Acer Aspire Revo R3600 - nVidia ION Nettop Comments

As this unit would make an ideal media centre machine I am curious how noisy it is. Any chance you are able to advise the noise level in dB?

Regarding PowerDVD 9 and MKV files: I've found that if you stick to regular AC3 or DTS audio encoded files, you can get MKV files to play normally simply by renaming them .AVI files.

I like the idea of the 8 Gig Solid State version, just keep the SSD for the OS (should be plenty), and get a NAS for Media, a HD Homerun for Digital TV, and a copy of MythBunto, and of course a USB Infa Red receiver, A Perfect Media Center.

Rather than bundling a keyboard and mouse, they might have offered a version with in-built Bluetooth so we can use wireless peripherals. Then it really would suit being connected to a TV.
Still, it's not as if dongles are expensive...

Nice review, but it has one major omission. How does it work with YouTube, iPlayer full-screen or the other networks (C4, C5, ITV) equivalent players?

This is the big limitation for the ION platform at the moment... Flash video is NOT accelerated (yes, yes they are working on it... for what Q2 2010?) and an increasingly large amount of content is now available online via Flash... Atom cannot decode it effectively...

If you add testing of this to your review and find that iPlayer works a treat, I'll happily stand corrected as I'll buy one of these sooner rather than later (ie. Q2 2010!)

Also for iPlayer, can you check out the downloaded HD stuff as well as the Flash streams.

Shouldn't that be: 'an asthmatic ant carrying heavy shopping'...?

Have a misheard or misread that it cannot play youtube videos and other forms of flash player?

OK, so why not put it in the text for those of us who prefer to take our tech that way. We would've had to sit through (up to) 3 mins 38secs of video plus a 12 sec ad at the beginning - and we wouldn't have know n the info was in there.

Is the info about the iPlayer downloaded streams in there too?

Not being able to play HD flash streams is a total deal breaker for use as a media centre box. Surely iPlayer is one of the main applications for a device like this.

@andybee: Not being able to play HD flash streams is a total deal breaker for use as a media centre box.

Well hopefully Adobe will get a move on ->
http://www.trustedreviews.com/software/news/2009/06/02/Adobe-Bringing-GPU---Hardware-Acceleration-to-Flash/p1

I don't plan to use Youtube but will it work with BBC iplayer , ITVplayer etc ?

I plan to wait for Windows 7.

Thanks

I've had the vista version for a few days now and have installed the latest ion drivers. Unfortunately iplayer, ITVplayer,youtube, lovefilm all playback in a choppy way. Video through windows media play is absolutely fine. I'l search for work around's but my view is - nice idea but poorly executed

Just to add to my previous comment. I installed Windows 7 RC and it's transformed. Iplayer etc all play fine.

I ended up buying one of these, I think there fantastic, btw. This thing comes with McFee installed, first thing I did was uninstall this and it runs so much better, this might explain Richards findings with installing Win7, I assume he never kept McFee :). Only problem I've got at the moment is sound via HDMI is a bit hit & miss, I believe it's NVidia HD Audio codec that I'm going to try updating to see if it fixes it. As a Media Center PC it's great, bought a slimline DVD powered by USB and you have hardly any cable clutter especially when fixed to the TV with the Vesa mount, when slimline Blue rays are cheaper I could then upgrade. Oh, only niggle the wireless/n is a bit naff, not surprising really as there is no external antenna, a set of Homeplugs is much better. Next on my shopping list is a HD Homerun that I can stick in the loft and then it's complete. If your thinking of getting one of these for a Media Center then I would highly recommend, the single core Atom is plenty if setup right.

Would adding more memory add anything to these little PCs ??

It comes with 2Gb, but I'm sure I read somewhere that it can take upto 4Gb.

http://www.acer.co.uk/acer/product.do?link=oln85e.redirect&changedAlts=&CRC=600100215#wrAjaxHistory=0

Just realised that there is no DIGITAL AUDIO connection - is this correct ??

Will this work with a USB TV Tuner? Or is it possible to stream TV from another mediacenter PC?