My plan was to load the amazing XBMC application onto the device, point XBMC at my library of ripped movies, and then enjoy watching. I also wanted to keep Windows 7 installed in case I needed other Windows applications. By the way, for those who already know Google TV and Apple TV you can think of XBMC as a much better application for playing back content on your home network. Maybe someone will port it to Google TV one day.
After cabling up the Revo 3700 I spent some time removing all the extra software Acer had loaded onto the system. Then I ran windows update and loaded XBMC. I configured XBMC to use files on an SMB server and started playing some video.
It worked but the video stuttered quite a bit.
I worried that the Revo did not have enough horsepower to play 1080p video so I put some video on a USB drive and connected that to the Revo. XBMC played that video perfectly.
I should mention at this point that I was using a wired connection over power-line ethernet. My wireless doesn't reach into this room. Next I tried to copy a file from the network to the Revo. I noticed that even though the transfer was about 30Mbps average it was not consistent. There were lots peaks and valleys.
I did more testing and eventually concluded that there was some issue with the Revo's wired network adapter. This sent me looking for drivers. I found and updated the software using the latest Realtek network drivers. The driver install didn't go very well. It failed during the first update but after I rebooted the system the new drivers installed correctly.
Went back to XBMC and my SMB video files played perfectly.
If you haven't used XBMC I recommend it.
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