We just tore the packaging off of
Acer's new AspireRevo nettop and dove into its Ion-powered goodness. The computer is in many ways a product of NVIDIA's designs, since the
Ion-powered nettop reference platform has been a part of the Ion ecosystem for a while, and this Revo apple doesn't fall from the NVIDIA tree. Still, Acer had to go ahead and build the thing, and it's a pretty great package all-in-all. We're still in the preliminaries -- the HDMI didn't work out of the gate, but after swapping back and forth a few times with the VGA plug we were in business -- and we're playing with a potentially buggy "engineering sample," but hopefully we'll be able to pull together some cohesive impressions on the thing, and play a bit of
Spore while we're at it. It's already obviously the fastest Atom-powered device we've played with, and while it still pretty much chokes on Hulu and that whole "multitasking" concept, we're pretty pleased so far.
posted April 16th 2009 11:41AM
We need some way to offload the video decoding work to the GPU. The only reason I would want to get a machine like this is for HTPC. I don't need it to play Spore in the living room. I need it to decode every video codec in the universe perfectly, even 1080p content. Isn't that what the HDMI port is for?
I gotta agree here. I thought the whole point was 1080P playback. If it can't even stream video, this is a massive fail. This isn't a gaming machine.
1080p playback of H.264 encoded video (ie Blu Ray, MKV's, etc). NOT Flash video which, as stated a bazillion times here already, is CPU intensive video.
Dude, how many people are they going to sell this to if the only way you get content onto it is to either rip it off a Bluray disk or download it off BT? A lot fewer people than if it just handled legal internet video streaming I'll tell you....
@Fanfoot:
If I can run Windows Media Center & watch/record TV, I would buy one.
RIM said it best..... Nobody gets it perfect right out of the gate......
Im sure its just going to get better from here.....
What's on the other side?!
If they ship it, I will buy it!
Try playing a HD MKV video with Media Player Classic Home Cinema it has DXVA support so it should offload the decoding to the GPU.
http://mpc-hc.sourceforge.net/
VLC has no such support so you can compare them against each other in seeing what plays.
XBMC linux builds also now have GPU decoding but its buggy and a lot of work to install.
Ah but mplayer and MythTV both have excellent support for VDPAU right now, so you're good to go! No need for vlc and xbmc, but they'll get there.
None of the shots ever show the VESA mounting holes. I'm pretty sure it has them...
Please Acer give us one of these with a Pentium dual core or Celeron DC, I'll happily pay the difference If i don't need a battery then I don't need an Atom.
Give the Revo a break.. please! As mentioned above, Hulu chokes because it's flash based and there's no hardware acc for flash.. meaning the Graphics Cards does shieet.. However, 1080p movies will not be a problem as long as you decode them using CoreAVC or some other nice decoding..
Is Paul Miller left handed?
Nice catch :)
Please test HD media playback on ubuntu using VDPAU (mplayer or whatever).
Please.
If this Dell Mini 9 can run Leopard, this should run pretty sweet.
I guess I'll wait for a version with a better cpu.
Li-ion battery are more and more powerfull, see that http://symfox.free.fr/?p=258
Please test POWER CONSUMPTION!
Help a brother out... what is the cheapest device like this that CAN play Flash without a problem. I am using a Shuttle X, circa 2003, as my HTPC. It works well enough... I can surf the web, play DVDs, stream youtube, ABC, Netflix. But the CPU runs at @ 90% streaming flv in SD, so HD is out of the question. I would love to stream HD... maybe even play Blu-Ray. I thought this device (or the other upcoming nvidia devices: http://www.nvidia.com/object/sff_ion.html) might fit the bill... but I may be wrong.
You're going to have to wait till the fall/winter, but similar spec'd ION devices with faster CPUs should start coming out by the holiday season or so. Nvidia announced that ION 2 will support Via's Nano, as well as more robust Intel chips like Core2Duo. A bit more pricey than the Revo, but compared to what an HTPC used to cost to build? It's a no brainer. :)
http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/26/nvidia-ion-to-begrudgingly-support-core-2-duo-by-q4/
Hulu-suckery had better be a problem of the engineering sample. If that's fixed in the production run, I'll slap one of these behind my TV for Hulu alone.
It won't be fixed in the production run since its due to the slow processor and the lack of a hardware assisted flash player.
> RyanTV @ Apr 16th 2009 1:07PM
>
> what the hell, it chokes on hulu but is supposed to be able to spit out 1080p video? that's a little suspect.
Not at all. This chipset is supposed to offload all of it's h264/VC1 decoding to the GPU.
On my vdpau test rig, I see 5% cpu usage for Xorg and another 5% for mythtv when
playing the BD rip of Dark Night. (2.83Ghz C2Q)
The fact that it can't handle Hulu is rather disappointing though.
Looks awesome! Play currently have these ready for pre-order for £180 with 1GB RAM and a 8GB SSD running Linux. I think Windows 7 would run nicely and the built in H.264 AVC codecs use DXVA so should be good. As someone else pointed out though CoreAVC uses CUDA so it's a good alternative.
If I got one? I'd stuff a cheap but usable 40GB HDD in there, take the SSD out and use it for virtual memory and other stuff on my main pc as power consumption isnt a great problem for me ;)
Portable kickass gaming machines FTW!
Gah I hope there's a way of getting that Win7 h.264 codec working with Vista until its released completely.
Try out XBMC on it. I would like to know how it handles HD content in XBMC.
I know the Wii is popular and all, but does EVERYTHING have to tilt and have weird angles now?
What about a nice little box that's like square and stuff and easy to tuck out of sight or stack on
something like a dvd player next to the tv - why does it have to jump out and say "look at me, I wanna
be a wii" ?
Guys - Ion is a brand-new product. The drivers are immature. Give them a (small) break.
I can't imagine why this little bugger would be chocking on Flash videos. I have an HP mininote with a stock Atom (n260?), and it handles hulu just fine. Perhaps the problem is with the ram-- my mininote has 1GB.
Looks like it's using the redesigned Intel badge.
The Hulu choke is freaking folks out. WTH? Surely it is something weird going on, because spec wise, I would expect it to chew through it like butter with the Flash 10 plugin (as long as it has the broadband coming through to it).
Review! Review! The pleebs demand a review!
Paul,
When you test the device, can you give us some updates on its performance when using SlingPlayer?
thats really upsetting, i really hate using flash on a slow machine, i have a old ibook G4 and it grind to a choppy halt on youtube, thats at 1.33ghz so that extra .27ghz really doesnt make a difference.
Atom>G4
Gigahurtz are not everything.
Flash DOES do hardware acceleration but the source file must be properly encoded MP4. If Hulu is not providing MP4 to its flashplayer then it is HULU's fault that the video is not hardware accelerated not the Acer unit here. Quit complaining about ACER and start complaining about HULU for streaming their clips instead of providing progressive downloads.
This Ion stuff rocks - I wish NBC would quit the astroturfing operation in the engadget comments.
This has the SAME adapter as my almost 4 year old Acer Aspire laptop :|
Hey just wanted to say i have a acer x3200 htpc and it's just amazing ... it's not as small as the revo but tiny enough
1080p playback no probs ... hdmi out and i picked it up for around 450 plus tax about 6 months ago
does everything :)
http://forums.nvidia.com/lofiversion/index.php?t55090.html
Pocket-lint.com has pictures of the joystick as well.
http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/news.phtml/23743/gallery/acer-aspire-revo-photo-gallery-3.html#image