Comment posted on My Personal Revo 3610 Set Up that works well by Mike Collins
Wow… that is surprising Bobby. I have Aero turned off because I thought it would give better performance. I think Paul has it turned on. I’ll give that a try.
By the way, I got my HDHomerun thing working better. On their forum they said to turn off background scan in the HDHR Setup. I did that and then went into WMC channels setup and it shows the strength of all the signals. I turned off the ones that were weak and it seems to be working better now. Not sure why I had a different set of channels between HDHR and WMC.
The other question I meant to ask Paul and forgot. I’m using a Harmony One remote exclusively to control the Revo (or trying). One problem I have when turning things on is that for some reason the Revo keeps going to sleep. It has a flashing power light. I have gone into Control Panel and turned every power saving option OFF, and don’t see any place where it is setup to go to sleep, yet it keeps doing it. This forces me to pull out the keyboard and hit the space bar to get it back on, and usually prevents the Harmony One from starting WMC if its not already running. Any ideas?
Mike Collins also commented
- Mike, you may look into a MOCA adapter instead of WIFi. I went that route and its much better. Its certainly not going to get you gigabit, but it seems to be handling HD streaming just fine.
- That does stink Paul. I broke down and bought a Mac Mini over the weekend to try. I had to know if it would handle this stuff better or not. Bottom line is that the quality of playback for everything was excellent. The areas where the Revo struggled – anything in Boxee, MLB.TV, and navigation sluggishness… all worked fine. But of course, this it isn’t as simple as just saying… OK, get the Mini.
The user experience of WMC + Hulu + Boxee was working pretty flawlessly with my Harmony Remote. It was easy to use and my family I think could handle it. I am using WMC to access my local content and then Hulu for internet TV. Boxee I wasn’t using much because it was slow. That said, MLB.TV was nearly unusable… just bad. The live TV and recording with WMC is very nicely done and closer to Tivo than anything else I’ve tried.
So the Mac Mini can scream on video quality, but I am using Plex and EyeTV. EyeTV seemed to do a better job getting OTA channels than WMC (via HDHomerun), but its user interface is just really ugly and antiquated. Plex seems to work OK, but isn’t as pretty on the eye as WMC either. The real struggle is navigating between them with a remote. I’m trying something called Remote Buddy that looks hopeful, but a lot harder to get setup than the Revo. I am going to keep pushing the Mac Mini for a few days to see if I can get it to pass the wife test.
MLB.TV is the real puzzler to me. It uses Flash and with the Revo setup like yours, it only hits the CPU to 35% while watching a game. In comparison, my 2.8Ghz Macbook Pro was at 110% while watching a game. The Mac Mini I didn’t directly test, but I guess its similar. The Mini and Revo have the same graphics chip, and they are both hooked to the internet via direct attach gigabit switch, to router, to cable modem. Doesn’t make sense. Something in the Revo must be a bottleneck outside the CPU. A couple of things that come to mind… the ethernet chip.. or possibly the way the Nvidia graphics ship connects with the videoram. Something in there is slowing things way down. Plus, you’d expect the Ion to be cranking harder than the core2duo.
WIll keep playing with them both and testing. This may be why one of the guys in AVSForum is running WMC on a Mac Mini… best of both worlds.
- One other thing… I know you are using Boxee a lot… my experience has not been as good with Boxee as with other viewing. The Hulu player seems to give very clean HD playback. YouTube HD trailers are perfection. The things that still give me poor playback are some shows in Boxee, and MLB.TV continues to be bad more often than not. MLB.TV is definitely better on my Mac which is very strange since while playing it (via Internet Explorer) on my Revo it is only at 35% CPU, but on my Mac I”m at 110% CPU.
- Paul,
I’ve been busy the last several nights testing and googling. I keep feeling drawn to try a Mac Mini as an alternative because some things seem to work better on the Mac, but one thing that is pulling me back to Revo is the live TV and DVR capabilities. There isn’t a clean solution for Plex or Boxee that works well on Mac, but WMC on Windows 7 does a really nice job of that which brings me to my question.
I bought an HDHomerun which seems to work pretty well. Its a network attached dual tuner box that streams the media on your network. I tested it with EyeTV on the Mac and in Media Center on the Revo. This is a really good test of what that little Revo can do. I tried the following scenarios and they all resulted in flawless HD recordings.
- Recording HD channel while watching other HD/Non-HD channels… heavy use of DVR functions. The live show via DVR got mixed up and out of sync a few times, but a simple stop and start fixed that. The recording on the other channel was perfect… played back with no problems.
- Recording HD channel while also watching a Netflix movie… all via MC…. again, recording was fine.
- Recording HD channel while watching TV shows via Hulu… launched from MC and returned back to MC… recording was flawless.
- Recording two HD channels at the same time… again, it worked fine.This is pretty impressive since these HD streams are coming in at about 30mbps I think… times 2… and then the processing to launch and stream Hulu or Netflix. WMC seems to know that the recording must be handled because even when I got the Revo into slowing down by constantly switching things, the recording was clean.
Now my problem. I can go into the HDHomerun viewer that lets you test the channels and I get about 14 channels. I can watch them from my Mac and they work equally well. For some reason , WMC only sees about half the channels… on the others I get a “No Signal or Off the Air” message. I know the channel is there and solid because I checked it with the viewer and it looks perfect. I’m thinking its a timing thing or something… it takes a second or two for the tuner to get the signal flowing and by then I think WMC may have given up. Have you run into this?
- I did two things last night… replaced the router and also disabled Aero. I think the router had an affect.. not sure about Aero. I am getting better results… probably not there yet, but starting to think about it being a possibility to ditch cable at some point in the near future.
Hule Desktop Player is looking sweet now. I watched a few movies and television shows and they looked very good. There are a few breaks now and again, but nothing bad. Also had good results via Clicker.com. I’m trying to remember if I tried Netflix or not… I think I did and it was fine. Within Boxee I was getting better results, and I think the problems I was having were really the content or something. For example, I watched an Engadget show that was on the RSS list and it was excellent. It looked HD to me and had no problems at all. I then watched an episode of House though Boxee from the Television show list, and it was to be blunt… horrible. It seemed like it was running at a horribly low framerate and just stuttered along.
I am running at 720P by the way, and the Windows 7 desktop now looks very nice from the couch. I fiddled with the programming of my Harmony One remote last night and actually got functional enough that I was able to navigate the desktop and launch all this stuff and use it with just the Harmony One. I used the instructions found here – http://forums.logitech.com/t5/Harmony-Remotes-Programming/Expanded-control-for-Windows-Media-Center-now-available-in-our/td-p/374844 . I basically setup a whole page of softkeys to do the mouse – left, right, up, down, click, and right click. With that, you can pretty much tackle anything as long as any urls you need are in bookmarks.
Now to MLB.TV. I am a little baffled by this and have yet to find someone with a good baseline experience to compare to. I think the router helped, as before MLB.TV was telling me via their bandwidth check that I was only getting 3-6mbps (I have 15-20mbps), and now its showing (5-11mbps) by their test. Before it wouldn’t give me a decent quality at all… very pixelated (it scales quality based on bandwidth I think). Now, however, when I watch something the video quality is excellent HD, but it goes for about 3 seconds then stops for 3… then repeats over and over. I’ll keep working with them to determine if there is something wrong. Its all done in Flash and their “required specs” are below the Revo; and they claim you need 3mbps from their test to get good HD.
I think we are getting there. Hulu Desktop is quite impressive and if that works, then everything else should be able to work. I dropped the idea with my wife last night that I’m thinking of ditching Cable and going OTA. Between the Tivo (OTA, Amazon, Netflix) and the Revo, we should be able to get more than enough content to watch if we are patient.
Thanks again for all the help.
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Derek,
I’ve had no issues with ISO playback and screen fitment. If it’s letterbox on the DVD itself, then it’s letter box on Boxee. If it’s full screen 16:9 on the DVD itself, then the ISO plays in boxee the same size.
I would have to say this fluctuation in sizes may be related to what software you are using to rip the DVD files. There are multiple views on some DVD’s and the ripper software can sometimes grab whichever version it feels like during the rip process.
I have no experience with WD TV or the movies you refer to, so I cannot comment on the differences. Post on the boxee forums, maybe one of my Smods or mods will know of something if it’s not the rip software and what files it’s grabbing for screen size.
Thanks a lot for the guide, Paul. Very very helpful.
My experience after following the guide was that I had great playback through Firefox for Hulu and Comedy Central, but terrible choppy playback in Boxee.
After reading through some comments, I found someone who mentioned that enabling Aero helped them. I had disabled it, because that seemed like the intuitive thing to do.
And, I can confirm that *enabling* an Aero theme totally fixed the streaming in Boxee. I now have fantastic playback… for some reason.
If you get a chance to update your post, I’d edit to say Aero *should* be enabled on the 3610. It actually doesn’t work well without it for some unknown reason.
Thanks for the feedback. It’s not a huge concern and probably has more to do with my TV than anything.
I’ve been using Windows Media Center 7, too, and am anxious to integrate my extended collection of ISOs. I know that I can use Mikinho’s Media Center Mount Image app, along with DVDFab Virtual Drive, but Mikinho’s site appears to be down and I can’t find his app anywhere else. Have you had any experience with accessing ISOs inside WMC 7?
AtomicCEO
Yeah, I’d heard that and tested it to be true on my system too. Makes sense once you see what Aero actually does for the GPU.
I thought as you did at one time.
I’ll clarify that bit in my Set Up post. Good idea! Thanks.
Derek,
Sorry, but I don’t use WMC at all, so I’ve had very little use over the years once I decided I did not like the workflow and function.
If there is a plug in to make ISO’s work, give it a try.
I tweeted mikinho to inform of site outage. Reading his tweets over the past few days, he’s had this issue already and fixed it .
Update:
Mikinho tweeted me two links for 32 bit or 64 bit.
mikinho@pauljroberts My VM is corrupt, the hosting company is working on it =/ v1.7 x86-32: http://bit.ly/cFRwXj x86-64: http://www.chi-town.com/mikinho/mount-image-setup-x64-1.7.msiabout 4 hours ago via Chromed Bird
My Revo Forums:
http://www.pauljroberts.com/forum/
Great info! Thanks a lot! I did the installation and everything works except h264.mp4 playback which does not play in neither boxee nor WPC. Any ideas why? Which of the programs above was supposed to include h264 codec?
Alex,
Glad my site helped out! Thanks.
An H264 mp4 file plays natively on Windows Media Player, MPC-HC, Boxee and most any video player. H264 and MP4 requires no additional codec
Your file is either not H264 .mp4 or was encoded with some other off beat codec.
I included files at the bottom of the post that are proper H264 mp4 files. Download one and test it.
Thanks. I did try it with the linked file before but probably did not download it properly. It works now.
However, I still have sporadic problems with Netflix playback despite all the same setup. Every other time (randomly) the playback is very choppy. Then the other time it’s OK. It’s not the inernet – i am consistently getting over 5Mbits/s on speedtest. It seems to be the CPU. Playing neflix in explorer – same proble. So far WMC plays fine. Any ideas?
Alex,
Ok, good to hear.
NFlix? Hmmm, boy. Real frustrating here to. Worked perfectly in HD the first week then went to crap. Seems I have plenty of CPU, but once the playbitrate and the download bit rate both hit 2600 or 3800 it starts to stutter. Did not do it that first week at all. I’m wondering if they are tinkering with the encoding, bandwidth or the player code? I’m not sure. All I know it went to hell real quick and I can’t do anything on my end to get it back. I even turned off all sorts of services and got down to 39 items running and it still would not play. I’ve had to set the browser to 1500 bitrate manually and just deal with how it used to be before HD streams.
WMCenter? I don’t use it, but may have to see if it is using the HD stream or not and how it plays for me. I’ll post back.
We may need to move this to the my forum: http://www.pauljroberts.com/forum/
I have been looking into this solution with Boxee, or a Boxee box, or Sezmi PVR solution, to cut my satellite service and the one thing I would additionally like to integrate is Live OTA HD channels into this HTPC Do you have any thoughts, comments, recommendations about adding a usb tv tuner onto this unit to connect a OTA antenna and DVR recording capabilities, or would a satellite internet solution be a better way to go. I am afraid the added cpu load of the tuner would cause performance issues.
The only way I can sell this to the family is to make it as easy to use and close as possible to our Dish HD DVR setup . I know i can justify the cost in a few months of sat bills, but trying to figure out a smooth interface.
I have been playing with Boxee on another non HTPC right now, and having alot of problems with performance and interface(audio and cant get Hulu to work), so I believe it is not going to be the end all solution, but will be a combo of softwares.
Any advice would be appreciated
Paul:
You can disregard some of my question above – I see this issue with USB tuners has been discussed to death with no final resolution. Seems the Hulu thing and Boxee is also a common problem.
Wondering if a newer Revo is on the way with a bit more horsepower.
Michael,
Please see more on this topic in my forums:
http://www.pauljroberts.com/forum/
Michael,
The new revo I’ve seen on the web but Acer has not confirmed the release other than their Aton/Ion 2 laptop. Nvidia still has to release a video patch driver that helps Windows play Flash with GPU acceleration. I feel that all the other vendors are waiting for this patch to be made BEFORE they all go to market with the Ion 2 boxes. That’s why nothing has been released other than the Zotac Zbox, which is having playback issues without the new driver.
Read more in the forums: http://www.pauljroberts.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=60
I have an Acer Revo 3610. When I try to watch Hulu full screen my TV says no signal. Any thoughts on what might be causing this? I’m wondering if there could be something wrong with the HDMI cable, but I feel like I’m grasping at straws.
I’m also experiencing a stuttering issue when streaming Netflix in HD. Hopefully this is temporary.
Mike,
The no signal issue: Check for good cable connections. Open the Nvidia controller and be sure to set the Revo to HDMI out and select your 720P or 1080p resolution (I recommend 720P). If you have it set to vga…that may be your issue. Update the Nvidia drivers. The new WHQL 257.27 is out now.
Stuttering with Netflix is normal right now. NF is in the midst of tweaking their player, bitrate settings etc. So, be sure to disable the HD opion in the player by clicking the HD tab and uncheck the “allow HD” and it should play in 1500 SD quality like it did before the move to HD streaming a few weeks ago.
Sometimes, when they have the player tweaked right, it will stream HD nicely, but it comes and goes as they tweak it lately.
Hi Paul, My revo 3610 is pretty much set up. I am having one issue with the display though. My TV is 720p (1280 x 720). Its a 50″ samsung. However, when I set 720p as the resolution on my revo, the display on the TV is not fully within the TV screen. In order to get the display correctly within the TV screen I have to reduce the resolution on the revo to 1242 x 696. The recommended resolution on the computer is shows as 1280 x 720. Is there a way out?
John,
You did not state what cable you are using: HDMI or VGA.
Set the revo at 720P. Then adjust the TV settings themselves. Those settings are Normal, cinema, Overscan (try NOT to use that), stretch, or some variant of all of these.
Some older TV’s don’t play well with PC’s even if connected via HDMI. They interpret the signal oddly and make it a strange size. Try to use the TV’s format settings I outlined.
Thanks Paul. I have an HDMI connection. I did as you said. Set the revo resolution to 720p and adjusted the TV resolution. The TV screen was with the aspect ratio 16:9. When I changed it to “Just Scan” the screen fit well. Thanks.
Hi John,
Thanks for the excellent start-up guide. I have just purchased the Revo R3610 which I presume is the slightly newer model as it comes with the 500GB HDD and 4GB RAM. I am pleased to say that your guide has made my machine into a Media Center to be proud of.
Whilst the Revo won’t hook onto the back of my Sony 40″ TV, it is more than small enough to sit proudly down in the TV Stand. I can now finally get rid of my PC Tower
One question though, I have a large collection of TV Shows already on my NAS Drive, but Boxee has some issues with collating them, what other programs can you recommend?
David,
Thanks for the props and glad my blog was able to help get you going.
Your model is the usual for the UK as the USA models have only 2 gb ram and 160 gb drives.
Boxee has had some NAS issues. I’ve not trouble shot any of those issues on the Boxee forums, I’ll ask my fellow Super Mods on the Boxee forums to see what some of the solutions may be.
Other media center programs? Ahhh, most need too much power to run and don’t offer what boxee does. I’d say just use WMC that is already on the machine. But, I’ll see what I can find out about getting the Nas to work
What model is it? Network connected or USB?
My Revo Forums:
http://www.pauljroberts.com/forum/
Hi Paul,
One more question for you. Is the HDD in revo swapable? Is it a 2.5″ or 3.5″ HDD? Can I replace it with a 1TB internal HD?
It is 2.5 SATA. You can run any size HDD you want..either traditional platter style or a newer SSD.