back to article Acer Revo RL100 media centre

It’s been a long time since PC makers started trying to get PCs into people’s living rooms. Originally it was all about games, but consoles soon became a cheaper and better-supported option. Now, it’s about TV and disc playing, in particular 3D, HD viewing and Blu-ray too. Acer seems keen to revive the lounge PC and with the …

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  1. Lottie
    Badgers

    Shame about the price...

    ... but I have to say it looks like a really decent idea. I'm quite taken with the keypad/ remote thingy.

    It kind of reminds me of a squashed PS2 for some reason.

    But for 600 quid, I think I'll pass.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Price Fail.

    Windows Tax takes its toll...

    how about a winfree *nix version?

    anyway I have a cheap settop pvr box from Tesco with twin HD tuners that's got wifi and IPTV and iPlayer, and connects to my Media Center NAS, (where I 'might' have ripped some BR discs).. all for £200. so remind me what was the point again?

    1. Big-G

      Tesco ?

      Curious, which Tesco model are you describing?

  3. Dave 49

    £600, for /that/

    Or:

    £300 for a Pentium Dual Core or Athlon X2 laptop, with easily enough power to decode 1080p MKV without dropping a frame

    £80 for a 2TB harddrive

    £0 for XBMC . Google if you're unaware of it.

    £100 for an Orange Sanfrancisco. It's a phone that does a billion things, but the one we're interested in is the XBMC remote control app, which you really should search Youtube for footage on, since it's awesome

    £480 for something considerably more flexible, capacious and, frankly, flash. At £600, this is really far too expensive considering how little you get.

    1. JEDIDIAH
      Linux

      $900 for that???

      Get yourself an old Acer Revo and a USB BluRay drive and you're there for less than $400.

      I've got a setup very much like this for running AnyDVD (as I am a Linux user).

      h264 is a beast. If you are going to be decoding ANY video in software then you need a CPU that is also a beast. Doing it half-arsed won't help. If you don't put a fast CPU in the thing you might as well just use an Atom or even an ARM.

      1. James Hughes 1

        Hmm

        Does anything decode video in software any more? Thought it was always handled in the GPU (and if it isn't it bloody well should be).

        1. JEDIDIAH
          Linux

          Curveballs...

          > Does anything decode video in software any more?

          > Thought it was always handled in the GPU (and if it

          > isn't it bloody well should be).

          Do you use Flash?

          Then more likely than not, you are video decode in software.

          This is why everyone hates on Flash.

          Although hardware decoding in general has it's limits as it's much easier to change software and it's pretty easy to throw a GPU something it can't handle.

          h264 shares a lot with DNLA in terms of being a standard that everyone is free to implement in their own way.

          1. James Hughes 1

            @JEDDIDIAIAHAH

            Flash has the ability to be HW accelerated - there are apis for doing it. Whether those APIs are used is another matter though.

            And a decent GPU will handle most stuff (the one I work on does H264, 263, WebMM, MPEG, JPG etc)

            1. JEDIDIAH
              Linux

              Flash has the ability to be HW accelerated

              > Flash has the ability to be HW accelerated

              Yes. But you are not the one in control of this if you are using Flash.

              This is why most Flash video still sucks.

      2. Shades
        Stop

        @JEDIDIAH:

        "If you don't put a fast CPU in the thing you might as well just use an Atom or even an ARM."

        That's odd. I must be imagining my lowly little Atom based netbook, with the standard intel graphics, playing 720p video (upscaled to 1080p by the netbook, not the TV). It will, at a push, do 1080p video but that has to use the right codec and only with (the ancient Microsoft) MPlayer2.

        And I thought Linux users were above the "Solve everything by chucking more power at it" mentality?!

        1. JEDIDIAH
          Linux

          Hiding in the tall grass.

          > And I thought Linux users were above the "Solve

          > everything by chucking more power at it" mentality?!

          We are. You just have to be smart about how you throw the "power" around.

          It's not the CPU that does the real work on these kinds of boxes. It wouldn't even be doing the real work if you were using a recent Mac Mini. All the heavy lifting would be done by the GPU.

          They very expensive supercomputing setups out of nothing more than a big tower and a bunch of GPU cards.

          Even Flash can will the GPU if the webmaster in question bothers to enable newer features in the plugin.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    A miss is as good as a mile

    It needs USB3.0 and options for dual tuner Freeview HD and I'd have bought one. Maybe next year Acer?

  5. DrXym

    Didn't apple just patent something similar to this keyboard

    I think it's a neat idea, at least for constrained devices. I can't say I think much at all of the price at all. You can have a media player for 1/6th the price and spend the rest on a decent laptop.

    Even if you absolutely need some kind of computer thru TV functionality, it shouldn't cost that much. If a netbook retails for £250 (they do), then a PC media device should cost the same or less even.

    After all the savings on the keyboard, battery, lcd would offset the cost of a remote keyboard and larger storage. I expect the most recent atom processors are quite capable of 1080p output.

  6. Citizen Kaned
    FAIL

    nice idea but

    not that good for the cash.

    as people said before its expensive for what it is.

    you could even go for a ps3 with the tv tuner thingy for £300

    you are far better off with standalone devices, usually i find. even if you dont want v+ or sky+ you can get a hd freeview box, ps3 and a nas for much less.

  7. Brian 6
    Stop

    Cant record one thing while watching another ??

    "there’s only a single tuner, so you can’t watch one channel while recording another" what a load of bollocks, when its recording something from its own built in tuner whats to stop u watching something else on the tuner that built into your TV ???

    1. Matt Gerrish

      The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

      Perhaps the TV doesn't have a built in tuner.

      Perhaps the TV isn't a TV at all, but a monitor.

      Perhaps you want to record more than one program.

      £600, I'd expect the thing to have dual tuners. Especially when dual tuner cards are pretty cheap thesedays.

      I suppose you could attach a USB tuner to work around the problem, but you shouldn't have to.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Tuners...

      A lot of old plasma displays are just that - displays (*not* TV's). However, with a single tuner it should be possible to record multiple shows assuming they share the same multiplex. At least, MythTV allows this. I assume MythTV runs on this, hence the choice of Nvidia (with hopefully VDPAU support)?

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