Acer's Revo includes a RevoPad multi-touch pad that recognises gestures or can be switched to work as a keyboard. You can slip it back into the Revo's case when it's not in use.I have a three-year-old Panasonic plasma TV – great picture, great sound, no need to upgrade it yet. However, I would like to use it to watch movies and catchup TV available on the net, and maybe do some web surfing. How do I best achieve this without having to go down the Apple TV route? I already have an LG PVR attached, but that limits me to YouTube and Picasa, and has a horrible alphanumeric entry system. I understand there are PCs that I can attach to the back of the TV and connect with HDMI, and that use wireless keyboards or new-generation mice like the Loop.
Matt Coomber
If you want to connect a PC to a flatscreen TV, then almost any current machine with an HDMI port and Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium will do the job. HDMI carries both video and audio signals, so it avoids having to use separate audio cables, as you do with DVI. Windows 7 includes the Media Center software that was originally designed for use in home entertainment PCs running Windows XP Media Center Edition, and it works well with a remote control. Windows Media Center has PVR (personal video recorder) features and now "Internet TV" (ie you can get movies from Zune, Netflix etc, if they are available in your country), so it might possibly replace your standalone PVR. You can certainly use it with a Loop and the Kylo made-for-TV web browser.
Windows XP Media Center PCs died in the marketplace because they were much too expensive for the home TV market, and there were alternatives such as streaming audio and video to the TV set from an existing PC. That's still a cheaper option, using devices such as the Boxee Box. One day, Google TV products such as the Logitech Revue might also be a more attractive option.
However, the PC-centric approach returned with the arrival of "net-tops" such as the Asus EEE PC Box, MSI Wind Box and Acer Revo. These were, roughly, netbooks without screens, so they were very small, relatively cheap, and reasonably quiet. You may be thinking of the EEE PC Box because this can be clipped to the back of a flatscreen TV set. The new more-stylish version of the Acer Revo, the RL100, can be stacked flat or used as a very skinny tower: it's just 300mm high and 25mm thick, and that includes a DVD or Blu-ray drive. Its main rival is probably the Zotac Zbox.
Specification issues are much the same as with netbooks, as discussed last week (Wanted: a netbook for business trips). In general, I'd go for a dual core CPU, and if you plan to play movies, some sort of graphics processor. The standard over the past couple of years has been the Nvidia ION, which is capable of playing full HD (1080p) video. The drawback is that a (literally) hot graphics chip can rev up the cooling fan, increasing the noise level.
The latest version of the Acer Revo 100 has a 1.3GHz dual-core AMD Athlon II Neo K325 processor, ION graphics chip, up to 4GB of memory, a large hard drive (500GB, 640GB or 750GB), a DVD or Blu-ray drive, multi-format memory card slot, USB, Ethernet, S/PDIF and HDMI ports, Wi-Fi, and 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium. It often includes a built-in digital TV tuner. A slot in the tower case holds a somewhat odd remote wireless gesture-capable touchpad that doubles as a keyboard. However, the RL100 will also work with a vast array of Windows mice and keyboards, and with XP/Vista/Windows 7/Media Center MCE remote controls.
Acer also provides Clear.fi software that, according to its blurb: "automatically connects all of your household digital devices, including your smartphone, mobile internet device, notebook, all-in-one PC, HD media player, etc" – it should detect any DLNA-certified device. Clear.fi lets you share media content, play it to other devices, and upload it to popular social networks, though you can use your preferred Windows programs instead.
Since it is, obviously, a PC, you can run standard Windows software, browse the web, play videos in Flash and other formats, and all the usual stuff. You could also use it to run the free, open source XBMC networked media-player/home theatre software. (XBMC has no connection with Microsoft, it just happened to start life on the original Intel-powered Xbox games console.)
While the AMD K325 seems to be (according to the benchmarks) a bit quicker than a comparable Intel Atom, it's not a speed demon, and it isn't going to compete with a Core i3/i5/i7 – as fitted to the ASRock Core 100HT-BD home theatre PC – for general purpose computing or gaming. Depending on local prices, you might be able to build a better Shuttle or "barebones" media computer for a similar price. You could also use a Windows laptop, and most of these now have HDMI as standard plus either DVD or Blu-ray drives. However, the Revo RL100 does the job in a plug-in-and-go format that's quite close to the size of a slimline DVD or Blu-ray player, and will sit happily under your flatscreen TV set without looking like a computer.
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