HD playback with XBMC & an Acer Aspire Revo

Ryan Boyles
Ryan Boyles
31
Jan 2010

HD playback with XBMC & an Acer Aspire Revo

Tags: 1080p, 720p, hdmi, HDTV, media, mkv, Revo, video, XBMC, xvid, General
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HD playback with XBMC & an Acer Aspire Revo

Until recently, I had been using my PS3 to stream various media to my HDTV. It worked fairly well, but lacked two really key things: A good media center interface and support for some media codecs (mkv, ogm, ogg, some xvid, etc.) So, I decided that if I'm going to replace my PS3 for my media playback needs that I will need to find something that will take care of those two issues as well as be lower power than the PS3. I soon stumbled upon a guide from LifeHacker for building one using Xbox Media Center (XBMC) and an Acer Aspire Revo. After ordering a Revo and going through their guide, I quickly ran into some issues. Stability was a major problems as well as media playback of certain codecs. I looked around the XBMC forums for a bit and discovered that the newest version of XBMC, 9.11, apparently fixes those issues. So, I went about upgrading my little box, but this only caused more issues with stability. I dug deeper, trying to find an answer, when I stumbled onto a small post on their forums pointing out that the standard installation of XBMC works with the Revo without needing to include updated NVidia drivers in the installer. This led to the creation of this guide for installing XBMC 9.11 onto an Acer Aspire Revo for full 1080p playback.

Requirements

  • Computer (duh)
  • HDTV with HDMI input (not required, but what's the point of 1080p playback without a suitable tv?)
  • Acer Aspire Revo (or other suitable machine)
  • USB drive with atleast 2 GB of space
  • Some basic computer skills

Software Required:

Downlod XBMC Live

For this install, we are going to want to use the Live version of XBMC. This will allow us more flexibility with the Revo as well as use it for booting any machine into XBMC without installing it to the machine.
Navigate here and select the Live version on the far right. After downloading, unzip the file, outputting an iso file.

Install XBMC Live to flashdrive

Since the Revo does not have a disc drive, we'll need to create an installer that uses a USB flashdrive. Unetbootin will allow us to quickly and easily create a bootable USB drive that the Revo can use to install XBMC.
  1. Open Unetbootin and select the Diskimage button
  2. On the right of the Diskimage, click the ... and select the XBMX 9.11 ISO that you downloaded
  3. In the "Drive" selector, select your flash drive.
  4. Click OK. This will let Unetbootin extract files onto the flash drive and make it bootable.
  5. When complete, just close out of Unetbootin.

Preparing the Revo

Now that we have a bootable USB flash drive with XBMC, we need to allocate more memory to the GPU on the Revo so that we can maximize video playback performance.

  1. Plug the USB flash drive into the Revo and turn it on.
  2. Hit the "Delete" key at boot up (labeled "Del" on the included Revo keyboard). This will take us to the BIOS configuration.
  3. Go to the Advanced section and make sure the iGPU memory setting is set to Manual with 256MB selected (Alternatively set it to 512MB, if your machine has 2 or more GB of RAM)
  4. Make sure to Save & Exit the BIOS

Installing XBMC

The Revo is now set with the right amount of graphics memory needed for playback of HD content... Now we just need to install XBMC onto the built-in HDD

  1. Restart the Revo
  2. Press F12 during boot up, and select to boot from the USB drive. It will now boot into XBMC Live that is on the USB flash drive.
  3. Scroll down and select "Install XBMCLive to disk"
  4. After a little bit, this will present you with a list of possible devices to install to. The built-in HDD will be the only option.
  5. Press the number for the built-in HDD. NOTE: This WILL delete the existing Windows partition on the built-in HDD.
  6. Follow the rest of the installer, setting an administrator password, etc. It should all be very straight forward.
  7. After installation, the machine should restart and boot directly into XBMC.

Tweaking XBMC

Now that XBMC is installed on your Revo, there is only one step that remains. We need to tweak XBMC to take advantage of the Revo's graphics processor via VDPAU (Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix). VDPAU will allow XBMC to offload processing of video onto the Revo's graphics processor, which is what allows for smooth playback of even full 1080p video. We will also need to adjust the audio output so that XBMC knows to use the Revo's HDMI port for audio.

Changing Render Method

  1. Go down to the System menu item and press right
  2. Select the Settings option
  3. Scroll to the System item and select it
  4. Scroll to the Video section and then scroll to Playback
  5. Change the render method to "VDPAU"

Changing Audio for HDMI

  1. Scroll to the Audio section
  2. Change the output to Custom and enter "plug:hdmi" as the output type

Finished

Now the Revo is complete and will playback even full 1080p video without issues. Running through with this tutorial, I have not ran into any issues with playing back any media in any codec on my XBMC. For a media source, I use a Intel® Entry Storage System SS4200-E with Windows Home Server (WHS) installed with 5.5 TB of space on it. (if there is any interest, I'll create a guide for installing WHS to this device) If anyone tries out this guide, let me know how it went for you and if I need to make any adjustments to this guide.

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Comments

February 4, 2010

ThaboreBoy

Thanks for this very useful

Thanks for this very useful post. Going to try this out in the near future. Few questions however.

1) what u think the average life span of revo will be if we are only using it for XBMC? Is it going to be another $200 in 3 years..

2)Can you turn on Revo with a remote control? If so how long does it take for u to be able to play any media on it from the time you turn it on.

3)Is there any advantage of installing Linux on the stock machine vs XP in terms of Playback

4)Deos revo or XBMC upscale the SD video content while playing back?

Thanks for your help.

February 4, 2010

rboyles

Thanks very much for the

Thanks very much for the reply. I'll try to answer as best as I can...

1) I'm not entirely sure. The Revo comes with a 1 Year Warranty and the components are fairly standard components. No solid state drive, so the HDD doesn't have those limited read/writes. So, unfortunately, your guess is about as good as mine. The hardware feels solid to me, so I would venture a guess and say at least 5 years, probably longer.

2) The Revo supports Wake on USB, however I have had no luck with a standard WMC remote that uses a USB infrared adapter to talk to the Revo. I haven't spent too much time messing with this as I have the Revo in a very easily accessible place. Ideally, I would like to have it wake on USB from the remote and always put it into standby or hibernate, which will reduce some of the boot time.

As boot time goes, it takes about 45 seconds to a minute before I get into the main menu. and then another 15-20 seconds to find exactly what I'm looking for... The menus feel a little sluggish when loading movie or tv show photos, but not terrible.

3) YES! YES! YES! The CPU in the Revo 1600 simply isn't powerful enough to playback HD content smoothly. It needs to offload the video processing to the GPU.

Windows does NOT support VDPAU, which is the reason HD playback works so well on the Revo 1600. Windows does have DirectX Video Acceleration (DXVA) but it is currently not included in the base XBMC installation. There is someone that created a player plug-in for XBMC but I have not had any hands on with it, so I cannot say how well it works with the Revo 1600 and HD playback or even if it is stable or not. Here's the link to the XBMC.org forum thread about it - http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=61355

Also, this guide is for installing XBMC Live, which runs on a trimmed down Linux kernel. With XP or even a normal Linux Distro, you will notice a performance decrease as it is having to load a lot more than just what XBMC needs.

4) Content will be scaled up to fit the resolution you set in XBMC. It does do some post processing, but it's not the best up-scaling. Having come from streaming via my PS3, the Revo is a bit worse at upscaling. It's hard to answer this, as most cases I don't even think of it... but quality wise, I'd say it's on par with a standard DVD player hooked up to an HDTV.

February 5, 2010

ThaboreBoy

Thanks. Really appreciate

Thanks. Really appreciate your detailed response.

February 4, 2010

Fishinfool

If you want to fix the wake

If you want to fix the wake on usb this is how I did it.

ssh into or open the terminal in xbmc (ctrl alt f2)
then bring up the editor of your choice I use nano mostly. You need to edit the file rc.local.

sudo nano /etc/rc.local

In the bottom of the text there's a blank line just paste or type the below.
echo USB0 > /proc/acpi/wakeup

Then save and exit. (ctrl o) (ctrl x)

February 5, 2010

rboyles

Thank you for pointing this

Thank you for pointing this out, but I tried this with no luck. The Revo will not come out of suspend from my MCE Remote (this one - http://bit.ly/aUq8SD ) Though, thinking more about it, I might have it plugged into the wrong USB port. Seems like the one it is in is turned off during standby. I'll mess with it again tonight.

February 6, 2010

Nuuki

Great posts guys. I've

Great posts guys.

I've recently got XBMC Live running on my new Revo 3610, and its been great - thoroughly impressed. However I'm struggling with power management a little, and wondered if any of you could shed any light on what it might be.

If I select "Standby" nothing seems to happen at all.
If I select "Shutdown" XBMC closes and I'm dropped to a login prompt.

One additional anomoly - I went to configure Shutdown to do to Standby. However the "Shutdown Function" gives me the option of ?0? and ?-1?. Don't know if this is a related issue or irrelevant, but it seemed odd, as my Windows install (on a separate PC) shows the options correctly.

Anyone seen anything similar, or have any ideas?

February 5, 2010

Dave Sunter

Wireless

Hi there,

Great guide, just wondered if you'd figured out a simple way of getting the wireless to work on the Revo?

Thanks

Dave :)

February 5, 2010

rboyles

I have not tried to get

I have not tried to get wireless working with my Revo. I'm using a gigabit Wireless N router with the Revo and my NAS box on wired. The XBMC.org forum is a great resource for modifying and customizing XBMC. I discovered this forum post - http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=65538 It has somewhat of a guide, and should be a decent starting point.

Personally, I would avoid wireless if you can. It seems like a lot of hassle and you must go through some more advanced things for getting it running in XBMC. Also, depending on the network, you may not be able to stream some HD content. Anything 1080p will definitely have some choppy playback.

February 7, 2010

Anonymous

Wireless

Hi Ryan

Thanks for your reply.

I've got the wireless sorted now.

I can't believe how poor the streaming is compared to when I streamed to my PS3. I've now copied everything to the HD. Was going to do that anyway but was shocked at how poor the streaming performance was.

Have you tried any torrent apps on the Revo and XBMC?

Cheers

Dave :)

February 8, 2010

rboyles

The combination of wireless

The combination of wireless and streaming for XBMC could be a bad combination. The PS3 handles it really well because it will cache the video playback, even when streaming it. XBMC doesn't cache as much, if any at all at times.

As far as the torrent apps, nope. I have not tried them and I probably never will. I do not run any torrents at my home and probably never will. For my download needs at my home, I utilize my NAS server which is running WHS (basically Server 2003), because it is always on and I only need to organize my downloads instead of then transferring to another machine.

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