Acer eMachines ER1402
#16
anthropoidape Wrote:Okay, got it today. Booted straight up in XBMC Live off a USB stick, went straight to some 1080p HD video on the network and playback was perfect, presumably using VDPAU (video was just set to "auto").

5.1 sound through spdif, video through HDMI. I deliberately selected video that is a bit demanding.

Awesome value for $302 US. This is an ER1401, which runs the dual core K325.

Still some config to do to get an IR remote happening but it's not really that much of a hassle since it comes with a wireless keyboard and mouse anyway. So if you get your USB stick ready in advance it is pretty much XBMC in HD straight out of the box.

I'll post up any issues should they arise.

Jason

Where did you get this for $300 I would be really interested in purchasing it
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#17
xbmcevo Wrote:Where did you get this for $300 I would be really interested in purchasing it

They are on ebay mate, from a seller called "funnybom-us" based in Taiwan.
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#18
I didn't want to promote a particular seller but yeah that is where I got mine from. It is the same company as 23port.com who were previously selling the Revo 3610 at a good price on ebay as well (they suggested the ER1401 to me and directed me to the funny-bom ebay ad).

For anyone making an offer they are asking $309 US with best offer, I offered $299 and they counter-offered $302.

The thing is that it's really not a bad little PC either.

FWIW there are two minor negatives, one is that the stand that holds it vertical is not that sturdy, the other is that if you take that stand off and just lie it flat it has a curved shape so it doesn't sit that well. It also comes with a sort of bracket/case that lets you mount it to the back of a monitor. For me none of this matters because it's tucked in behind my amp, which you can do because the IR receiver is remote anyway. So all you see is the remote receiver.
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#19
Question: Is the USB IR Receiver of a type that XBMC can recognise? - therefore being able to program a universal remote with it and use for XBMC?

I previously bought an r3610 from 23port and the remote is the only part I've not every been able to get working due to not being able to find a suitable USB IR Receiver for cheap in Aus. I'm about to build one of these for a friend and it would be very handy if this came with just about everything required in the box.

Cheers.
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#20
AFAIK all that comes with it is the receiver for the wireless keyboard/mouse. This works but it is not IR I don't think.

I have successfully installed a Dvico IR receiver I had spare and it works, but the remote itself is lousy (it lacks an enter/okay button!). This came bundled with an old TV card I had. So I have ordered an HP MCE remote and receiver off ebay, about $30 delivered. I will let you know how I go with it when it arrives.

My expectation is that this should basically work without even needing any config, just a clean LIRC install should do it.
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#21
Cheers mate - would be curious to hear how the remote goes! It all is good I'll grab one for myself.

I'm going to order one of these ER1401's aswell.
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#22
Stanton73 Wrote:Question: Is the USB IR Receiver of a type that XBMC can recognise? - therefore being able to program a universal remote with it and use for XBMC?
I know Philips do a MCE remote that can also work as a universal remote, XBMC + MCE remote work straight out of the box. We can get the Philips remote easily here in NZ so surely it can be found in Aus.
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#23
Stanton73 Wrote:Cheers mate - would be curious to hear how the remote goes! It all is good I'll grab one for myself.

Well, delivery wasn't terribly quick (about 12 days, although they said it would take 15) which is why it has taken me a while to follow up on this.

The one I bought was on ebay as "NEW HP MCE /REMOTE CONTROL /USB IR RECEIVER /IR Emitter" (I haven't double checked, but according to the ad it's "Hp newest Remote Control - RC 1804912/06 - P/N: 438483-001").

It ended up costing $26 AUD including international postage. It looks like it really is an HP item, it's very good. I plugged it in and did a new XBMC Live install (probably overkill but I wanted a clean install anyway after trying a few different tweaks), and it worked without any configuration at all.

Very happy with the quality and price on this I must say. Meanwhile I still have the wireless mouse and keyboard that came with te ER1401 which is also handy, tucked up on a shelf for emergency use. (I usually just SSH from my laptop but sometimes it is handy to just use the keyboard.)

Jason
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#24
Ordered my ER1401 now Big Grin Can't wait for it to arrive, I love playing with new toys!!!!!

Sick of streaming movies from my pc to my xbow 360 or my ps3.
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#25
Got e ER1401 yesterday from the same guy, 1 week post and he did it for $340 AUD delivered ... Had a couple issues with the Wifi drivers at first, found some drivers on ppa for the ra3090 worked sweet ...

The Only other drama I have had is audio over hdmi, but that isn't a big issue for me... Mounted it on the back of the tv, installed samba and added my sources and off it went ...

Plays everything I have thrown at it so far, will update if I have any issues, or if anyone else wants to know specifically where I found ways to make things work like wifi etc...

Oh one thing, even tho I knew it was there, I still had difficulty finding the mouse/keyboard dingle ... It is tiny as, and inside the mouse battery compartment..
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#26
I have now received my er1401, and all is good other than when i use xbmc live to watch 1080p mkv's that are over 10gb in size i suffer with quite a bit of motion stuttering, i have changed the settings in the bios as recommended but still i suffer with the problem, it doesn't make watching the files unbearable but its rather irritating. Does anyone have any ideas on how to improve this or are we all in the same boat?

Edit:
I have improved the video quality to near perfect just by simply updating the nvidia driver for xbmc, i still get the odd jitter, I watched the last hour and twenty minutes of avatar (20gb+ file) this evening and it stuttered maybe three or four times, and they were only very small stutters (almost unnoticeable).
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#27
I gave this a go with a 33GB .mts file straight off a commercial blu-ray, and it was indeed a little stuttery. This was via the network though, so I am not sure where the issue lay. In theory the video card should handle a straight blu-ray disc. I will have to work out how to store a file locally on the xbmc-live machine and try that too I guess.

All my 1080 stuff is a lot smaller than that so it hasn't come up for me.
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#28
anthropoidape Wrote:I gave this a go with a 33GB .mts file straight off a commercial blu-ray, and it was indeed a little stuttery. This was via the network though, so I am not sure where the issue lay. In theory the video card should handle a straight blu-ray disc. I will have to work out how to store a file locally on the xbmc-live machine and try that too I guess.

Try a local copy and let us know.

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#29
anthropoidape Wrote:I gave this a go with a 33GB .mts file straight off a commercial blu-ray, and it was indeed a little stuttery. This was via the network though, so I am not sure where the issue lay. In theory the video card should handle a straight blu-ray disc. I will have to work out how to store a file locally on the xbmc-live machine and try that too I guess.

All my 1080 stuff is a lot smaller than that so it hasn't come up for me.

Do you have an external usb hard drive this is what i'm using as i only made a 10gb partition on the internal hard drive to xbmc live, i tried to get xbmc to see my windows partition, but couldn't get it to so used my external instead.
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#30
poofyhairguy Wrote:Try a local copy and let us know.

I put the file locally in the /home/xbmc directory and regret to inform you that it was definitely choppy when playing back. Watchable I guess but definitely not satisfactory.

That is a ~33GB .mts file from a commercial blu-ray disc. None of my library is in that format normally so this issue has never arisen for me, basically everything's in a DVD-R friendly size of either ~4.5GB or ~8.5GB.

Clearly the bitrate is too much for some aspect of the system, where the bottleneck is I couldn't say.

I didn't try any BIOS tweaks or anything.
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