Home Theatre PC, do you have one? Here's mine...

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Oct 1, 2004
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So about 6 months ago, I setup my Mac Mini as a HTPC. It worked pretty well. I set it up with a USB TV tuner and was able to easily use it as a DVR box with Windows 7. It was a little sluggish in some of the menus and some 1080p content, so I decided to upgrade the processor. That failed. Not only did the processor not work, but it seems to have fried the whole damn thing. FUCK. Not wanting to be without TV, I fired up my Amazon Prime and picked up one of these:

mini-acer_revo_81.jpg


It's an Acer Revo, technically classified as a 'nettop', and is currently $199 from Amazon. Including a 1GB stick of RAM and overnight shipping, I was in for $230 total. Not bad.

First thing I did was wipe out XP and install 7 on it (while I was at work on Friday). Then I plugged in the HDMI cable and setup Windows Media Center (at home on Friday)...

WOW

This thing has onboard hardware acceleration for video. Even though its only a 1.6Ghz processor, the thing can play full 1080p content and 7.1 audio with about 30-40% CPU utilization. The overlaid menus pop up now without any lag. I also installed the new Flash 10.1 (release candidate), so that it plays Flash content (HULU Desktop) with hardware acceleration as well.

This thing rocks. It's well worth the $200 I paid for it. (If you keep an eye on slickdeals, you can find em refurbished for like $160.)

Worthy of note if you have a flat panel TV: This thing comes with a VESA mount, so you can install it on the back of your TV. No visible wires then!

blah, blah, blah - Lets hear about your HTPC setup now!
 
Ok, I want one, seriously. I am so tired of the massive computer we have for our tv and all the stupid wires and such. I'm drooling. I also have $20 in free amazon gift cards right now. I wonder how fast I could earn $200. Hmmmmmmm.
 
yep, use it quite a bit to read in my car at lunch.

its got a 160GB in it. I dunno your setup, but in my case the drive size didn't matter. I've got a server that stores all media.

It's not a huge issue, we have a 1 terabyte external that sits next to ours, so I suppose that just has to stay.
 
Ok, I want one, seriously. I am so tired of the massive computer we have for our tv and all the stupid wires and such. I'm drooling. I also have $20 in free amazon gift cards right now. I wonder how fast I could earn $200. Hmmmmmmm.

I'm guessing about an hour or two.
 
I've had an htpc for a long time. I've recently added a Windows Home Server to store all my files
 
Did you see the newegg reviews on that? They don't look so good. I personally don't need wireless, so the Revo works for me.


WHS rocks. I don't know what I did before it.

I am still trying to find a use for it. Right now I installed utorrent as a service on it and so it's my porn server right now, but our HTPC does everything we need. It plays off of the Drobo, it is a torrent server, it is an FTP server. It can transcode if needed. If can play DVDs. There isn't a reason to have WHS in our situation.
 
I'm not seeing audio jacks on the Acer. Are there some? What about the ability to port in cable or audio input from other devices?
 
Did you see the newegg reviews on that? They don't look so good. I personally don't need wireless, so the Revo works for me.


WHS rocks. I don't know what I did before it.

I just have a standard windows 2k3 server. It's awesome. Well, 2, but one is for messing around with Exchange and shit.