Acer Aspire Revo as a MythTV frontend

When Acer released the Aspire Revo, a lot of people seemed to think it would make a good front-end for a MythTV box. The price point seemed reasonable, the hardware seemed capable, and the size was just right.

However, Acer decided not to release it in the US at launch. Unfortunately, my trek to the UK for the year had already passed by the time it was released. (I was also a little too early for the start of the Depeche Mode tour, but that is a different story.) So, I looked around in Japan while I was there this summer, and was unable to locate one in either Akiba or Den-den town.

But, it was unclear that it would have worked well considering only SVN had the needed VDPAU support for MythTV. But, when the Revo FINALLY showed up at Newegg for a mere $199.99, I jumpped and snapped one up.

I'll spare you specs of the box, since it is posted all over the net. If you are really curious which one I have, you can see the specs here : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883103228&Tpk=Acer%20Aspire%20Revo .

Once I got the box, I loaded Gentoo Linux on it, and grabbed the 0.22rc1 release of MythTV from the MythTV site. I also loaded up the latest beta driver from NVidia's web site so I could be sure to get support for the ION chip in this box.

In a nutshell, the Revo is a pretty good option for someone looking for a fairly no frills front end for MythTV. There are just a couple of issues to watch out for.

First, MythTV wants your VDPAU enabled board to have 512 Megs of RAM, minimum. In the stock configuration I ordered from NewEgg, the box only comes with 1 Gig of RAM. The maximum amount of RAM that the BIOS will allow to be assigned to video is only 256 Meg. In my initial testing, this worked okay, but it is always a good idea to meet the specs of the software you are running. (It will usually result in less pain.)

My theory was that if I upgraded the RAM, perhaps the BIOS would let me assign more memory to the video card. So, I dug up some SODIMMs that I had laying around the house. (Yes, I know.. Most people don't have SODIMMs laying around the house. ;) A little bit searching around on Google, and I found this video on how to open the case : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ayQOyTEWRw . The video suggests the use of a flat-head screw driver to pry the case open, but I found that less damage was done to the case if I used the slot cover from a desktop case instead.

Once the box was open, I slapped the 1 Gig SODIMM in the available slot, booted the machine up, and checked the BIOS. It allowed me to up the video memory from 256M to 512M. Mission accomplished!

So, how well does it REALLY work? I think the answer to this will come only after a few weeks of using it. But, in my tests, with VDPAU running, and watching live TV from a 1080i source, the CPU sat at about 12-13%. This was without any form of deinterlacing enabled, so it may well be higher when I get around to messing with that. The box also managed to play DVDs, and FLAC audio with no problems.

So, a Myth frontend for $199.99? There has to be SOMETHING wrong with it! It is too good to be true! Well, I am not sure I would say that there is anything "wrong" with the box, but there are some things that you may want to consider before picking up a Revo. One of the most glaring is the lack of any form of digial audio out. For me, this is a non-issue since I am hooking it up to a TV that only has stereo anyway. But, for some, this may be a good enough reason to steer clear of this system. The box also has two other annoyances. First, the only audio jack is on the front. So, if the box sits somewhere that people might see it, the audio cable will be sticking out. Second, the power LED on the box is a bright white LED on one of the corners. If you were going to put this in a room where you wanted it to be dark at night, this could be an issue. However, solving this is fairly easy. A little bit of painters tape from your local hardware store should be enough to dim the light on the box.

If you need a front-end that is similar to the Revo, but has optical or other features, you might check out the mainboards that NewEgg sells. I saw a few of the Atom boards with the ION chips on them. Many of those included all of the outputs you could possibly want.

But, at the end of the day, a board with an Atom processor, and an NVidia ION chip is plenty for driving a MythTV frontend.