[g-a-c]

I'm looking to buy one of the above for use with XBMC Live (or possibly XBMC Linux on top of Ubuntu). It'll be plugged into a Samsung 32" 720p set, although I do have some 1080p .mkv files. The reason I'm asking for opinions here is that I was going to get the R3600 (~£150 here in the UK), but this only has 1Gb of memory and I've read that I'd need to upgrade to 2Gb to get the best performance from XBMC. That's likely to be around £45 so would bring the total cost to around halfway between the two boxes, and since the Asrock has a better spec (dual-core Atom, and optical drive) would I be better off just going a step further and getting one of those? The dual-core Aspire Revos are all ~£250 and would still be missing an optical drive, whereas I can find an ION330 for £229.

So I guess the question is whether there's any advantages to the dual core for most content. I know that CPU-intensive Flash will suck (as it does on all Linuxes), does the XBMC iPlayer plugin use Flash at all or does it play a standard raw stream? I use the iPlayer plugin a lot and would like to use the other UK "catchup" plugins if possible and if I can get them to work, will these be OK with VDPAU?

With the VDPAU support, is there any limitations? I don't want to move all my video over from my current XBMC box (a C2D) and find there's some content which can't be hardware accelerated and therefore can't be played smoothly at all (particularly if I go for the cheaper Atom 230). Is there any way of finding out whether I have any media files which couldn't be VDPAU accelerated?

Thanks!

[hartjo1]

I'm dealing with the same dilemma. What are the advantages of the Asrock over the similarly-speced Aspire Revo 3600? Other than the fact that I cannot find a Revo 3600 anywhere...

[Mavinwow]

I went with the revo 3610 over the 330. For me, its smaller, quieter, comes with wifi/keyboard/mouse/Windows 7, and has the same atom 330/ion.

[hartjo1]

And yet the Asrock is considerably more expensive than the 3610. The only difference appears the be the DVD drive. Something I'm missing? I'm certainly much more familiar with he Acer as a brand, though that's not necessarily positive. At the moment I can only see one real advantage to the Asrock, which is that I can actually buy one whereas the 3610 seems to be some great unattainable mystery. Surely somebody out there knows of a more technical reason to prefer the Asrock...

[Mavinwow]

The asrock 330 Pro is the same price as the 3610, but lacks what I mentioned above. The 330 HT adds wifi and an IR remote but costs a ton more and is a poor value IMO.

The 3610 was pulled because they forgot to put the VESA mount in the packaging. A new package has been made and should hit retail "soon".

[hartjo1]

"Soon" being the operative word. I've read through all of the treads and it seems like the 3610 was pulled at lease two weeks ago without any word of a replacement. I suppose two weeks isn't much time. But it is when you're impatient and want your toys NOW!

[saratoga]

And yet the Asrock is considerably more expensive than the 3610. The only difference appears the be the DVD drive. Something I'm missing?

The Acer is a tiny, well integrated system thats mass produced in largish quantity. The Asrock is an enthusiast part targeting a much smaller market that tolerates much higher margins for the seller. People buying Revos to put into libraries and internet cafes are subsidizing the cost of a Revo relative to a building a system yourself and are also holding down Acer's profits.

[katiew]

I went with the revo 3610 over the 330. For me, its smaller, quieter, comes with wifi/keyboard/mouse/Windows 7, and has the same atom 330/ion.

I read a compliant on ebuyer that the Revo fans are noisey when they go above 2400rpm. Are you positive the Revo is quieter than the Asrock ion?

Is the vesa mount the only upgrade on the new revo 3610s? I'd much rather have internal 802.11n like the asrock unit.

[Mavinwow]

I think youre confused. The Revo 3610 has 802.11n, atom 330, 2 gigs of RAM. The asrock 330 Pro, which is the similarly priced revo, doesnt have wifi. You need to get the 330 HT which is quite a bit more expensive.

[katiew]

^^
In the UK some websites now list the Revo 3610 wireless specs as WLAN: 802.11 b/g only. Original specs on the 3610 claimed to support 802.11 b/g/n but lots of angry customers returned units over the missing n mode.

Thought this might have been the reason why they pulled the units, but apparently it was over the missing vesa mount.