was doing Linear PCM at 48Mhz and I have to say that it sounded great. I actually had to turn the AV to 2 Ch when the wife went to bed because the house tends to shake when I don't ;-).

So that should put the rest any questions about this system being able to do HD audio over the HDMI.

Now my next step is to get the logitec remote configured to control this and then to work out a clean workflow to rip my 600+ DVDs and small number of Blu-Rays (actually, I need to build a dedicated server for my media... but not right away).

Thanks srauly for starting this thread and getting me off my butt to get one and set things up.

David

Yelloguy, What is the difference between getting PCM vs Dolby Digital? I just got my system basically working and I'm getting the PCM as well but I have to say that it sounds really good.


I struggled with this as well so here are some points to very/try (note that this comes from my digging with the Camelot builds of XBMC... I haven't tried this with the stable release):

1) You can tell if your video is playing via mpc-hc because you will see that player's logo startup right before your video.

2) If you right click on a video title you want to play you can select "Play with..." and that will give you a pop up that will allow you to select the video player to use. If you haven't correctly added the external video player to your configuration then it won't show up as an option.

3) Make sure you're editing the playercorefactory.xml file in the right directory. I initially was doing this in the wrong directory. It needs to be in: C:\\Documents and Settings\\\\Application Data\\XBMC\\userdata\\

4) There is this link on the XBMC Wiki: HOW-TO use an External Player for media playback. As I said, I haven't tried to get this to work on the stable release which would require adding the external player information into advancedsettings.xml. I think that is the way srauly does it. It seems that the old way doesn't give you the rules system to allow you to pick a different player for each video type...



I'm using the Windows XP that it came installed with... But I do have the overscan problem on my TV that I haven't tried to figure out yet....

PCM sounds good but it is being decoded in XBMC. Dolby Digital is bit streamed to your receiver which decodes it.


I am not seeing any logo and the stuttering is as bad as before so I guess it is not using mpc.

I will try #2, play with... but right now I am installing Windows 7. Since I was having issues with a wireless dongle I guess I would just go to Windows 7 and see how it goes.


Its super easy to fix. Go to NVidia control panel and on the left nav menu, towards the bottom there is an option to resize tv screen. Drag the sliders so you see the arrows and problem solved.

I tried the sample videos that srauly mentioned containing Dolby-TrueHD and DTS-MA. For Dolby-TrueHD XBMC decoded it and my receiver says it got PCM. For DTS-MA XBMC bitstreamed the DTS core and receiver said it got DTS.

I have tried windows version of XBMC 9.11 alpha 1. Did not like it. Not even with MPC-HC. I need subtitle and MPC-HC is not showing it. Also I was not able to get Dolby digital or DTS sound at all in windows version of XBMC. Everytime my receiver said it got PCM. XBMC for windows audio setting was the same as XBMC Live.

I accidentally *fixed* the audio issue. Just for kicks I tried Analog audio and as expected it did not give me any Dolby Digital. Then when I switched back to Digital (with DD and DTS checked) I started getting DD. I swear I tried these settings before and it did not work for me.

I got the same results with the Dolby-TrueHD as you (PCM).

I like the convenience of the live version but its not as "tweakable" unless you ssh into it and use the commandline for everything. I think I would either stick with a Windows version or install a Linux version.

Oh and please see the dell mini link above for the mpc settings for enabling subtitles.

If you are using an external player, wouldn't the player be the one decoding rather than XBMC? I wonder where the decode is actually happening? Maybe in the NVIDIA audio drivers?


Problems with a wireless LAN dongle? If so, I doubt there is any difference between XP and W7 except that maybe the W7 drivers for that dongle may not be ready or are not mature.

I come from a WLAN background (used to manage a team that developed WLAN drivers for windows/linux platforms) so I know how some drivers lag behind the OS.



I saw this too but the next problem was that the whole display was shifted to the left and I didn't see a control for adjusting that... just the resize control.

Which version of XBMC are you working with?

srauly,

Can you explain how you configured your logitech harmony to control the Revo and the TV? I've been searching through the forums without much luck.

David