$200 Aspire Revo as a Sage Client

[SWKerr]

Saw a link on geektonic.com with a positive review on this thing running XBMC.

Aspire Revo AR1600: $200
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16883103228

The price would be great for a HTPC running the Sage Client. Any one have one of these things running Sage? Seems like it would be competitive with the Extender if it worked well.

[gplasky]

The other plus is the is. I saw a link (I'll try to find it.) where the user added in .inf info to the full fledged ION graphics driver (Not the LE) which fully worked and gave it DirectX 10 capability. The LE graphics is restricted to only supporting DirectX 9 on netbooks/nettops as supplied by the maufacturer. With this little hack it shows that restriction is in the drivers and can now fully support DirectX 10, ie Vista and Win 7 and give even better video performance.

Slashgear LE hack

Gerry

[rwc]

I was just thinking the exact same thing--seems like a great box to use as a client; esp. if you do any browsing as well....

Since the 'nettops' seem realitvely new (or new to me at least) is there a cheat sheet somewhere of things to look for? (EX: Ion over Atom, etc)?

thanks!

rwc

[SMWinnie]

I'm decommissioning my 24/7 HTPC in favor of an Acer Easystore WHS box. Would an Aspire Revo (or similar nettop) have the horsepower to run SageTV for my limited purposes?

My wife and I have a TiVo HD and use that for most of our viewing. We use SageTV and a Silicondust HDHomeRun to handle overflow when: (1) the TiVo HD's dual tuners are overwhelmed; and (2) some overflow is OTA ATSC.

So, we wouldn't be using SageTV for playback, just for recording the ATSC stream.

Comments?

[LexLS]

First post on this forum, hello everyone!

I'm still in my STV trial phase and evaluating things at this point. I have a dedicated Sage server in my networking/computer closet which I'll post specs on later...i5 quad core, with 6 tuners. At this point I only have the one Acer Aspire Revo 1600 as a client. After cleaning up the system (lots of unneeded programs came with it) it runs STV perfectly. I do have a few issues I'm trying to figure out though and its probably just a settings thing I haven't configured properly. My Revo runs to a 46" Samsung via HDMI.

1) Audio very low when compared to my Comcast box. Seems compressed. I didn't have this issue when using BTV trial.
2) Some video seems washed out.

I'm doing a bit of searching here for those issues but if anyone has ideas please chime in.

All in all the Revo is a sweet computer for $200. I wouldn't use it as a server but its perfect for a client. It's completely silent too and boots in about a minute or so. If I can get these playback issues resolved it will be perfect. I know the HD200 is a bit cheaper but its not a full blown computer. If I stick with STV then I'll probably get one or two for my other TV's though.

Carl

[Clift]

Originally Posted by LexLS

First post on this forum, hello everyone!

I'm still in my STV trial phase and evaluating things at this point. I have a dedicated Sage server in my networking/computer closet which I'll post specs on later...i5 quad core, with 6 tuners. At this point I only have the one Acer Aspire Revo 1600 as a client. After cleaning up the system (lots of unneeded programs came with it) it runs STV perfectly. I do have a few issues I'm trying to figure out though and its probably just a settings thing I haven't configured properly. My Revo runs to a 46" Samsung via HDMI.

1) Audio very low when compared to my Comcast box. Seems compressed. I didn't have this issue when using BTV trial.
2) Some video seems washed out.

I'm doing a bit of searching here for those issues but if anyone has ideas please chime in.

All in all the Revo is a sweet computer for $200. I wouldn't use it as a server but its perfect for a client. It's completely silent too and boots in about a minute or so. If I can get these playback issues resolved it will be perfect. I know the HD200 is a bit cheaper but its not a full blown computer. If I stick with STV then I'll probably get one or two for my other TV's though.

Carl

1) look up ac3config in your SageTV installation folder and make sure it's set up to use 2 channel audio if you have the nettop connected directly to your TV. http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=44700

2) You have the dreaded 16-235, 0-255 color space issue. Two things you could try: in the NVIDIA control panel you can change the color space to HDTV or PC Monitor (whatever it is now, change it to the other). The other thing you could do is that some TV's have an option to change the color setting to vibrant or standard or something like that. Look at the attachment....

[LexLS]

Thanks Clift, I'll give those a try this weekend!

[LexLS]

Your suggestions worked perfect Clift - thank you!!

Changed ac3config settings to 2/0 32-bit, bumped the gain and it's now the same or slightly louder than the comcast box.

Also, you were right on with the color, its wasn't on 0-255 for some reason. Changed that and it greatly improved things. I then installed my color calibration software and ran a calibration with my eye-one to make an accurate icc profile for the TV. Wow! It was waayyyy off. Color is perfect now.

Now that I've been using this box for a while I should say that it's not by any means perfect. I've had a few BSOD's which I think is just due to overheating. When I get some time I'm going to check to see if there are fan settings I can tweak. Otherwise all is good.