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As a geek I really like Atom CPUs but can't find a reason to buy one yet :( Although I was thinking about making my own DVR with NAS and media center functionality. Unfortunately, even today's Acer Revo, built on ION platform is not fast enough for streaming Full HD videos. So what do you think, will new two core CPU make it better, will it be able to show Full HD videos, store them to disk and transfer something over the network at the same time? Will it be able to scale videos from Hulu and YouTube to fullscreen?

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You're unlikely to be able to use one as a combined front and backend(though it is possible but TV cards will be an issue, as you'll only be able to use USB ones), but if you set up a seperate backend machine, the revo makes a perfect, quiet frontend machine, even for HD content.

XBMC (which can be used as a Myth frontend) runs briliantly on these, as does a proper Mtyh frontend.

As has been said, the ION platform contains the NVidia 9400m chipset, which can handle h.264 decoding without breaking a sweat, and only using like 5-10% CPU, even under linux (through the mentioned VDPAU) - EVEN FOR FULL 1080P HIGH BITRATE HD

There are currently active threads on the XBMC forums and I'm sure there are on MythTV forms too.

even lifehacker has spotted this

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I am in the USA and waiting for the Aspire Revo. The Revo will make a great MythTV frontend. As @pgs said, VDPAU is the key.

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If you have nvidia 8000 series or better video and recent enough mythtv (and nvidia drivers) then you can enable VDPAU and get on chip hardware video decoding. I hear it will happily decode h264 video with <10% CPU usage.

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Streaming won't be that great but if you hook it up to your TV directly the nvidia chipset takes care of the video. It will play Bluray and anything else GPU related perfectly.

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I ran a XBMC media server on a EeeBox 202 - with some careful optimization, I was able to get it running 720p video over the network smoothly. It wasn't particularly good at seeking, and I've since switched to something a bit more substantial.

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  • an eeebox is missing the crucial (NVidia >84xx)graphichs hardware that the revo has making it perfect for a HD media player
    – geocoin
    Nov 25, 2009 at 8:48

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