My Arctic MC001 (with OpenELEC and XBMC pre-installed) was ordered 6th February and arrived 18th February. Everything worked out of the box, except analogue sound. Arctic support have agreed that this is a hardware issue, but I've given up trying to get a replacement. Instead, I have just installed a
Behringer UCA202 USB sound card The UCA202 is plug and play on OpenELEC, and gives both analogue and digital optical audio outputs. The analogue output from the UCA202 (needed for my 11-year old plasma) is pleasantly low-noise.
I've also installed a
PCTV 290e nanostick HD – again, this works out of the box on the Arctic, and was detected by TvHeadend, giving all 4 UK HD channels. For catch-up TV, I installed the add-ons for BBC iPlayer, ITV Player, 4OD and Channel 5 - no problems there either, though I have noticed that pressing the left and right keys during video playback (but not Live TV) can crash and restart XBMC.
For the remote, I ditched the very basic unit supplied with the Arctic in favour of a
Motorola NYXboard. This is a great little remote: as well as providing IR support for other devices, it combines an XBMC-friendly remote with a full keyboard on the reverse side. Brilliant! Again, this is plug-and-play on XBMC/OpenELEC. I used the learn function to program the NYXboard to switch on the Arctic from standby (using the Red button) and kept the main Power button in IR-mode for the TV. Being a bit of a newbie, it took me a while to figure out that I could re-map the NYXboard key functions simply by saving a custom keyboard.xml file in /storage/userdata/keymaps. I've set it up for easy access to the EPG, one-click record (using the Red button) with Context Menu mapped to the Blue button (and a couple of other shortcuts):
Code:
<keymap>
<global>
<keyboard>
<info>OSD</info> <!-- INFO - OSD -->
<home>XBMC.ActivateWindow(Home)</home> <!-- Home -->
<f3>XBMC.ActivateWindowAndFocus(MyPVR, 31,0, 10,0)</f3> <!-- EPG -->
<f3 mod="shift">XBMC.PlayerControl(Record)</f3> <!-- Red - One-Click Record -->
<f4 mod="shift">XBMC.ActivateWindowAndFocus(MyPVR, 35,0, 14,0)</f4> <!-- Green - Timer -->
<f5 mod="shift">XBMC.ActivateWindowAndFocus(MyPVR, 34,0, 13,0)</f5> <!-- Yellow - Recordings -->
<f6 mod="shift">ContextMenu</f6> <!-- Blue - Context Menu -->
<key id='61952'>ActivateWindow(shutdownmenu)</key> <!-- Power - Shutdown Menu -->
<f4>AspectRatio</f4> <!-- User button - Zoom -->
</keyboard>
</global>
</keymap>
I also disabled the turn-over commands for the NYXboard (in System/System/Input devices/Peripherals)
In my experience, OpenELEC is a perfect OS for lightweight hardware such as the MC001, and combined with XBMC and TvHeadend really does give a slick, intuitive and responsive interface for live TV, as well as catch-up services such as BBC iPlayer, 4OD and so on).
Thanks to all those who have contributed to these projects!!
