Squeezing out Performance - Revo R1600

[cbeiting]

I know I should have saved my monies and gotten the dual core Atom based system, but i just couldn't pass it up for $199...

So I blew off Win XP, dropped in 2GB of Ram, and installed Win 7 on it.

I've installed Flash 10.1 release 2 beta...

Any other suggestions I could do to make my Flash performance better? I know that the ION chipset is still new and eventually Flash should get better and Boxee is going to support ION better and better as they progress.

What I'm wondering is if installing Linux would give me better performance with a lower overhead? Anyone using the Acer AspireRevo D1600? Anyone have any overclocking tips or drivers that work better?

Any help or anything would be great!

Thanks!

[cbeiting]

Looks like I have an ION LE chip which doesn't officially support DX10 -- however it seems like you can hack the INI in the driver and get it to work... maybe I'll do that. :)

[judgeschambers]

You've done all you can do to upgrade it. Good move on Win-7. Linux would be less overhead, but you would not get netflix using silverlight. Plus, there are some other hurdles, but doable if you can trouble shoot it.

Boxee Beta (latest release) does support Flash Beta and acceleration. So, make sure you have the latest release (vs 10063) and it should play Flash & Silverlight nicely.

[dan1son]

cbeiting,

I'm running the same box as you. I upgraded it to 2 gigs of RAM and put Windows 7 and Ubuntu on it. To be perfectly frank, boxee beta isn't up to par on that box yet. I have an open ticket with their support staff and they said they're working on it and should have it working within the next couple of releases.

Flash support is not very good on that single core atom right now in boxee (even if it is "using" flash 10.1 beta2). Flash videos play great in the browser, but quite poorly inside of boxee.

Ironically, flash (at least the non HD stuff) inside of boxee plays a lot better on Ubuntu, which has no GPU acceleration. It's not perfect their either right now...

I'm sure they'll get it all working on Windows with accelerated flash.

[cbeiting]

So I hacked the INI file of the latest NVIDIA drivers to make them think that my ION LE chipset was in fact the ION itself -- the results are dramatically better. Now the graphics card supports DX 10 and flash is running quite well even in Boxee -- it's not perfect, but I think it will get better as the development of both Flash 10.1 and Boxee continue.

I'm pretty stoked I got the little box, and I'm pretty jazzed and what it's doing even right now.

If you have questions about the ION LE hack let me know.

[dan1son]

That's interesting. I never went through the trouble of forcing install of the ION drivers over the ION LE since adobe and nvidia both claim support for 10.1 beta on the ION LE platform.

I also get full DXVA decoding without modifications inside of MPC-HC.

I'm not seeing how doing directx 10 support (or DirectX 11 on Windows 7) should make any difference... but I could be wrong. I'll give it a shot and see.

[cbeiting]

Not sure - I just know that before I modified the driver Hulu seemed to run choppy, and now it's pretty smooth.

When I did the Win 7 benchmark I was scoring a 3.8 I believe, and now it's a 5.1 or so... in the graphics part.

[dan1son]

Out of curiosity how did you do the little hack?

Everything I can find only mentions HP Mini drivers, which I can't seem to find ION versions of, especially new ones.

[dan1son]

Never mind... I changed the Nvidia 195.81 driver to make the ION LE device IDs match the "sections" of the ION device IDs and it took my performance from 3.8 to 5.0 in Windows 7. Gonna do some testing now...

EDIT: no change in NBC flash performance inside of Boxee. FPS (per the 'i' button) hovers around 15 as it used to before the hack.

Hulu for the same video claims to hover around 30fps, but it looks just as choppy as the NBC feed.

H.264 MKV 1080p support remains fine on local media. VC-1 (I don't believe that has been added yet) still fails.

[cbeiting]

Weird. I'm sure you did this, but run dxconfig to make sure it's reporting that you can use DX 10 -- maybe it's not making a huge difference and it's in my mind, which could be the case... I just know Hulu was running like balls before, and now it's pretty close to perfect, there's some noticeable hitchyness in advertisements.

Regardless, I'm excited about the future.

[dan1son]

I'm still having the same slow video playback on most flash material with the public beta release in Windows 7 with flash 10.1 p2 (and p1) with nvidia 195.81 beta drivers.

Ironically Fox and ABC play back great with that third party flash player (looks like they're pumping 24fps material based on the 'i' screen). NBC, CBS, WB, Youtube, Hulu are all still choppy. Hulu is "decent" by some standards, but it's not smooth. The others are quite bad.

Anyone else on the R1600 or other Nvidia ION LE box having better luck?

[judgeschambers]

I'm still having the same slow video playback on most flash material with the public beta release in Windows 7 with flash 10.1 p2 (and p1) with nvidia 195.81 beta drivers.

Ironically Fox and ABC play back great with that third party flash player (looks like they're pumping 24fps material based on the 'i' screen). NBC, CBS, WB, Youtube, Hulu are all still choppy. Hulu is "decent" by some standards, but it's not smooth. The others are quite bad.

Anyone else on the R1600 or other Nvidia ION LE box having better luck?

If you went back to 1p then also go back to Nvidia 195.62, which is the match for 1p. Some are claiming this pairing works to improve flash and silverlight inside and outside of Boxee. Though Marcel told me today that acceleration is not working at all in XP with Boxee. So any gains in flash and SL acceleration would be gained only outside of Boxee on the revos with XP.

I'm thinking the whole Ion LE and XP pairing is the issue. DX is only for HD vid decoding in boxee, which DX acceleration in boxee is not yet supported. Otherwise MPC-HC 64 should play 720P or 1080P just fine.

It's stating to look like an upgrade to Win-7 64 is the only way to improve things across the board for the R1600 & 3600. The usa made R3610, like mine, seems to be working just fine for most users.

Check this thread too to see what others with Revos are doing and what's working or not.
http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=12905

[dan1son]

If you went back to 1p then also go back to Nvidia 195.62, which is the match for 1p.

Check this thread too to see what others with Revos are doing and what's working or not.
http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=12905

I didn't go that far, I can try again tonight, but it was worse when I used that setup with the first or second boxee beta build.

The Adobe forums have a few posts about 10.1 beta2 being more cpu intensive on ion boxes than 10.1 beta1. They claim it'll be fixed in beta3.

Too many untested things are in effect on these builds right now :)

I like fiddling... but I miss stability. Hence the reason XBMC 9.11 on Ubuntu 9.10 is normally booted up.

[honestbleeps]

If you went back to 1p then also go back to Nvidia 195.62, which is the match for 1p.

Check this thread too to see what others with Revos are doing and what's working or not.
http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=12905

Hey Judges - thanks for being so helpful through these forums.. i'll be trying those files you posted up this weekend for sure... rolling my 3610 back to Flash 10.1b1 ...

Quick question for you on your Win7 installation: Did you slipstream the drivers in, or did you do a normal Win7 install, then install the drivers? I'm going to be making a USB installer and wanted to try to replicate exactly what you've got going on since you're on the same hardware and are clearly much happier with things than I am!

So to clarify:
- Flash 10.1b1
- Matching nVidia driver (so, not the latest, but 1 version prior, can't recall the # off the top of my head)
- have you installed anything else or tweaked other settings? do you have UAC on or off? (I know there was discussion of that in a thread somewhere on here)
- have you installed any CODEC packs that may affect things?
- how about the CUDA toolkit from nVidia?

[judgeschambers]

Hey Judges - thanks for being so helpful through these forums.. i'll be trying those files you posted up this weekend for sure... rolling my 3610 back to Flash 10.1b1 ...

Quick question for you on your Win7 installation: Did you slipstream the drivers in, or did you do a normal Win7 install, then install the drivers? I'm going to be making a USB installer and wanted to try to replicate exactly what you've got going on since you're on the same hardware and are clearly much happier with things than I am!

So to clarify:
- Flash 10.1b1
- Matching nVidia driver (so, not the latest, but 1 version prior, can't recall the # off the top of my head)
- have you installed anything else or tweaked other settings? do you have UAC on or off? (I know there was discussion of that in a thread somewhere on here)
- have you installed any CODEC packs that may affect things?
- how about the CUDA toolkit from nVidia?

No problem. I'm here to help if I can.

My made for USA version of the 3610 comes with Win-7, so no installation was required for me. You can make a Win-7 installer with a usb stick. Then simply Dload the drivers you need and install after boot up. Slipstreaming is up to you. ;)

To answer your questions below in Red:
So to clarify:
- Flash 10.1b1 Yes Plug-in and AxtiveX
- Matching nVidia driver (so, not the latest, but 1 version prior, can't recall the # off the top of my head) It would be 195.62 WHQL. And the Chipset 15.51 WHQL
- have you installed anything else or tweaked other settings? do you have UAC on or off? (I know there was discussion of that in a thread somewhere on here)
Yes, UAC is OFF.
MS Anti virus (uses less resources),
Removed all bloatware (this frees up ram by killing services. If your acer came with Win-7, do not unintall any of the Acer specific prorgrams! You man need them later.)
Ran MS update and installed everything except Windows Live crap.
Updated DirectX to 11.
Updated latest Silverlight via MS Update.
Flash 10.1 1p Beta and Nvidia 195.62 WHQL, Nvidia Chipset 15.51 WHQL. MPC-HC 64. Done.
- have you installed any CODEC packs that may affect things? None.
- how about the CUDA toolkit from nVidia? Nope, nadda, nothing.

If you need the original files in one zip pack, follow the link above to the other post. I posted a link to my blog with a zip pack with all the files needed for Flash 1p and the ION vista/win7 64 drivers listed in RED. Post #82

[cbeiting]

Here's what I did on my Revo R1600 and it runs pretty well...

- Put 2GB Ram
- Installed Win 7 32bit (no need for 64 if I only have 2gb of ram in it)
- Installed the audio, network, chipset, and video drivers provided for Win7 from acer.com
- Installed Microsoft Security Essentials
- Updated the system (except Windows Live)
- Installed the latest Flash 10.1 B2
- Downloaded the latest NVIDIA drivers from NVIDIA.com
- Modified the drivers to natively support Direct X10

The only issue I see is that it's a little hitchy running the ads on HULU... I feel that while it's not lets say 30FPS video, it's close enough -- I know that when Beta 3 comes out, a new Boxee Build things will be even better.

Now, anything else runs great... watched a 720p Rip of Dexter, and it was beautiful and flawless.

[mrfatboy]

Check this forum out for Revo users

http://www.revouser.com/forum


There is a post on how to overclock your revo. You will have to find it yourself but it's in there. Becareful, overclock at your own risk. Don't do it unless you know what you are doing.

[judgeschambers]

Here's what I did on my Revo R1600 and it runs pretty well...

- Put 2GB Ram
- Installed Win 7 32bit (no need for 64 if I only have 2gb of ram in it)
- Installed the audio, network, chipset, and video drivers provided for Win7 from acer.com
- Installed Microsoft Security Essentials
- Updated the system (except Windows Live)
- Installed the latest Flash 10.1 B2
- Downloaded the latest NVIDIA drivers from NVIDIA.com
- Modified the drivers to natively support Direct X10

The only issue I see is that it's a little hitchy running the ads on HULU... I feel that while it's not lets say 30FPS video, it's close enough -- I know that when Beta 3 comes out, a new Boxee Build things will be even better.

Now, anything else runs great... watched a 720p Rip of Dexter, and it was beautiful and flawless.

Well, it seems that with the ION LE units, you must ditch XP for Win-7 then mod the Nvidia Driver so DX 10+ can be installed and used. Seems like you may have nailed it for these units.
Because you mention the same drivers from Acer and Nvidia, I would like to clarifiy exactly.
Can you give the specific Nvidia Vid driver number and the chipset? Just so other users can exactly replicate this set up.

Aslo, how exactly are you modding the Nvidia driver to install on the LE?

[judgeschambers]

Check this forum out for Revo users

http://www.revouser.com/forum


There is a post on how to overclock your revo. You will have to find it yourself but it's in there. Becareful, overclock at your own risk. Don't do it unless you know what you are doing.

Here's what I found there:
http://www.revouser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=283

[dconti]

I have the 3610 and did mostly the same stuff judges posted above. I did go in to the bios and set the video memory to 512mb instead of 256mb after reading a few threads on avsforum about configuration. If you have 2gb of ram this should only help. I also plugged a usb key into it and set it up for readyboost based on other comments i had seen. I haven't done perf comparisons on either of these to see how much they help so YMMV.

I also did remove most if not all of the acer software. A lot of the software had background services that ran that i really didn't want, like the backup stuff, etc.

Worth noting that you can get the 3610 for $299 at frys; i picked one up a couple of days ago and they indicated they were getting another shipment tomorrow. That adds a second core, bumps the memory to 2gb, gets you built in 802.11n, ion instead of ion LE, and the spdif connector.

[kurzweil]

I just did the R1600.

Win7 x64 and stripped out all unnecessary features/services. Installed the latest DOX version of the Nvidia drivers to get DX10 support. Overclocked (with the Asrock utility) the FSB to get a 1900Mhz proc speed with stable temps around 50c. Upped the graphics clock to 500. A 4gb flash drive for ReadyBoost seems to smooth things out an appreciable amount as well. The sixteen dollar remote with mouse control off eBay is great.

Still only 1gb ram but everything except full-screen Flash is absolutely flawless. My monitor's native resolution is 1900x1200 so full screen flash is a little messy. I wish Boxee had some options to set full-screen streaming resolution to match source resolution. Would be an incredible help. It sucks that I can stream 1080p over WiFi but can't even fully enjoy a stinky low-res streaming version of Lost.

Gonna grab the 2x2gb g.Skill ram cards from NewEgg and I'm sure that'll help.

Also going to disable some junk in the NTFS system that adds unnecessary overhead not needed for this purpose: disable NTFS last access date, disable 8.3 filename compatibility.

Was shocking seeing the graphics index go from 2.0 to 5.1 after these tweaks and still with 1gb RAM.

Now to figure out how to permanently dispose of those unasked for and unwanted 'Feed' and 'Featured' columns upon start up. 'Queue' might be tolerable if I ever find a reason to use it but those other two piss me off everytime I start up the program. How about a simple on/off toggle to start up on the functional panel of 'Movies, TV, Apps, Files' so those of us who are over 16 and know what we want to watch don't have to be force fed someone else's viewing preferences?

[posnera]

After reading this thread, I think I'll be upgrading from XP to Win7. Will I need to increase ram (only interested in playing flash or 720p mkv on a 720p TV). Exactly what ram chips are recommended?

[kurzweil]

Probably not related to the forum title but for what it's worth, I'm going to buy this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231156

No idea what's going to happen when I put it in but I've got reasonable expectations that it should work.

EDIT: If you've got the same machine as me, you might not even need the RAM. 720p over WiFi plays like it's a local file and if they fix Flash I don't see how it could be any worse than the 720p MKV's. I think my issue is the upscaling of Flash to the 1900x1200 monitor which I'm hoping the RAM will help as far as buffers and whatnot are concerned. Still would be nice if Boxee had an option to change the full screen resolution to match source resolution for internet stuff. Who knows? Maybe it does.

[dan1son]

Probably not related to the forum title but for what it's worth, I'm going to buy this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231156

No idea what's going to happen when I put it in but I've got reasonable expectations that it should work.

EDIT: If you've got the same machine as me, you might not even need the RAM. 720p over WiFi plays like it's a local file and if they fix Flash I don't see how it could be any worse than the 720p MKV's. I think my issue is the upscaling of Flash to the 1900x1200 monitor which I'm hoping the RAM will help as far as buffers and whatnot are concerned. Still would be nice if Boxee had an option to change the full screen resolution to match source resolution for internet stuff. Who knows? Maybe it does.

Unfortunately your RAM won't help the flash streaming. It simply still has some issues that need to be worked out to really excel on the ION LE Atom 230 boxes. Boxee says they're working on it... so we'll see what happens.

And, for the record, 720p on Flash is MUCH more intensive than 720p h.264 streams (probably what your mkv files contain). Flash has excessive overhead with DRM and the fact that it runs in a browser that really slows it down. Adobe is working on that for flash 10.1 as well as GPU acceleration.

More RAM really just makes the machine run better with multiple applications. Instead of the apps storing data on swap space (or "virtual memory") it can just load it into RAM. That can dramatically speed the machine up if it is in fact swapping a lot.

If you're running lean Windows 7 with just boxee, I doubt you'll notice much of a difference.

[kurzweil]

Yah, just got home and watched an Episode of Arrested Development using the Hulu Desktop app in high quality and fullscreen and it was flawless outside of Boxee on that cheap little Revo still with the 1gig RAM. Guess it's still the beta state of Boxee that makes Hulu less than impressive.

I wonder if there's some kind of launcher app to switch between Hulu and Boxee and Netflix ... Online TV, Local Media, Online Movies.

[posnera]

Kurzweil, which OS are you using?


I just played the same 720p file that boxee couldn't with Media Player Classic - Home Cinema. It played very well. So, the 1600 with XP can play 720p, just not through Boxee. I read that XBMC can use MPC-HC as a player, maybe I should try XBMC rather than Boxee?

[dan1son]

Kurzweil, which OS are you using?


I just played the same 720p file that boxee couldn't with Media Player Classic - Home Cinema. It played very well. So, the 1600 with XP can play 720p, just not through Boxee. I read that XBMC can use MPC-HC as a player, maybe I should try XBMC rather than Boxee?

XBMC can use MPC-HC if you set up an external player. It also supports native VDPAU in Linux on with the XBMC-live cd. You're probably better off using the live cd.

Boxee only supports DXVA in Vista or Windows 7 due to their choice to implement it using the DXVA 2 method instead of DirectShow as required by XP. Apparently the DShow implementation is pretty hackish, so it's probably better they chose to use the new one.

[posnera]

I'm not sure I completely understand what that means, but I'm a little disappointed. It seems like the computer itself is powerful enough, but there are 2 major problems.

1 - boxee can't run 720p on XP
2 - upgrading the NVIDIA drivers to enable the flash beta breaks audio over HDMI.

I'm not thrilled with the idea of spending the money to buy Win7. The goal of all of this was to work with a $200 system. What does W7 cost?

[jsl4980]

I have the Revo 1600 and I'm pretty disappointed with Nvidia's HDMI audio bugs in XP (HDMI audio does not work at all in XP with latest drivers). I'm pretty sure they'll fix that in the future and I've opened a support ticket.

I have a copy of Windows 7 so I upgraded right away. I had to go through a bit of work to get the Revo 1600 working with the latest flash beta plus the Nvidia drivers and removing other apps on startup. But after all that work it's working great.

You might still be able to use the Windows 7 RC or Beta or whatever MS was giving away as a trial. Hopefully Nvidia will fix the XP HDMI audio bugs before the Windows 7 trial ends.

[posnera]

I think the free trial is expired for Win7.

MediaPortal has the ability to launch an external player, and has a Netflix plugin. I may try messing with that for a while.

If it can play Netflix, 720p files and DVD rips to VIDEO_TS folders, then I may use that for now. If the NVIDIA drivers for XP get fixed (audio over HDMI), I may not need to buy Win7.

So now I've got a new project. I really prefer the simplicity of Boxee, so I hope all this can get worked out.

[kurzweil]

Is Server 2008 available as a trial? Strip the heck out of an x64 version of that?

[jkang29]

I have similar setup as other revo users and am pretty impressed w its performance. Flash plays well except youtube for some reason??
When i play youtube video outside boxee, it plays fine. so my guess is it's boxee beta.

one question regarding ION LE...
I upgraded from xp to win 7 and didn't do any nvidia driver modification, but when I do dxdiag command, it tells me I'm using DX11. Driver still says ION LE. Am I getting native DX11 support without any modification?

performance subscore shows graphics 4.0 gaming graphics 3.8

Can someone post detailed instruction on how to install ION driver for revo 1600?

[kurzweil]

Look on the second tab of dxdiag for your DDI version. I had 9E or something until I installed the modded drivers. Now it shows 10. The first tab shows what you have on your system I think and not what is being used.

[dan1son]

Look on the second tab of dxdiag for your DDI version. I had 9E or something until I installed the modded drivers. Now it shows 10. The first tab shows what you have on your system I think and not what is being used.

Mine says 10 as well, but I haven't noticed any changes to boxee, flash 10.1 beta, or dxva playback.

Maybe some games would benefit.

[jkang29]

I'm not planning to do any gaming on my revo. so will there be any benefit to getting DX10 support as a media computer? Is worth it to hack ION LE to install ION driver?

[jsl4980]

To 'hack' the Nvidia drivers you only need to modify one INF file nv_disp.inf I think, but I'm not 100% sure I don't have it in front of me. I wrote a few notes to myself about it so here's my instructions to myself:

For the Nvidia ION LE nettop, the hardware ID is 087E, the ION nettop is 0874. The Nvidia ION LE netbook is 087F and ION netbook is 0876.

1 - Download and start the install of the latest Nvidia drivers. After the installer extracts the files you can cancel the installer (and run it after modifications).
2 - Open nv_disp.inf
3 - Search for 087E and remove every line that contains that number
4 - Do a find and replace: find 0874 and replace it with 087E (for netbooks like the HP mini 311 replace 0876 with 087F).
5 - Save the file
6 - Run setup.exe

It's pretty simple. You will get a warning message when installing the driver if you did everything correctly.

[dan1son]

To 'hack' the Nvidia drivers you only need to modify one INF file nv_disp.inf I think, but I'm not 100% sure I don't have it in front of me. I wrote a few notes to myself about it so here's my instructions to myself:

For the Nvidia ION LE nettop, the hardware ID is 087E, the ION nettop is 0874. The Nvidia ION LE netbook is 087F and ION netbook is 0876.

1 - Download and start the install of the latest Nvidia drivers. After the installer extracts the files you can cancel the installer (and run it after modifications).
2 - Open nv_disp.inf
3 - Search for 087E and remove every line that contains that number
4 - Do a find and replace: find 0874 and replace it with 087E (for netbooks like the HP mini 311 replace 0876 with 087F).
5 - Save the file
6 - Run setup.exe

It's pretty simple. You will get a warning message when installing the driver if you did everything correctly.

Another option when editing the file is to make the lines with 087E and 087F look like the 0876 lines. Basically changing the "section##" to match 0876.

[posnera]

What advantage will hacking the drivers result in? Any benefit on XP?

[jsl4980]

No benefit at all on XP, this is to support DirectX 10 in Windows 7 (and probably Vista too).

The ION LE is supposed to be the Windows XP version of the ION chipset and only support up to DirectX 9. This is just an easy hack to make your ION LE work like a normal ION in Windows 7 (maybe vista too not really sure). The ION LE wasn't supposed to support DirectX 10 for some stupid licensing reasons between Microsoft and Nvidia.

[moethecat]

Hi,

I have a revo 1600 and was trying to hack the ion le to a ion. I tried following the directions above but could not find 087E or 0874 in nv_disp.inf .

Any help would be appreciated. I was turned on to boxee today and am anxious to get things setup the best I can. The top of my file looks like this'

; Device ID Section Name
; ------------------- ---------- ----------------------------------------
; 10DE.0860 Section003 NVIDIA GeForce 9400
; 10DE.0864 " NVIDIA GeForce 9300
; 10DE.0865 " NVIDIA GeForce 9300
; 10DE.0868 " NVIDIA nForce 760i SLI
; 10DE.086A " NVIDIA GeForce 9400
; 10DE.086C " NVIDIA GeForce 9300 / nForce 730i
; 10DE.086D " NVIDIA GeForce 9200
; 10DE.0871 " NVIDIA GeForce 9200
; 10DE.087D " NVIDIA MCP7AION
; 10DE.087A Section005 NVIDIA Quadro FX 470
; -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rob

[jsl4980]

What version of Windows are you using? This hack is only relevant to Windows 7 and Vista, not XP. Windows XP does not support DirectX 10, and this hack enables DX10 support.

I just checked Nvidia's site and it looks like they've released a newer version. I haven't had a chance to look at those since they came out yesterday (1/19/09). But with previous versions I downloaded the ION LE desktop drivers and modified that .inf file. If you still have problems let me know and I"ll look into it some more.

[moethecat]

I am using xp currently. I wanted to see if I could make the change and then if that worked upgrade to Windows 7.

I think my next step is to do a diff on the drivers for the ION and ION LE .

Thanks for the help

[jsl4980]

This modification is for Windows Vista and 7 only. If you want to see how to do the modification then you can download the Windows 7 drivers and extract them. I doubt the XP drivers contain these sections since XP does not support DX10.

[posnera]

New NVIDIA drivers are out today - http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_196.21_whql.html

There is no word on whether these fix the HDMI audio issues on XP yet. I'm not willing to be the first test dummy. I've had to do three factory resets because rolling back the drivers didn't work.

Any guinea pigs out there?

[madneon]

Its funny I am writing this while watching the Boxee release on HAK5, anyways I am using the latest nvida drivers with 2 gigs of RAM stripped down win xp and HDMI audio works, on my 50" Panny Plasma the only time it slows down is when I fire up the itouch app. Still using the mouse to work Boxee, looking for a RF/IR/BT usb remote.

[jsl4980]

New NVIDIA drivers are out today - http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_196.21_whql.html

There is no word on whether these fix the HDMI audio issues on XP yet. I'm not willing to be the first test dummy. I've had to do three factory resets because rolling back the drivers didn't work.

Any guinea pigs out there?

Yes, the latest Nvidia drivers did fix the HDMI audio problems. Sorry to reply so late.

[madneon]

So as of right now there is NO hardware accell. in win xp so I MUST upgrade to Win7 do get DX10 or whats the chance DX10 will work in XP?

[jsl4980]

So as of right now there is NO hardware accell. in win xp so I MUST upgrade to Win7 do get DX10 or whats the chance DX10 will work in XP?

DX10 will never work in XP. Some hardware acceleration does work in XP things like Flash 10.1 and the Nvidia drivers work well in applications like Firefox and Hulu desktop. I can't see Boxee's source and I don't want to search through it, but it appears that they use DX10 functionality which does not work in XP and will never work in XP. This doesn't mean it can't change in the future.

This only negatively effects very very weak systems like the Revo 1600 with the Atom 270 processor. I have other XP systems that Boxee works great on, but they are higher powered.

[madneon]

can you give me a place I can go while in Boxee that will bog it down right now I am streaming a 720p vid from my NAS wireless G and it looks great. I have tried many of the TV shows ( House, Heroes, Flash Forward) to see if I get bog dows all is well but since I am running XP no hardware accell I do have a copy of vista laying around....

[jsl4980]

Hi, Boxee plays back local/network video files great for me, I have the biggest problems playing back flash video. Most video I play is from NBC, ABC, and Hulu. The last few times I've used Boxee to playback shows like 30 Rock from either the NBC feed or the Hulu feed it has been quite choppy.

[madneon]

Thanks I will give it a shot and report back I mean if I have to load win 7 I will I was just wondering if I should run down to the BX and pick up a Apple TV box...

[madneon]

Yep your right the shows you mentioned were choppy but the funny thing is other better quality shows on NBC and HULU ( Heroes, House, Angel<from the WB) looks and works great. So to sum is the problem the shows, the servers the shows are on, the web connection, the OS, the software, or the hardware...or a combo....Just tried "Scrubs" ABC on hulu and it works great...