A few days ago, I decided to give a try to Win8 + Media Center Pack on this Acer iDea; total cost: ~15€ - including upgrade from Win7 home premium to Win8 pro and the free licence for WMC
I thought it could be interesting to post here about my experience, for people who would still be using their Acer iDea too... (although I didn't find any post about the iDea anymore)
I tried first a x64 version of Win8... Bad luck... It was far from working perfectly, mainly because I didn't find any video drivers compatible with Win8 x64:
=> with the basic Microsoft graphic adapter, the display is really slooooooooow (forget about watching an HD movie!)
=> the various sleep modes (suspend and hibernate) are disabled as Windows doesn't know how to manage the power state of the graphic card.
But next, with the x86 version of Win8, I was luckier. I found indeed a website with a modified version of the Vista video drivers supported by Win8.
And thanks to those drivers specific to the graphic card (I.e. for NVidia Geforce GO 7600), the sleep modes are supported too.
Drivers (in a self-extracting exe named “18070_vista.exe”) and an adapted .inf file (named “nv_disp.inf”) must be downloaded separately from the bottom of this page: http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/drivers/v ... isclaimer/ They are unofficial drivers and not WHQL certified !
Once the drivers and the .inf file downloaded, extract the self-extracting package and move "nv_disp.inf" into the extracted folder (“180.70_vista”).
Finally, Run the setup.exe and don’t be afraid if you see that it’s for Vista.
Once installed, reboot the system. You will clearly see the difference (the resolution will be much higher – 1920×1080 instead of 1024×768 – and WMC runs now much faster).
About the other features working out-of-the box with Win8 on Acer iDea:
- The remote control is 100% working fine
- WiFi and Ethernet connection are 100% working fine too
- Ethernet NIC is configure to allow WOL
- Standby mode works out of the box (nothing to fine tune in Windows) with the remote control. Notice that S1 and S3 are enabled in the BIOS.
However:
- The front Digital Display is recognized by Windows 8 but not displaying anything else that “Welcome To Aspire IDEA. I did try to install the drivers from Acer web site (named “VFD Transcoder Driver 1.01.01.zip”) successfully, but it didn’t fix anything. I am not surprised as this display was already not working with Windows 7.
- Drivers are missing for the 2 Multimedia Video Controllers devices. I did install the drivers from Acer web site (named “MPC718_install_V6_13_32_1026_Oscar.msi”) and those devices were recognized without any issue. That being said, I don't receive TV anymore on coax cable..
- Wake-up on Lan works out of the box (nothing to fine tune in Windows) if the shutdown is initiated from WMC (or XBMC). But if the shutdown is done from the "Start Screen", WOL does not work! In Windows 8, the default shutdown behavior puts the system into hybrid shutdown (S4) and all devices are put into D3. Remote Wake-On-LAN from hybrid shutdown (S4) or classic shutdown (S5) is unfortunately not supported.
The purpose of using the hybrid shutdown (a.k.a “Fast Startup” - the default in Windows 8) is to offer a fast boot... And indeed, booting after WMC/XBMC’s shutdown is clearly much slower. But as I don’t care about a slower boot on this PC (which is usually in sleep mode anyway), I have disabled the hybrid shutdown. And WOL is now working 100%. Here is the how-to:
- On the Start Scren type “Power” and select “Settings”.
- Click on “Change what the power buttons do” in the list of results.
- Click on “Change settings that are currently unavailable” if UAC is not disabled
- Uncheck “Turn on fast startup (recommended)”
- Select “Save Settings” and test a shutdown/WOL. It works !
I had to install K-Lite codecs to be able to play HD movies (mkv)
And finally, I had to configure the Speakers 5.1 (no specific audio drivers installed)
- Right click the speaker in the sys-tray and select “Playback Device”
- At the bottom of the tab “Payback”, click on “Configure”
- Select the second 5.1 in the list of “Audio Channels” (with 2 speakers on the back).
(And for sure, I have also created a user "Media Center" for which I replaced the shell explorer with WMC: ehshell.exe /mediamode)
Et voilà, Win8+WMC are working fine on my Acer iDea 510, at least as well as Win7+WMC.
No big advantage IMO, except the lifecycle of Win8 and the Metro Style to surf and use the PC on the TV using a Logitech Touchpad
V.
