[LINUX] HOW-TO achieve XBMC nirvana with an Acer Aspire Revo 1600 and Ubuntu - Printable Version +- Kodi Community Forum (https://forum.kodi.tv) +-- Forum: Support (https://forum.kodi.tv/forumdisplay.php?fid=33) +--- Forum: General Support (https://forum.kodi.tv/forumdisplay.php?fid=111) +---- Forum: Linux (https://forum.kodi.tv/forumdisplay.php?fid=52) +---- Thread: [LINUX] HOW-TO achieve XBMC nirvana with an Acer Aspire Revo 1600 and Ubuntu (/showthread.php?tid=67819) |
- DecK - 2010-03-17 Myrison I had quiet a few posts here that were lost, most on the Partimage re-imaging process. Over the last weekend I was able to get through the full process. I have a copy of the screenshots that thermite451 took and have taken copious notes on how I loaded the image. Unfortunately all of those are on my home PC. I will get them added back here this evening. PS, I am not totally in love with my revo - nergrum - 2010-03-17 Deck I was planning on buying the $200 Revo as a present to myself when i move into my new place. I was then going to load up ubuntu+xbmc or win7+xbmc. You think it isnt worth it? I wonder if the win7+xbmc has as many problems/configuration issues as the ubuntu+xbmc direction. - DecK - 2010-03-18 nergrum Wrote:Deck I think it is totally worth it. This is a cheap, elegant solution to the HTPC challenge. I've been building boxes for a long time, and none of them have anywhere near the ROI as this one does. I wouldn't go down the Win7 path. (BTW this is coming from someone who knew Sweet FA about Linux a week ago). The beauty of Linux + Revo is VDPAU. Handing off so much of the decoding to the graphic chip does make Hi-Def play 'like butter', to quote the OP. Using windows negates that advantage. When I bought the Revo, the first thing I tried was XBMC in the pre-installed Win7 OS. The performance there was the same as on my other boxes, fine for SD, crap for Hi-Def. Per my last post, I'm about to write some detailed instructions on how to implement the solutions in this thread. Give them a try. Worst case, if you don't like the results, you can always reinstall Windows. I will be including a how-to on that also. A Complete Noob's guide to Implementing this Image - DecK - 2010-03-18 A Complete Noob's guide to Implementing this Image Yes I'm a complete Noob, and this is my guide. I went through this process several times, and hopefully the following will mean that you only have to go through it once. There is no guarantee of success here, I have little to knowledge of Linux, your mileage may vary. I want to start out by thanking thermite451 for his original guide and for the screenshots he originally uploaded. It looks like they were lost in the crash, so I have made them available for download here. He is the brains here, I'm just a guy who got through this stuff, is very happy with the results, and want to give something back. In the how-to, any time you see <<nnn>>, where nnn is a number, that is a reference to the corresponding image in the zip file. OK, here goes. The guide is in 5 sections:
That's it for now peeps. Later Declan - phertiker - 2010-03-18 I'd like to thank everyone who put so much effort into this post. It's people like you all that make XBMC even more fun than it already is. I have to ask, though... I used the 9.11 Camelot Live release to test, and later install XBMC and Ubuntu Minimal, and I don't recall having any issues at all with the stock install on my Revo 1600. HDMI, WMC remote, certainly 1080p playback, MKV's all worked flawlessly without any desync in A/V... Did I have some kind of crazy, Twilight Zone XBMC release or is my Revo some ultra-secret government monitoring project? Holy crap, I'm gonna maybe go run a magnet over my machine, be right back... - myrison - 2010-03-18 Phertiker - as I've told some others in the past, go buy a lottery ticket. Clearly you've got better luck than the rest of us. In seriousness, the reason it worked out of the box for you probably has to do with your display. Because HDMI is so finicky, if your TV doesn't talk nicely to the Revo over HDMI, then it can require all kinds of troubleshooting to get working correctly. If they play nicely together from the beginning, it saves a lot of heartache. Also, the MKV bug I talk about in the first post that causes MKVs to fall out of sync only affects some MKVs (though in my case it affected almost every old SD DVD rip I had). Either way, if you don't need this image, then more power to you! - myrison - 2010-03-18 transcoder Wrote:How well does Hulu work on this device running linux? That's the one unknown preventing me from purchasing one of these neat little boxes. Until Adobe gets its beta Flash drivers working (well), it won't matter if you run Linux or Windows on one of these boxes. The standard Flash requires the CPU to do all of the work in processing video files. Because of this, the only way "around" this problem is to have a dual/quad core processor that can handle the high CPU requirements for live video processing (particularly HD) in flash. The new beta Flash drivers are supposed to do what VDPAU does in Linux (offload processing to the graphics chip), but the last I read, it's not quite there yet. - myrison - 2010-03-18 DecK Wrote:A Complete Noob's guide to Implementing this Image Declan, WOW, thanks for the write-up! I'll link back to these instructions from the OP. PS: Your comment about not knowing "Sweet FA" about Linux before this cracked me up. PPS: Hmm, so I went back to link to your instructions for applying the image and now realize I no longer have the image linked in the first post. Doh! I don't have the link any more either, so if anyone has the torrent link and can repost it, I'll add it to the first post. - DecK - 2010-03-18 myrison Wrote:Until Adobe gets its beta Flash drivers working (well), it won't matter if you run Linux or Windows on one of these boxes. The standard Flash requires the CPU to do all of the work in processing video files. Because of this, the only way "around" this problem is to have a dual/quad core processor that can handle the high CPU requirements for live video processing (particularly HD) in flash. The new beta Flash drivers are supposed to do what VDPAU does in Linux (offload processing to the graphics chip), but the last I read, it's not quite there yet. I agree, Flash and Linux seem to be a bad combo. There is another soultion, if you have a windows machine on your network. Playon media server runs a UPnP service on windows that can be accessed from XBMC. I have this installed and it works pretty well for Hulu. The browsing isn't as elegant as Hulu Desktop, but the streams play just fine. As an added bonus, playon also has Netflicks integration. this has definitely helped rasied the spousal approval factor for me. - DecK - 2010-03-18 myrison Wrote:If anyone has the torrent link and can repost it, I'll add it to the first post. I am seeding the torrent and will add the link once I get home tonight. Torrent is now up on Mediafire. http://www.mediafire.com/?cmwtvwvicwk Declan - Th3R00st3r - 2010-03-19 Went through the steps picture by picture.. restored the image successfully. When I reboot without the USB drive, I immediately get a GRUB command prompt and it says "File is missing" I am a noob, so be gentle ;0) Any suggestions? **I did the process again and it appeared to restore fine, still boots to this: GRUB is loading. error:file not found grub rescue> - Th3R00st3r - 2010-03-19 Found an article on how to fix the grub issue, but it turns out there is not a menu.lst file in the boot/grub/ location..I think I am just going to install ubuntu from the USB stick and install xbmc and lirc... - jonect - 2010-03-19 myrison Wrote:Continued from the first post.... Looks like all my previous posts on this were lost in the outage. The interlacing issue that I have been dealing with and may be the same for you appears to just be lack of support for it. All my encoded/ripped media that is progressive format seems to work fine. I looked for ways to fix it but this post is pushing me in the direction of just adding a script to launch MythFrontend when I want to watch live/recorded 1080i broadcast. - myrison - 2010-03-19 Th3R00st3r Wrote:Went through the steps picture by picture.. restored the image successfully. When I reboot without the USB drive, I immediately get a GRUB command prompt and it says "File is missing" I am a noob, so be gentle ;0) Argh! This is one of those things that was really explained here before the data corruption of the form wiped out four weeks worth of instructions. These are essentially the instructions you need to follow to fix it. It is actually very straightforward and fast, but you have to boot from the 9.04 Ubuntu Live CD to be able to do it. Give this a try before you give up. I did this myself and it takes <5 minutes. Once done, it should boot right up to the new image. - myrison - 2010-03-19 DecK Wrote:I am seeding the torrent and will add the link once I get home tonight. Thanks Declan, OP updated with the link to the torrent and your noob-friendly instructions. |