[OdgeUK]

Hi

Newbie post here. I've been looking at the Revo as a cheap HTPC solution seeing as I've just aquired my first HDMI LCD TV.

The Revo seems ideal and so much cheaper than going to through the pain of building a new PC Media Center. I hear nothing but great things about XBMC against Windows Media Center also.

Before I go out and purchase and configure a Revo for XBMC, I wonder if someone with experience could confirm that I will be able to do the following things:

1) The missus will be able to watch ITV Catchup, Youtube and iPlayer online with no issues around the technologies that those players use. Also, the missus will be able to watch these things without needing a long list of instructions detailing how to boot the box, and configure, and select xxx etc etc

2) I will be able to watch MKV Blu-Ray rips / backups of my extensive Blu-Ray collection. In full 1080p (yes, my TV is 1080p) and also VOB, DIVx, AVI files.

3) I will be able to stream content from my Desktop PC (which has a lot more storage than the 160GB Revo) to the Revo and play without any buffering / lag.

4) I will be able to switch from watching movies / playing music via XBMC to watching regular TV Channels (Freesat) with ease.

5) I will be able to comfortably sit my arse on the sofa and browse the internet using Google and it be the same experience as browsing on my regular Desktop PC.


The only thing I can think of that I won't be able to do with the Revo, that a full HTPC might be able to do, is to record Freesat TV via a PC TV Tuner card. Is there any other functionality I might have missed?

Also......what would the user experience difference be running XBMC vs XBMC Live?


Many Thanks

[edz2k9]

Evening.

I have a 3610 revo BUT I also have a backend box with hard disc storage, freesat and freeview cards and running mythbackend.

So to take your points against my setup:

1) The missus will be able to watch ITV Catchup, Youtube and iPlayer online with no issues around the technologies that those players use. Also, the missus will be able to watch these things without needing a long list of instructions detailing how to boot the box, and configure, and select xxx etc etc

Yes and no here. I believe ITV catchup doesnt work due to the fact they now use encrypted flash (this is via a plugin in XBMC I dont see why it wouldnt work in a browser although, again, full screen flash can be jumpy at least until the new version of flash player with graphics accelleration is sorted out - see below). On my system the iPlayer plugin works very well, I dont use youtube but it seems ok unless its full screen (I believe the new version of flash is supposed to sort this out when out of Beta though). I have my system set up so that pressing "live tv" on the MCE remote shuts down XBMC and transparently loads up MythTV front end to watch live TV or schedule / watch recordings.

2) I will be able to watch MKV Blu-Ray rips / backups of my extensive Blu-Ray collection. In full 1080p (yes, my TV is 1080p) and also VOB, DIVx, AVI files.

I dont have any blue-ray rips since I havent yet got a drive for my main PC but I can watch a short rip from planet earth (the so-called 'Killa' test) which works fine streaming 35mbps from my back end system. Vobs, ISO, divX (xvid) MKV and mpegs all seem to work fine with the one exception of some older interlaced mpeg converted to MKV (that's another story) those work but look processed. Everything else looks great.

3) I will be able to stream content from my Desktop PC (which has a lot more storage than the 160GB Revo) to the Revo and play without any buffering / lag.

This one depends entirely on your network. My backend system is running ubuntu karmic with file shares via smb (samba) and hard linked via a 100 mbps switch. I know mileage varies when wireless is brought into the picture!

4) I will be able to switch from watching movies / playing music via XBMC to watching regular TV Channels (Freesat) with ease.

I do this via the setup I mentioned above. My backend machine also runs squeeze center so we tend to use squeezeboxes for music but in general, yes, this is possible.

5) I will be able to comfortably sit my arse on the sofa and browse the internet using Google and it be the same experience as browsing on my regular Desktop PC.

In theory yes, I use the wireless mouse and keyboard that came with my Revo to do exactly this. Remember though the Revo (especially the non dual core) is a low powered machine with very high power graphics. Things that rely on CPU power (some scripting, non graphical flash, Java sites etc) may be slower than you are used to.

The main point to note here is that, at present, XBMC is not a live TV / PVR system. it *CAN* integrate into a system with a PVR system and the new TV frontend work thats going on via the talented developers will bring fruits to future versions (hopefully) as well as the exisiting mythbox plugin thats out at the moment but, out of "the box" XBMC does not offer live TV unless its supplied via a streaming plugin like iPlayer (as far as I know)

I'm running the following system:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Backend:
Old asus tower
1GB internal HDD space
Ubuntu karmic
Squeezecenter
MythTV backend
Samba
2 x 1TB external HDD (USB)
100mbps networking

|
network switch
|

100mbps networking
revo 3610
Ubuntu Karmic
XBMC (Running the 9.11 BETA not the present version)
NVIDIA VDPAU drivers
Mythtv frontend
MCE (Vista cheapie) remote control & usb dongle
SPDIF cable - yamaha amp
Audio out - TV audio in
HDMI - HDMI/DVI converter - TV DVI in (older set no HDMI)

Also I've had a myth system for around 6 years and totally rejigged it from December and I work as an infrastructure / developer so I'm ready to stay up to 3AM to resolve these things!!

Cheers

Edz

[OdgeUK]

Many thanks for the superb reply! I'm sure to have some more questions but I'm going to mull over your current set-up first which sounds very cool.

The limitiations you mention around ITV Catchup and Youtube in full screen. Are these limitations of the OS on the Revo? Or limitations of XBMC at present? Presumably if I went for the option of having Windows 7 / XP with XBMC run from there, I could always watch Catchup through a Browser in Windows? But alos presumably this would do away with the slickness of the device when configured to simply boot to XBMC on startup?

[edz2k9]

Many thanks for the superb reply! I'm sure to have some more questions but I'm going to mull over your current set-up first which sounds very cool.

The limitiations you mention around ITV Catchup and Youtube in full screen. Are these limitations of the OS on the Revo? Or limitations of XBMC at present? Presumably if I went for the option of having Windows 7 / XP with XBMC run from there, I could always watch Catchup through a Browser in Windows? But alos presumably this would do away with the slickness of the device when configured to simply boot to XBMC on startup?

No problems on the reply. My system has been growing over a few years the backend being saved from a company scrapheap originally!

The ITV Catchup thing is something I read in one of the plugin forums and is a limitation caused by the way ITV has chosen to do things for "media rights" reasons - again as far as I know - I could have completely the wrong end of the stick. You may want to search the forum for itv catchup since someone may have sorted this but I believe they where encrypting the video stream before delivering it via the internet. I get the impression that the developers aren't going to start playing cat and mouse with trying to dodge around various technical measures rights holders use to obscure their content, an approach I can fully understand in the - heavilly biased towards litigious rights holders - world we live in

If you go for an install on ubuntu instead of using the live version you can install firefox under linux and wont need to dual boot (although theres no reason you cant dual boot, my revo has a windows 7 64 bit partition but it hasnt been used since I installed ubuntu).

The main limitation with any of the streaming that needs flash is, I believe, flash player doesnt (or at least hasn't up to now) properly utilised the NVIDIA ION chipset graphics accellerator. Version 10 is supposed to fix this but I think the people who tested the beta said it was far from being ready yet.

As always, your mileage may vary!

[edz2k9]

Just as an FYI if you hadn't found it, heres a posting on ITV Catchup http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=32897&page=12