Acer AspireRevo w/XBMC - Page 4

I did update my NVIDIA drivers early on, so that might be important. On the NVIDIA site, I tried both manually selecting my computer model to search for drivers (both graphics and CPU - separate searches), as well as letting the NVIDIA site attempt to determine what computer I had and which drivers I needed. I found that each approach sometimes yielded different results, and I'm not exactly sure if I can tell you the quickest approach to arrive where I did. But I will check to see what versions I have and report back.

As for selecting NVIDIA instead of Realtek, that should be done within Settings / Control Panel / Sounds and Audio Devices. I believe that there are two places where you should make the change. I've also played around with the speaker settings options (selecting "No speakers" vs "Stereo speakers" - the latter of which there are several variations of). I'm not sure what the purpose of those settings are and what, if any, difference it makes.

Again, once I figure out what drivers I have, and how I have my Control Panel settings set, I'll post back as well as update the original post in this thread.

Oh, one more thing...have you gotten any new patches, etc. from Windows Update? I don't recall if there was anything of significance there (the Revo is so new that I'm pretty sure it already had XP SP3 on it).

Lastly, how are you testing the audio? Playing video files? Or are you not even able to get Windows sounds to be sent over HDMI?

OK, so under Control Panel / Sounds and Audio Devices, under the "Audio" tab, for "Sound playback" I have the "Default device" set to "NVIDIA High Definition Audio." And under the "Voice" tab, for "Voice playback" I've got the "Default device" also set to that value.

Under either tab, if you click on the "Advanced" button, you'll see a selection box labeled "Speaker setup." I've got mine currently set to "No Speakers." But I'm not sure that this setting matters much as far as HDMI is concerned, as I suspect that this is applicable only when using the mini headphone/line out on the front of the Revo.

Now for driver versions...Under Control Panel / System, under the "Hardware" tab, I click on the "Device Manager" button and here are some things to look at (not all of which are pertinent to HDMI audio, but are all probably pertinent to the NVIDIA drivers that get downloaded from their site):

- Display adapters / NVIDIA ION LE
- Driver version: 6.14.11.9107, dated: 9/27/2009

- IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers / NVIDIA nForce Serial ATA Controller
- Driver version: 11.1.0.30, dated: 6/30/2009

- Network adapters / NVIDIA nForce 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet
- Driver version: 73.1.0.0, dated: 7/1/2009

- NVIDIA Network Bus Enumerator
- Same driver information as previous

- Sound, video and game controllers: NVIDIA High Definition Audio
- Driver version: 1.0.0.59, dated: 8/21/2009

Oh, and if none of that helps, here's a stupid question: Are you hooking up anything else to your TV via HDMI and getting sound? If not, you may want to double-check that you're not overlooking some setting on your TV.

OK, well that's definitely your problem. AFAIK, the Realtek driver can't do audio over HDMI.

Within the System / Hardware / Device Manager, do you see any special marks (exclamation point, question mark, I forget what) next to the NVIDIA High Definition Audio line? If you right-click it, does it indicate that it's currently enabled or disabled?

If that looks fine...
If you double-click it, and look at the properties, does the first page/tab state that the device is working properly?

FWIW, I'm very likely going to buy a 2nd Revo and am on the fence about picking one up at Best Buy today (I've been debating waiting a bit in case it goes on sale, and I'm still trying to get my 1st one set up exactly how I want it). If I end up getting it, I'll take a look at how the audio is configured on a clean boot up.

Oh, I remembered one more thing...when I downloaded some of the NVIDIA updates from NVIDIA's site, I believe that there were actual actual .exe's to be run. Did you run these, or did you just hunt through the download package for the driver files?

Just wanted to make a correction here. With Slysoft's Virtual CloneDrive app (freeware), you can mount the .iso file and then play it with MPC-HC. And I believe that I can set up XBMC to launch a .bat file as an external player, with the .bat file mounting the .iso, playing the file via MPC-HC, then unmounting the .iso file. Seems a bit clunky, but it might turn out to be a desirable option.

I spent some time last night trying to share the BD-ROM drive on my desktop so that I could play a rented Blu-ray on my Revo, but couldn't get that working. I think the problem is related to the fact that my desktop is running Vista. With my other shared hard drives, I have to go into a "Security" tab to set up the proper permissions, but the BD-ROM drive doesn't have that tab. Vista lets me share the BD-ROM drive, but when I try to connect to it from the Revo, it tells me that I don't have permission.

I'm very close to reformatting my desktop and installing XP on it so as to get it a bit more lightweight. I'm also thinking that I might then try to use it as both my media server and a media player for the bedroom. I'm a little unsure about whether the CPU/GPU is up-to-snuff because it's got on-board NVIDIA 6150LE and MPC-HC plays slowly, but PowerDVD 9 plays my .ts file fine, so I think it's a problem with MPC-HC's codecs being screwed up since, in the past, I had tried numerous codec packs on that machine. My other reason for wanting to switch to XP is so that I could possibly then share the Blu-ray drive more easily. The Vista network sharing seems unnecessarily complicated.

Do you remember if the option was there when you first hooked everything up (i.e., before you downloaded any Windows updates or NVIDIA updates)? Or did you update the software/drivers before you went to try to configure the sound? I'm wondering if maybe rolling back the drivers to the stock config might be worth a try.

I'm really not at the point where I'm using it as a replacement for the XBox. I still need to get it set up completely before I'd be ready to have my wife and daughter use it. But I don't see why the transition shouldn't be seamless for them, as I plan to use the same skin (xTV).


Again, I've only been using this in small doses as I set things up, so I'd like to report back on this later. But my initial thoughts are that scrolling through movie titles and waiting for fanart to refresh is slower than the XBox, but not at all unusable. To put it another way, I'd say that it's noticeable/annoying if you're coming from an XBox/XBMC, but if you weren't used to the speed of that, it probably wouldn't phase you at all. If I scroll down a long list of movies by pressing and holding the down position of my D-Pad, I'll see the scrolling pause and stutter a bit, but it still moves reasonably quick. And if I just tap-tap-tap down, I think that it keeps up with my taps, so it's not really a matter of ever needing to "wait" for the UI to respond.


Again, I'll have to comment more about that later.


There's a mini headphone out on the front of the Revo. I don't know whether or not this can be configured as a coax SPDIF out, but you should be able to use it for stereo out.


If you don't need high-def video, save yourself the headache and live happily with the XBox. If you want/need high-def, I think this will deliver it for a reasonably low cost.

I forgot to add that I haven't tested out any functionality other than playing back movie files, so I can't say for certain that everything else (movies, pictures, etc.) work as well as with the XBox. I would expect that they should, though YouTube video playback is reportedly an issue (which should be resolved once the ION-optimized version of Flash gets released next year). That may only impact high-def YouTube videos, though. I'll try to get around to trying out some of this other functionality later today and report back.

Researching software for ripping Blu-rays is making my head spin. I could easily spend a week trying to figure out which software I should use and what resulting format I should save my file to.

The easiest approach would seem to be to rip my movie using AnyDVD as an .iso file, removing protection in the process. I could then mount the .iso using Virtual CloneDrive and play it with MPC-HC. This approach would keep all soundtracks, subtitles, etc., so we're talking about really big filesizes. But since the movie would be in an .iso format, I could always later use Virtual CloneDrive to mount it and then use some other app to further reduce the size when time permits.

DVDFab just officially released a version of their product that can rip, and even compress, Blu-rays, but BD+ support isn't there yet (they're working on it). I'm a long-time DVDFab user (for standard-def DVD's), and so I'm used to the interface of that app. Usability is very good. But I'm not certain if I would need to rip a BD+ movie first with AnyDVD, and then use DVDFab to mux out the unwanted soundtracks, or if I could do it all in one step with DVDFab so long as AnyDVD was running in the background. Anyone know?

Then there are other file formats, like .m2ts, .ts, and .mkv. I could use Clown_BD, tsMuxeR, or toNMT to take my Blu-ray file structure (ripped by AnyDVD) and convert to a single .ts or .m2ts file. There's another app, whose name I forget, that will convert to mkv. Assuming I was sold on the idea of using my Revo as my streamer (which can support mounted .iso files), would there be any reason why I would be better off converting to .ts, .m2ts, or .mkv instead of the single .iso file?

I'm also still confused about audio formats. Currently, I have an A/V Receiver w/HDMI, but it's not 1.3 (I think it's 1.1 or 1.2). I don't know if I can rip just a TrueHD track, for example, and have MPC-HC convert this on-the-fly to multi-stream audio that can be passed to my receiver. Do I *need* to convert this audio track to a lower-quality format during ripping? Keep in mind, also, that only one of my rooms has this A/V Receiver. The other two rooms would be connected directly to an LCD or plasma, so I would also need stereo support. Again, I think the big question here is whether MPC-HC can decode/convert Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD on-the-fly to: a) Stereo, and b) a 5.1 format that can be sent over HDMI 1.1/1.2 to my A/V receiver. And, if/when I got an HDMI 1.3 receiver later, will MPC-HC also be able to transmit the full-quality audio from that Dolby TrueHD/DTS-HD soundtrack?

Trying to answer some of my own questions here...

So I hooked my Revo up to my LCD TV, and have MPC-HC configured to downmix the audio to stereo. I play an .m2ts file that contains a Dolby TrueHD soundtrack and that's the audio track that's playing by default. It seems to play just fine in stereo.

Then I move the Revo up to the home theater and connect it via HDMI to my A/V Receiver which is not Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD capable. I have the downmix options disabled in MPC-HC. Again, everything seems to play fine with the Dolby TrueHD track selected, and I'm getting 5.1 audio with my receiver reporting PCM (or something like that). Am I missing anything? Perhaps DTS-HD will be more problematic but, for now, it looks like I should be able to rip just the Dolby TrueHD track (when offered) and I'll be able to play it back fine whether in my bedroom (in stereo) or my home theater (in 5.1).

Will they take it back without a restocking fee? Maybe you can try to exchange it for another one and will have better luck.

The lack of a built in IR receiver is my biggest complaint about the box itself. And I don't care for the fact that it has ports on three of its four sides, just because that looks a bit messy, but that's a minor point as I don't have a need to use any of those ports and having easy access to USB ports can certainly be helpful.

I would agree that if you want to hook up a TV tuner, then that could make for a mess, but this is really more of a streamer than a "source" box, IMO. Even there, though, a USB tuner could connect to one of the back USB ports.

Same goes for WiFi, though it's worth noting that I'm pretty sure this box has some manner of PCI slot inside where you can hook up an internal WiFi card (I believe that some have used an Apple card purchased on eBay). Unless the existence of that slot was specific to a certain European model. Of course, you're also getting metal shielding in the box which would interfere with reception, so I personally would recommend a WiFi USB dongle on the back if you need that.

I have (or will have) hard-wired Gigabit ethernet for the first two rooms I'll need these in. My living room has a powerline network connection, but I don't think it's getting a strong connection, so I need to play with that a bit. If that doesn't go well, I'll need to make the decision of whether to try to run wired ethernet to that spot (which will be very tricky) or perhaps give 802.11n a go.

Congrats. Are you in the US? Where did you get that model and how much did you pay for it?

Edit: I see that NewEgg is selling this model now. Here's the comparison:

AR1600
- Atom 230 (single-core) 1.6GHz
- NVIDIA ION LE GPU
- 1GB RAM
- Windows XP
- $200

AR3610
- Atom 330 (dual-core) 1.6GHz
- NVIDIA ION GPU (non-LE means DirectX 10 support)
- 2GB RAM
- Windows 7
- wireless keyboard and mouse
- $330

Personally, I think the AR1600 is still the sleeper deal if you just need it as an HTPC / media streamer.

I'm looking at the Revo as a streamer first and foremost. It's small, quiet, and relatively inexpensive. So unless there's something that Win7 brings to the table that makes it a better streamer, the 1600 model has more bang for the buck, IMO. Now I could see that using Media Center under Win7 could, indeed, make this a better streamer for people who want to have a Win7 central computer with multiple cablecards. But I'm uncertain whether the encrypted channels can still be streamed across the house.

For me, I've already got two HD TiVo's, and dropping those in favor of a new Win7 computer with two or more cablecards adds a whole 'nother level of complexity and cost. That may be where I'll want to go later, but not now.