ACER Revo HTPC frontend

..yup

Yes its in and working. I got the unit in December and, after running through the fun restore disc creation (the software insists on a physical DVD drive to write the discs and the unit doesnt have one, my trusty USB to IDE converter and a spare DVD-R drive came into play here!) I used partition magic to change one of the 80GB windows partitions into blank space and installed Ubuntu Karmic.

Several fun filled days later I'd installed the NVIDIA ION drivers, XBMC and mythtvfrontend. I've also purchased a £20 MCE remote from Maplin and programmed an lirc script. Now when the machine boots up it uses the LAN to connect to the big old backend mythtv server (the one with the drives and satellite / freeview cards) and runs up the myth interface on the Revo. Pressing livetv on the remote kills mythtv (front end - the backend server whirrs away regardless) and starts XBMC, pressing liveTV in XBMC kills it ans goes back to MythTV front end and so on.

The Revo (a 3610) has HDMI and SPDIF (although WHY the SPDIF output is on the front of the box is a mystery to all) and my Hyundai TV only has DVI and analogue audio so the spdif routes to my Yamaha amp for DTS ,PCM and Dolby Digital audio.

Using NVIDIA VDPAU this little beasty handles 1080p/720p High def output nicely (there are a few dropped frames as the LAN wakes up and a few hiccoughs but thats a tuning issue). In MythTV I can also watch live TV even viewing BBC HD!

Next up is a new Tv that can go to full resolution and match refresh rates (the Hyundai is stubbornly locked to 60hz at 1360x768 - see my postings at AV Forums ) and a redesign to get rid of the big old tv unit and server whirring away in th lounge!