Acer Revo RL100 Desktop PC (AMD Athlon II Neo dual-core processor K325, 2GB RAM, 500GB HDD, BluRay Combo, NVIDIA nForce 520, Windows 7 Home Premium)
Feature
- Special Edition,Open Box,
Product Overview
Acer Revo R100, AMD Neo Dual Core,3GB RAM,BluRay Combo,640GB, Magic Remote 27 of 27 people found the following review helpful
A great XBMC box, By
The Serial Najjar "serialnajjar" (London, Seattle, New York, LA) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What is this?)
This review is from: Acer Revo RL100 Desktop PC (AMD Athlon II Neo dual-core processor K325, 2GB RAM, 500GB HDD, BluRay Combo, NVIDIA nForce 520, Windows 7 Home Premium) (Electronics)
I purchased this to be my new XBMC media centre in the living room, and it's superb at the task.The good:
1) Full DXVA hardware acceleration giving perfect 1080p playback with no dropped frames.
2) Dolby & DTS pass-through via HDMI out of the box with no fiddling.
3) It's tiny and well made. The pictures don't give you a good indication of the size of this thing. It's tiny. It's the size of a tablet pc and not that much thicker. It also seems to be sturdily put together.
4) It's silent, absolutely silent, not a whisper from it.
The bad:
1) The combined mouse/keyboard looks very nice and is certainly an eye catching gimmick, but it's horrible to use. It was okay for finishing the install of windows on the box and installing VNC, but since then it's been docked back in the device and will only be used when I absolutely must.
2) There is no built in infra-red receiver.
3) Ten million tons of extra installed crud that takes a year to remove from the box.
4) The NVidia ION drivers from the official NVidia website refuse to accept this machine as having a valid chipset (this may be me doing something wrong however)
The meh:
1) After much digging around online, you need to go into the NVidia control panel and disable active contrast enhancement otherwise playback of HD video with DXVA enabled results in a horrible strobing effect in XBMC.
2) The XBMC Live CD doesn't have network drivers for it built in. (Not Acers fault, but worth pointing out for other people).
Overall, this is a great bit of kit, and if the keyboard was better and it had a built in IR receiver I would have given it 5 stars.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Performs well with some limitations., By
Alan J - See all my reviews
This review is from: Acer Revo RL100 Desktop PC (AMD Athlon II Neo dual-core processor K325, 2GB RAM, 500GB HDD, BluRay Combo, NVIDIA nForce 520, Windows 7 Home Premium) (Electronics)
I bought the Revo 100RL as a smaller, quieter alternative to the Acer M3641 which I had been using as a media centre to play music, record TV, play DVDs and Blu-Rays and allow general internet use.There was no user guide in the package, although the guide is accessible on the pc once it is up and running. This includes a section entitled "Necessary to know before setup"! Setup was OK, and I used the blank discs provided to download the recovery software (as recommended). I agree with comments by other reviewers regarding the pull-out keyboard. While it is a neat piece of design, I found it difficult to use (keys too small and sensitive). Also swapping between keyboard and mouse functions makes operations more time consuming. From reading other reviews I had anticipated that this might be the case, so I connected the wireless keyboard/mouse used on my previous system, and have had no problems using them with the Revo. The keyboard issue was not a factor in my decision to buy/not buy the Revo.
The TV aerial connector/plug doesn't seem particularly strong, so care is probably best when installing. Media Centre tuned TV channels OK, and live TV picture/sound is good. Recording TV programmes is also satisfactory.
Wi-Fi connection works OK ( my router is in a separate room), and internet speed is much the same as previously.
An expansion drive with pictures, music, films is connected by usb to the Revo, and playback on all is satisfactory.
The cd/dvd drawer doesn't seem particularly robust, and I find it better to support the drawer when loading discs. DVDs and Blu-Rays play well on the system, but this is where the limitations of the Revo apply to my setup. The Revo has 1xHDMI, 1x S\PDIF and 3x USB output sockets. The pc is connected to HDTV by HDMI cable. A Freesat box is also connected by HDMI cable to the TV. This works fine if you are happy with stereo audio output from TV speakers, but doesn't utilise the Dolby 5.1 surround sound from DVDs or Blu-Rays. I don't have a home theatre setup, receiver, decoder, or digital speakers, all of which I think would provide the Dolby sound via the S\PDIF output from the Revo. My speakers are Logitech x530 with 3 x speaker jack plugs, so straight connection to the Revo isn't possible, as it was with the desktop pc. The solution seemed to be an external USB sound card with the appropriate speaker sockets. Several of these cards are available, and they all seem to operate with the same chip and software, and have mixed reviews. I eventually managed to get the Dolby 5.1 surround audio output I wanted after several hours of effort, others seem to have no problems at all with these cards. Connecting the audio-out from the TV to the line-in on the sound card also gave sound from six speakers for the satellite system. Amazon reviews on these cards were helpful.
The other Revo limitation is the number of USB ports, very limited cf desktop PCs. A usb hub would be needed to connect other devices eg a camera to utilise Skype (software provided), printer/scanner or usb stick.
I haven't used the Revo on the supplied stand (vertical orientation), so have no comment re. this. I did have an odd problem when the speaker mute icon appeared in the centre of the screen, and would not clear. Eventually thought to remove the keyboard and found this had caused the problem. I think that vibration/movement must have caused a random key operation causing sound mute, so looks as if the keyboard is still 'live' even when inserted in the pc.
This pc is primarily a home media product and it seems to meet the requirements satisfactorily. While it is not particularly fast, it is quiet, small, looks good and with the keyboard has innovative design. Depending on your system, the audio output is something to be aware of, but after sorting this out it meets the requirements I had to replace my previous system, and I have no regrets about buying it.
27 of 29 people found the following review helpful
Very tidy piece of kit, By
Magento Matt - See all my reviews
This review is from: Acer Revo RL100 Desktop PC (AMD Athlon II Neo dual-core processor K325, 2GB RAM, 500GB HDD, BluRay Combo, NVIDIA nForce 520, Windows 7 Home Premium) (Electronics)
Recommended one of these for some inlaws so that they can surf the web on the big-screen TV. They went ahead and bought it, and guess who was invited to plug it in for them?Setup was very easy, including the TV. The 'setup McAfee' step was skipped, we removed that entirely and put Microsoft Security Essentials on. Also downloaded Chrome to use instead of the 'Bing browser', however, with Chrome you cannot set a big font size for living-room browsing, hence Firefox or IE9 might be better.
The mini-keyboard is very 'Tron' and it does not take long to get used to using it. For a proper keyboard it may be preferable to use that of a netbook (if you have one) and 'Synergy' instead of a wireless keyboard/mouse set as these don't work properly on one's lap whereas a netbook is designed for the task, and, with Synergy, can be setup for keyboard/mouse sharing.
The bonus with the RL100 for the living room is that, once you get rid of the old set-top boxes, VCRs, DVD's and HiFi guff, then you don't need half-a-dozen remote controls, or even the main TV remote control - the 'TRON' pad (with it's volume wheel on the side) can do it all.
The TV viewing software can be used with ease, however, if you want to record 'Eastenders' on BBC3 and watch the latest news-disasters-at-ten on BBC1 then you realise a slight problem - you cannot record one program and watch another live at the same time. However, here Amazon is your friend and you can order up a UHF splitter, a couple of extra cables and another DVB-T USB dongle. This will work with the system so you can watch one channel live and record something else at the same time. Given the price of DVB-T dongles you might want to get two of them, in that way you will be able to record that re-run of 'Top Gear' on 'Dave' as well as 'Eastenders' whilst watching the news for some truly compelling viewing...
One small gotcha is with the wifi - if your building is a natural Faraday cage with a maze of wires under the TV then the wifi could struggle. Hence, for setup you may want to use the provided stand and park the RL100 vertically next to your TV so it has a chance of speedy downloads. Alternatively, plug in an ethernet cable.
Not sure if you have to leave the thing on the whole time to record, but that is probably the case, which is probably no worries as everything about the RL100 is low power. Unlike other set top boxes and PC's this box is quiet, no clucking hard drive, fan drone or mains hum to be heard. Contrary to popular opinion, a HDMI lead is in the box, this does carry sound as well as pictures so you should be up and running in time for 'Eastenders' (or hopefully something better to watch).
There seems to be an absence of technical documentation online so it is not clear whether you can plug in a SSD-card into a PC-slot of some sort. The size should be impressively small - more like a PS3 than a HUMAX/DVD/VCR.
As for the price, there are a lot of naysayers out there that believe this box to be over-priced. Before buying we specced up a homebrew solution, with a SFF PC, tuner card, quiet CPU, decent graphics and so on, and, even with Amazon bargain prices for selected items, no Windows (i.e. using Ubuntu/MythTV for free instead) it was not possible to find a better solution for what this box does - provide a first class PC for the living room where you can surf the net and watch TV at the same time. The low power CPU is not a performance issue either as the Nvidia ION chipset does all of the picture stuff. You also get Bluray, but not just any old BluRay - BluRay 3D. If your TV does 3D then this box will work with it very well.
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
- Rii 2.4GHz Wireless Mini PC Keyboard Touchpad V2 Black
- Windows 7 Vista XP Media Center MCE PC Remote Control and Infrared Receiver for Home, Premium and Ultimate Edition
- Logitech diNovo Mini
- Keysonic ACK-540RF Wireless Mini Keyboard with Built in Touchpad
- ClimaxDigital DTV395 USB 2.0 DUAL DVB-T TV Tuner/Receiver/Recorder Adapter/Dongle/Stick Freeview with Aerial, Remote Control for PC and Laptop (supports XP / Vista 32bit/64bit/Windows 7 32bit/64bit)
0 comments:
Post a Comment