The Many Flavors of Acer Revo (AR3700, AR1600, RL100)
As you know Acer has put out a lot of different flavors of the Acer Aspire Revo and some are now discontinued and some are still in production.
Let's begin with the one that started it all the Acer AspireRevo AR1600
This little guy packed a punch and was why I started this website. It featured:
- Windows XP
- 1GB RAM
- 1.6 Ghz Atom 230 (single core) + ION LE Grpahic
You can actually still find this on Amazon
Then came the Acer AspireRevo AR36XX and Now the AR3700
However now we are on the next generation of Acer Revo's with the Acer Revo RL100-U1002
The RL100 line brought tons of changes including design, processor, physical drives, and even a cool wireless touch keyboard and mouse. Here are their features
- 1.3GHZ Dual Core Athlong II Processor
- 4GB DDR3 RAM
- 750GB Hard Drive
- ION Graphics
- Windows 7 Home Premium
- DVD Player (U1002) or a Blu-ray Player (UR20P)
How to get TV on your Revo
A lot of people have asked me how they are able to get Television (including cable tv) onto their Revo. Under equipment in the Guide I list a bunch of options for over the air television (ATSC) including network attached and also USB powered. I use 3 USB ATSC tuners for over the air television. I don't pay for TV, but I also only get 13 or so channels...HD though. Now if you are a cable subscriber then recently there have been a few nice solutions that have come out to get your Revo recording Cable Television.
Step 1.) Pick the device:
You still have 2 options here. First is to go with a network attached tuner. This is a device that connects to your wired network via ethernet. These are great because you can put them anywhere in you house, and you can share them between multiple HTPCs in the house. The obvious choice is the SiliconDust HDHomeRun PRIME
The second option here is to go the USB route. There are 2 USB devices now that offer this functionality. First is the Hauppauge WinTV DCR-2650 Dual Tuner Cable Card TV Tuner
Lastly, Ceton is coming out with a USB Quad tuner! Ceton is a big name in the tuner game now because they released the InfiniTV PCIe tuner which offered a quad tuner for HTPCs. This has by far been one of the most successful tuners to date. The Ceton USB tuner will be released September 19th for $300.
Step 2) Get a cable card
You will need to call up your cable company and get a multistream cable card. You can usually rent these from your cable company for about $3-$5 a month. This is still a savings over the $10+ that you pay to rent a cable box with a horrible interface.
Step 3) Cable card install.
You will literally need to have the cable card installed into the new device. You are now allowed to do a Self Install, however you can simply have your cable company come out, and type in some codes to handle this. Check out a nice article with pros and cons over at The Digital Media Zone
Step 4) record awesome television 
Just remember that you will not get "Premium content" like cable on demand or VoD. However now you have an awesome interface with Windows Media Center.
I hope this was helpful. If you have questions feel free to contact me.
Getting Netflix HD to work on your Revo!!!
Let's get down to it, Netflix HD on the Revo has not been very great at all since it was introduced on PC and inside of Windows media center. For a while now Netflix has allowed you to manually adjust the quality of video that receive. If you are using Netflix 100% on your Revo then there is a simple work around which is to manually adjust the bandwidth on your netflix account to the "Better" setting. This will allow all netflix to stream silky smooth onto your Revo. Now be warned though that this effects all of your netflix devices. Which means that if you do use an Xbox 360, PC, or any other device it will also limit your bandwidth on these devices. Here are the simple steps.
1.) Goto http://www.netflix.com
2.) Select: 
3.) Down a bit on the page you will find: 
4.) Then just set it to "Better": 
And there you have it, you should now be able to stream netflix just fine on your Atom powered machine.
Source: The Digital Media Zone
Great deals on the Acer Revo AR3700
Since the Acer Revo RL100 has come out it looks like both Amazon
Acer Revo RL100-UR20P With Blu-ray now available on newegg.com
The blu-ray model of the Acer Revo RL100 is now available on Newegg.com for just $569.99. This will net you the 4GB Ram, 750GB Hard drive, b/g/n wifi, Dual Core Athlon II, Windows 7 64bit with Ion Graphic, but more importantly a Blu-ray Combo Drive. The
Acer Revo RL100-UR20P is on Newegg.com right now!
Acer Revo RL100 Now Available on Newegg.com and Amazon.com
I knew it would happen eventually, but Newegg.com and Amazon
Acer Revo 100 In Stock and Shipping at CircuitCity.com & Tiger Direct & eCost
That is right people the Acer Revo 100 is finally shipping from CircuitCity.com. For $499 it will net you the DVDRW version officially titled: Acer Revo RL100-U1002. It includes an AMD Athlon II Neo K325 1.3GHz, 4GB DDR3, 750GB HDD, NVIDIA ION, HDMI, DVDRW, Wireless Touchpad, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. The only question now is if the ION/Athlon II combo can surpass the Atom/ION Combo. From my hands on in Munich it was looking like it could. The Wireless Touchpad is simply fantastic. Go check it out now right here. Additionally eCost.com has the Revo 100 for $490, but it is only the DVD version as well. I will post when it hits newegg and amazon, which will hopefully be soon.
Acer Revo RL100 Finally Shipping in the US
That is right the Revo RL100 which I got my hands on in Munich airport a ways back is finally shipping in the US. It will most likely be available at Newegg and Amazon, however at time of posting they were not listed yet. Acer has also announced the 2 different configurations which will launch and they have kept it nice and simple.with the only difference being a blu-ray upgrade on the drive. For only $500 you will get a 1.3GHz AMD Athlon II CPU, 750 GB HD, 4GB DDR3 Ram, 3 USB Ports, multi-card reader, 802.11 bgn wifi, ethernet port, hdmi, Windows 7 Hompe Premium and of course the awesome touch pad. The thing looks amazing just a 1x11.81x7.09 inches. It looks like I might be changing out my HTPC once more.... Here are some press shots. You can read the full article and press release over on engadget.
Acer Aspire Revo 100 Hands On
I just happened to be wondering through the Munich Airport on my way to Romania, and I happened to find the Acer booth. I was checking out a few of their laptops and desktops and around the corner low and behold was a brand new Acer Aspire Revo 100 hooked up to an Acer LCD Television. I talked to the Acer representative for a while about it and showed him RevoHTPC.com and then he let me do a hands on video for a few minutes. Overall the specs on the machine are really nice. It is rocking Nvidia ION graphics, but is no longer coupled with an Atom this model had a Dual Core Athlon II. This is a great upgrade because as we know the Atom is very low powered and while isn't horrible isn't amazing either. You could also deck it out with Wifi, Blu-ray drive, 500GB hard drive, and 4GB RAM. I am not sure if the 499 Euro price tag included all of these features, but that seems about correct. The best part of the Revo 100 is the built in rechargeable wireless track pad and keyboard. This thing is really slick you have a full track pad and at a touch of a button will bring up the full keyboard with multimedia controls to boot. You can simply plug it right into the docking station back in the Revo to charge it. On the side of the remote was a little slider that let you control the volume if you were on keyboard mode, or scroll up and down if you were in track pad mode. Overall the system looked great standing up right next to the television. It looked exactly like a PS2 slim, which is a great design to begin with. Here is a little hands on video that I shot while I was there:
Amazon VOD Review on Acer Aspire Revo 1600
Last night I was checking out the Yahoo Widgets on my television, Samsung LN46B650. I saw that they had an Amazon VOD widget so I decided to check it out as I had a few rentals from Amazon's service. Even though my television is about 2 years old and the Yahoo Widgets take forever to load to my surprise streaming video directly to my television via the widget was awesome. This got me thinking, why I don't just try this on my Acer Aspire Revo? So I did and I made a video review comparing not only my Television and Revo 1600, but also my little Acer Aspire One netbook.
TV:
Streaming on my television was really really great, besides getting it started. I have to bring up Yahoo Widgets which are really slow and you have to wait for them to fully load before they are capable of doing anything. Once you get the video started it is basically flawless and looks absolutely stunning. I was really shocked how great Inception looked just streaming on my TV.
Acer Aspire One netbook:
My poor little netbook is slowly becoming out of date. It is a single core Atom processor, integrated graphics, and 2GB of RAM. I booted up the VOD service and small inside the browser it actually played back decently smooth. I was really shocked here as I didn't think it would work at all. I then put it on full screen and oh my was it choppy. You definitely can not watch it on something this lower powered, but it is nice to see it play fine when it is not in full screen mode.
Acer Aspire Revo:
It was funny to see the "small" version on the 1080p television, it was really tiny as you can see in the video. However, once you blow it up in full screen mode the video actually played very smooth. It was completely watchable with a few tears in the video, but overall I was really impressed. I would recommend the Amazon VOD service as it is really affordable for rentals and even some purchases.
Check out the video review:
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