Running XBMC/Ubuntu on Zotac HD-ID34

I recently bought a replacement for my aging Acer Revo R1600. I decided to go with the HD-ID34, since I didn’t wanna fiddle with buying a bunch of components. Installed a copy of Windows 7 on it (just to try it out …. :-P), and downloaded the Ubuntu 11.10 mini.iso. However the mini.iso apparently has issues (no clue which), basically it boots but gets stuck when bringing up the network connectivity (which is fucked up, since the mini.iso needs network connectivity to contiune the installation).

So I went a version back (11.04 – Natty Narwhal) and installed my stuff, however the audio didn’t work. So I kicked of a distribution upgrade, and about half an hour later that was finished. But still no audio …

1) The SPDIF channels were muted (no surprise there)
2) XBMC sent the audio do card 0, device 0 (which is basically /dev/null)

After playing around with the audio output settings (and trying different devices without any luck), I finally found a post for OpenELEC for the ZBOX (for an older version, but non the less, it still applied) describing what I had to configure.

Audio output = HDMI
Speaker configuration = 7.1 (or the what your receiver is capable of)

Audio output device = custom
Custom audio device = plughw:1,7

Passthrough output device = custom
Custom passthrough device = plughw:1,7

What’s just left now, is actually mounting the thing to the wall, since it looks just shabby sitting on my TV wall.