It’s been a long time / I shouldn’t have left you / without a strong blog to post to.

As promised, the 3rd part in my ongoing “Building a Cheap, Energy-Efficient HTPC & Classic Gaming Emulator Box” series of articles on my Acer Revo 1600.

I’d like to outline in this article my settings for playing back perfect 1080p HD movies on the Acer Revo in Windows 7. There’s a lot of incomplete information out there regarding how to “properly” playback HD movies on the Revo. Unfortunately, a lot of the stuff I have read online doesn’t take into account things like subtitle rendering which can have an impact on movie playback. So I wanted to write a definitive guide for the Revo which I have spent months honing and perfecting.

What You’ll Need

My hardware setup:

Acer Revo 1600 (standard ION LE, upgraded to 2 gigs of RAM, with adjusted 512MB of video RAM as detailed here).

Alternatively, you could use a Revo 3600 or 3610. And possibly (??) similarly-spec’d ION platforms such as Asrock, etc. But your mileage may vary.

Software

Windows 7 (I am using Home Premium 32bit Upgrade version, non-OEM)
Windows Media Player Classic Home Cinema
CoreAVC 2 (~$10)
Haali Media Splitter
Directvobsub
Nvidia Graphics Drivers (I am using 257.21 ^WHQL)
Nvidia HDMI Audio Driver (I am using 1.00.00.59 ^WHQL)

Start Installin’

First, download and install the Nvidia Graphics Drivers:

If you are using an Revo 1600, select:
“ION > ION LE (Desktops) > Graphics Drivers > and then select your OS”

If you are using an Revo 3600 or 3610, select:
“ION > ION (Desktops) > Graphics Drivers > and then select your OS”

Follow the on-screen steps. Don’t install the Ethernet drivers if prompted (unless you specifically want them).

Continue to follow the on-screen instructions and reboot your Revo.

Next, download and install the Nvidia HDMI Audio drivers:

Revo 1600:
“ION > ION LE (Desktops) > HDMI Audio Drivers > and then select your OS”

Revo 3600 or 3610:
“ION > ION (Desktops) > Graphics Drivers > HDMI Audio Drivers > and then select your OS”

You may need to reboot.

After installation of the HDMI Audio driver, go to Control Panel > Sound > Manage audio devices.

Under the “Playback” tab, make sure “NVIDIA HDMI Out” is set to default with the green checkmark.

Download and install Media Player Classic Home Cinema and install using default options.

Next install CoreAVC 2.0. This handles the codec decoding and it is excellent at what it does. Yes, I know there are free options out there. But this is what I have used and I can guarantee it works on the Revo 1600. Install it with the default options.

Here is how CoreAVC’s options will appear using the default installation. Remember, do not change any of the options during installation:

Next, install Haali Media Splitter with default install options. This will parse your MKVs and other video files and designate which programs will open the separate streams of the file, including audio and video. Haali does all the work, don’t even sweat it.

Finally, install Directvobsub with default install options. Why Directvobsub? Because when I used MPC’s internal subtitle filters, large bit-rate files would suffer during playback. We need to offload the subtitles to another program to let MPC do its thing, and Directvobsub is great at that.

Ready, Settings, Go!

Everything installed with default options, then? Great, we’re almost there!

OK, I know it feels like we just blew through all of that. But here’s where we will set things up:

In Media Player Classic, go to View > Options > External filters.

Click “Add filter” and locate “DirectVobSub (auto-loading version)”. Highlight it and click, “OK”. Now click “Prefer”, hit “Apply” and then “OK”.

Next, go to “View > Options > Output”.

Select “EVR (Vista/.Net3)”. This is an extremely fast decoder, and it handles every single video file I throw at it like a champ.

Hit, “Apply” and then “OK” to save your selection.

Now You’re Playing with Power

At this point, you are ready to go!

Use Windows Media Player Classic Home Cinema to open up all of your HD movie files from here on out.

When you play an HD file, you will notice a few new icons pop-up on your taskbar:

From left to right they are:

CoreAVC: When the icon is green, CoreAVC has engaged the Revo’s GPU CUDA capabilities and is properly decoding the video.

Haali Media Spliter: The green arrow means Haali is working properly, and demultiplexing the movie’s streams.

DirectVobSub: Right-click this white icon to bring up your audio and subtitle streams. In Media Player Classic, you can easily switch between subtitles by simply hitting “S” on the keypad while a movie is playing. This is super easy if you have a handy HTPC remote, such as my trusty Lenovo Wireless keyboard.

And honestly, that’s it. You can now play 1080p and 720p HD movies flawlessly on your Acer Revo.

Bonus Tips & Tweaks

Here’s a few more tips I have setup to make an enjoyable movie watching experience using Media Player Classic Home Cincema:

In Media Player Classic, click “View > Options > Player”. Here, place a check next to, “Launch files in fullscreen” so that movies start in (you guessed it) fullscreen mode immediately after clicked.

Another nerdy thing I do is turn on the statistics options, simply so I can marvel frome time to time at how zero frames are ever dropped with this particular setup. To do this, open Media Player Classic and select “View” from the menu. Place a check next to: Caption&Menu, Seek Bar, Controls, Information, Statistics and Status. You will end up with a statistics panel that plays below the movie, which will only display when you escape from fullscreen mode:

And there you have it. This is what I use. I have scrutinized the playback of dozens of movies with various bitrates and file containers. This setup has proven rock solid for me. I hope it does the same for you.

Enjoy.

Update – August 2010: The Dharma Initiative

Thanks to Scott R in the comments as well as the AVS Forums for hipping me to the presently in-development (but extremely promising) Dharma builds of XBMC on Windows 7. These are essentially betas at the moment, but will one day become the latest release of XBMC.

What’s so special about the Dharma branch of nightly builds is its use of DXVA 2. This is the latest Direct-X video acceleration from Microsoft and it only works on Vista and Windows 7. I’ve thrown a ton of test videos at the Dharma XBMC install and it’s played everything without a hitch.

It’s all very promising, because now you get perfect HD video playback and the fantastic XBMC front-end to boot. The only shortcoming at the moment is: Since the XBMC crew is currently working on the Dharma branch, the code is constantly changing, features are slowly trickling in, and bugs will more than likely pop-up.

Of course, all those issues will be sorted out once Dharma is ready for prime time. I look forward to it.

Click here to download the latest Dharma nightlies. Please note: This software is in development and prone to bugs and may be lacking features. Also, if you currently have XBMC installed, you will need to completely uninstall it (along with profile data) before you install the nightly. Also, be sure to turn on DXVA 2 in the settings, as it was set to “off” by default in my nightly.

Scott R also hipped me to the fact that you can use an external video player with XBMC front-end. And you can do this NOW in 9.11 of XBMC. I tried it with Media Player Classic and it WORKS. You’ll need to edit an XML file with a simple notepad progam, but it’s not too difficult. I recommend testing it out! Cheers!

Continue reading:
Part 1 — Building a Cheap, Energy-Efficient HTPC & Classic Gaming Emulator Box
Part 2 — The Refinement: Building a Cheap HTPC & Gaming Box

In Part 1 of my “Building a Cheap, Energy-Efficient HTPC & Classic Gaming Emulator Box” adventure, I outlined the different hardware options I was considering to create the cheapest, nicest-lookingest, lowest-energy-using, HD movie-playing, classic videogame-emulating home theater PC.

Four months later, I am more than happy with my purchase of the Acer Revo 1600.

And so, I am here to outline the refinements to the machine I have made since that first blog including interface devices, hardware upgrades and more.

Wireless Keyboard & Mouse

When I last left you at the end of Part 1, I was considering purchasing the $119 Logitech diNovo Mini (pictured above) to control the HTPC from the couch. It sure looks purtee in those pictures, don’t it? Well, reviews for the diNovo Mini were all over the map: Some people loved it, while others cited glaring problems with it including its trackpad, the build quality of its plastic shell, and of course its pricetag. For that price, I thought to myself, the thing needed to be damn-near perfect…So I held off. And good thing I did. Because within a few weeks two new devices came out that caught my eye.

The first was this guy:

I mean, it looked cool enough, right? Certainly functional with that huge trackpad and all those keys. There were a few Chinese knockoffs available on eBay, so prices ranged from about $30-$60.

A big downside for me was there were next to zero reviews for it at the time. And since its manufacturer’s name is glaringly omitted, no one could guarantee the quality of the build. Also, no F1, F2, etc keys which could prove problematic down the road.

My search continued, until I saw this baby…

Oh shit. It was everything I wanted: It had a trackball, it was small, I could use it in one hand, it had left and right mouse buttons and the price was decent enough (about $60 direct from Lenovo). No F1, F2 keys but whatever…It had dedicated home theater controls at the top for fast-forwarding, pausing, etc which more than made up for the lack of F-keys, in my opinion.

Boom. I copped it. And I absolutely love it.

It comes with a tiny USB dongle that I have inserted into the Revo’s rear port, out of sight. The Lenovo unit itself takes 2 AAA batteries. I picked up a pack of rechargeable AAA Eneloop’s for about $10 since I already have the charger. But as of this writing I am still using the batteries that came included with the wireless keyboard. It’s well-made and works lovely. I highly recommend this chumpy if you’re looking for an input device.

If the Lenovo isn’t really your cup of tea, I also considered these:

Mini Bluetooth Keyboard (no trackball or mouse function)
USB 2.4Ghz RF Wireless Tiny Keyboard With Trackball
Rii Mini Wireless Keyboard
USB Wireless Handheld Keyboard and Touchpad

Videogame Controller

The next thing I wanted to do was get a proper wireless game controller for the videogame emulators. I considered getting a wireless Xbox 360 controller for the PC, but there was a lot of overhead involved such as picking up the PC-compliant, proprietary wireless dongle that Microsoft sells (about $40 for a wireless controller, and another $30 for the wireless receiver). The wireless receiver is also somewhat big — about the size of a PC mouse — and would stick out like a sore thumb on a tiny HTPC).

Instead, I turned to my PS3 Bluetooth controller and found freeware PC drivers called MotionJoy which would enable me to use the DualShock 3 controller with Windows XP. All I needed was a Bluetooth dongle which I found for $14.99 on Amazon:

(Cirago Bluetooth BTA3210 v2.1 EDR Class 2 Micro Bluetooth Adapter)

It’s tiny. Super tiny. About the size of a dime as you can see in the picture above. (FYI: the USB wireless dongle that comes with the Lenovo Wireless Keyboard is exactly the same size.)

I inserted the Bluetooth dongle in one of the 4 rear USB ports on the Revo. Be warned: this particular dongle has a blue LED that flashes as it intercepts a signal. You can apply some electrical tape to the LED to hide the emitting light if you want, or simply do what I did and use a port on your HTPC that is in the rear of the unit and unseen. I never see any blinking light from the dongle, even in a completely dark room.

Once the Bluetooth dongle was installed, I configured the Dual Shock PC drivers and now I have complete and full use of the PS3 controller on my PC. That includes rumble, digital and all analogue controls. Additionally, I can now pair any Bluetooth device to the PC which is a nice added bonus.

RAM

The final thing I did was upgrade the RAM from 1 gig to 2 gigs…I’m not sure if this was really necessary: All of my HD videos and video game emulators worked just fine on the standard 1 gig of RAM. But I knew I wanted to install Windows 7 on a separate partition (more on that in Part 3), and figured I would just go ahead and get the RAM since it was fairly inexpensive (about $30 in December 2009).

The thing about RAM and the Acer Revo was…I was not entirely sure which kind to get. The documentation available online is not very good regarding this seemingly important tidbit. And so if you’re wondering, it has to be laptop RAM. Here is what I purchased:

Corsair Memory VS1GSDS800D2 1 GB PC2-6400 800Mhz 200-pin DDR2 Laptop Memory Kit

Just remember: If you upgrade your RAM to 2gigs, you need to enter into your Revo’s BIOS and upgrade its video memory from 256M to 516M to reap the benefits it will provide to the GPU (arguably the most important part of the Acer Revo).

You can find easy instructions to do that here. And below is a video on how to open your Revo hardware safely (although take note: it will void your warranty!):

Game Over, Man!

And voila! We have a refined, fully-operational, cheap HTPC & gaming box. Now stop dicking around with the thing and start playing some games and watching some movies! All from the comfort of your couch

Continue reading:
Part 3 — Windows 7: Play 1080p HD MKV Movies on Your ION Acer Revo
Part 1 — Building a Cheap, Energy-Efficient HTPC & Classic Gaming Emulator Box