A lot has happened since I wrote my post back in June about setting up Ubuntu and Boxee on the Acer Aspire Revo; a new version of Ubuntu has been released and today (7^th January 2009) the new beta version of Boxee was officially released to the public. The new version is a major overhaul and represents quite a different, enhanced user experience from the alpha. So I thought I would do a new version of the post to reflect these changes. Fortunately, Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic) has introduced many changes that make getting the Revo up and running much easier than under the previous release of Ubuntu.

** UPDATE 7th January 2009 ***

See my new post for details on how to install the Boxee Beta and Ubuntu Karmic on the Revo:
How to install Ubuntu 9.10 and the Boxee Beta on an Acer Aspire Revo (including 64 bit option)

The details below are now out of date, but are still useful if you wish to install Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) on a Revo.

***

The Revo is a very new piece of hardware and features some cutting edge technology so installing Ubuntu on it is not completely straightforward as not many people own these units and have had a chance to make them work out of the box with this very popular Linux distribution. However, it can be done and the unit makes a fantastic Ubuntu machine and if you add Boxee a great entertainment centre for your living room. The first thing to do is to put a copy of the Ubuntu 9.04 desktop live CD image on a USB memory stick. Do this by visiting:http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download and selecting the 32 bit desktop edition. Once downloaded you copy it to a USB stick by using the USB Startup disk creator located under System → Administration. The task of installing centres around three areas: getting Ubuntu on the machine, getting the graphics to work (properly) and getting the sound to work (at all).

If you have treated yourself to a High Definition (HD) TV the chances are you aren't using it to its full capability. According to a recent report in The Register, only 1.7% of Western European households have the equipment necessary to receive HD broadcasts, and these consist of only a handful of channels. This situation is set to improve, in the UK we are lucky enough to have Sky HD and Freesat which both carry HD content, but the report goes on to claim that the widespread availability of free-to-air HD channels will not occur until 2015. However, there is no need to despair, luckily there is another interesting source of High Definition content; this time in the form of video podcasts: Miro. The advantage of video podcasts, or vodcasts is that you can subscribe to the content you want, no more being spoon fed by scheduler in a remote TV station! You don't have to watch these vodcasts on your computer either, pretty much every HD television can be hooked into your computer so you can enjoy HD content on your new TV.