Thoughts on/experience with Acer Aspire Revo R3700

[ronkinoz]

@Martin - I'm very interested in your experiences and thoughts with running the myth front/back combo on a Revo R3700. I've just bought a 4GB R3700 off eBay with the intent of doing exactly that. Any pitfalls? Up to transcoding (if not in a hurry)? How do you switch between Myth frontend and XBMC - a boot time option?

What I'm planning is:
- Mythbuntu & XBMC installed on the internal hard-disk. Will set aside the rest of the internal for ripped kids vids in xvid/divx/h.264 formats.
- External 2TB drive for myth recordings
- Networked HDHomeRun dual-DVBT tuner over 100MB wired.

Any thoughts/tips/warnings appreciated...

Cheers,
Ron

[MartinH-J]

@Martin - I'm very interested in your experiences and thoughts with running the myth front/back combo on a Revo R3700. I've just bought a 4GB R3700 off eBay with the intent of doing exactly that. Any pitfalls? Up to transcoding (if not in a hurry)? How do you switch between Myth frontend and XBMC - a boot time option?

What I'm planning is:
- Mythbuntu & XBMC installed on the internal hard-disk. Will set aside the rest of the internal for ripped kids vids in xvid/divx/h.264 formats.
- External 2TB drive for myth recordings
- Networked HDHomeRun dual-DVBT tuner over 100MB wired.

Any thoughts/tips/warnings appreciated...

Cheers,
Ron

Ron,
The only pitfalls are the wireless drivers are pretty crappy in the distro. I started with Mythbuntu 10.04 and upgraded to 10.10 but had to set the default boot to an older kernel (cant remember which as I am not near the machine right now). Upgrading to 11.04 just breaks and the box hangs...again I think this is all based around the wireless drivers but I don't need to run the very latest of everything. It's a media box after all. Neither do I want to be hacking configs if I need to install. My aim is to make it as smooth as possible.

I don't use a Homerun and I don't do any transcoding so cant help you there I am afraid.

I installed mythbuntu and then added xbmc. Using the Sony PS3 BD remote I have configured the eject button to run an irexec script to switch between mythfrontend and xbmc and it works just fine. It also means that if something does crash (I have had the occasional xbmc plugin crash) you can kill and restart things without ever needing the keyboard.

I have documented all my mods and tweaks to get the system running on my bllog (www.harley-jones.co.uk) so suggest you take a look there for config files and information.

I run my Revo 3610 as a combined FE/BE/XBMC combo and the 3700 as a FE/XBMC combo but either would do the job.

Hope this helps!

Give me a shout if you get stuck. Have been running my boxes for a year or two now and they are as reliable as any commmercial PVR/media center.

Martin