$25 Raspberry Pi running XBMC

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#683314 9-Sep-2012 09:43

Got my Pi this weekend and started to play with. As other's have noted, the installation of xbmc is pretty straightforward. I chose Raspbmc, downloaded the installer, formatted a SD card I had lying around and then plugged the Pi into my network. I also plugged in a Logitech wireless keyboard I had lying around.

After about 30 minutes of downloading and configuring, it all came up. I had it displaying on my 1080P projector. Mapped a drive on my network that has my movies and started to play them.

A couple of initial observations.

- it's running fine off the USB port on a PC.

- I can't get the time/date to change to NZ time. It seems to be GMT and I can't a menu item to change that

- the menus are a bit sluggish and when I select a movie to play, it pauses a while (100Mbs ethernet) before it starts to play. I guess it's buffering but on my Popcorn Hour on the same network, it starts to play immediately. I am grabbing content via SMB.

- Tried to play some content with Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD Master and it didn't seem to like that. Since it can pass through Dolby Digital and DTS over HDMI I would have thought it should be able to pass the HD Audio through also. I need to perform further checks.

I really haven't used XBMC before so part of the time is for to learn the interface.

But all in all very impressive for what it costs. I plan to make a case using a cassette tape box (decided to eschew the $15 box Element14 sells since it back ordered anyway and I have tons of cassette boxes lying around). Have a couple of friends who are interested also.

If I can get it to work with an IR Remote (might try to see if I can find a MCE remote somewhere) and then learn that with a Harmony, then this looks like a great media player option.

Staying in Wellington. Check out my AirBnB in the Wellington CBD. https://www.airbnb.co.nz/h/wellycbd PM me and mention GZ to get a 15% discount and no AirBnB charges.

reven

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#683326 9-Sep-2012 10:10

time is under settings \ appearance \ international

if you can share via nfs, that is preferred to smb, less cpu overhead. it takes a few seconds on mine to start playing (personally the time it takes i think is fine, it shows "working" down the bottom, never timed it, cos i think its fine, but could be my network + nfs is faster).

I think there is a few issues with the latest build of raspbmc and the merge of the new audio engine. so give it a few weeks if you cant get it working properly.

lchiu7

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#683364 9-Sep-2012 11:38

OK. Got the time zone corrected.

Downloaded the 0901 Build which has options for DTS-HD and Dolby TrueHD and tried to play a title with that audio. But I only get DTS. Tried playing a movie with TrueHD and it locks up. You might be right about the audio engine broken.

But I do see it played AAC audio fine from Freeview

NFS would be better I guess but it's hard to run a NFS server on Windows. Anyway SMB works fine for the Popcorn Hour on the same network.

Staying in Wellington. Check out my AirBnB in the Wellington CBD. https://www.airbnb.co.nz/h/wellycbd PM me and mention GZ to get a 15% discount and no AirBnB charges.

reven

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#683373 9-Sep-2012 12:22

Smb is fine and should work but it does use more CPU than Nfs which the pi is lacking

lchiu7

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#683412 9-Sep-2012 14:23

Certainly the GUI can be quite slow so that you think it's not doing anything. Wonder if xbian is better in that respect?

Staying in Wellington. Check out my AirBnB in the Wellington CBD. https://www.airbnb.co.nz/h/wellycbd PM me and mention GZ to get a 15% discount and no AirBnB charges.

reven

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#683418 9-Sep-2012 14:50

Xbian and raspbmc are pretty much the same I found. Raspbmc has better support and features.

reven

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#683700 10-Sep-2012 09:24

just saw this on the 4therecord.eu forums

http://www.4therecord.eu/forum/viewtopic.php?p=23161#p23161

Red_F: The good news

The ForTheRecord add-on has made it to the official XBMC 12 "Frodo" repository!

This means that everybody creating special distributions of Frodo, will have the ForTheRecord add-on in their distribution by default in the future.

This is good news for OpenElec and Sam's Raspmbc.

so looks like raspbmc will be getting the 4tr pvr addon soon :) (personally i think 4tr is the best pvr backend available, ive tried them all :))

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lchiu7

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#683814 10-Sep-2012 13:12

I moved to Darkelec2 just to check it out. It seems a bit faster (but not by much) than Raspbmc.

It also purports to support HD Audio since there are options for passing through those audio streams but as with the latest Raspbmc build, only the core audio passes through. And when I tried a title with Dolby TrueHD on both builds, the units cannot play them - the video starts but it stutters badly. OTOH the Popcorn Hour can play the same content on the same network just fine.

On all builds I find the GUI a bit slow - painfully slow at time. I wonder if that's because I am using a SD card I just happen to have lying around (might be Class 2) and if a faster card would help.

I also saw a post where you can actually put most of the XBMC build onto a USB drive which would be faster but it looked too complex for me!

Summing up I think the Pi is way cool product but based on my experience so far, falls short of being able to replace the PCH I have. But for some I can see it would be ideal, especially given the price.

Staying in Wellington. Check out my AirBnB in the Wellington CBD. https://www.airbnb.co.nz/h/wellycbd PM me and mention GZ to get a 15% discount and no AirBnB charges.

StarBlazer

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#684404 11-Sep-2012 14:40

lchiu7: Certainly the GUI can be quite slow so that you think it's not doing anything. Wonder if xbian is better in that respect?

Nope XBian suffers the same "working" pause. I've used Raspbmc and XBian and I've found XBian a little more stable.

Also I had a problem where Raspbmc did not auto mount the HDD on reboot whereas XBian does.

Got putty to connect (means I don't have to take over the TV which annoys the kids and wife) so I can tinker with the OS - also means I don't have to sit next to the box with a keyboard. Even used vi last night - that was a blast from the past!!!!

Successfully configured SMB to allow access via Windows 7 drive letter. There was talk that NFS is better - any comments - suggest any links to get it working to see if there is any speed difference?

Writing to the drive a little slow but reading much faster - perhaps this is just a USB2 issue!

All up - I'm really enjoying the Raspberry Pi. There's at least 3 people I work with who are now interested.

Procrastination eventually pays off.

lchiu7

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#684452 11-Sep-2012 16:02

StarBlazer:
lchiu7: Certainly the GUI can be quite slow so that you think it's not doing anything. Wonder if xbian is better in that respect?

Nope XBian suffers the same "working" pause. I've used Raspbmc and XBian and I've found XBian a little more stable.

I skipped Xbian and went straight to Darkelec2. At least it doesn't show an error in the audio section setup but still won't pass through HD AUdio

Successfully configured SMB to allow access via Windows 7 drive letter. There was talk that NFS is better - any comments - suggest any links to get it working to see if there is any speed difference?

Difficulty there might be in finding a way to setup a NFS server on Windows. I think there was Unix Services for Windows but it really only works now for Windows Server (that I can tell) and not for Windows 7/ But then apart from the significant pause at the beginning when playing a video (buffering?), SMB works fine for me over 100Mbs for streaming 1080P video.

Staying in Wellington. Check out my AirBnB in the Wellington CBD. https://www.airbnb.co.nz/h/wellycbd PM me and mention GZ to get a 15% discount and no AirBnB charges.

StarBlazer

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#684464 11-Sep-2012 16:19

lchiu7:
StarBlazer:
lchiu7: Certainly the GUI can be quite slow so that you think it's not doing anything. Wonder if xbian is better in that respect?

Nope XBian suffers the same "working" pause. I've used Raspbmc and XBian and I've found XBian a little more stable.

I skipped Xbian and went straight to Darkelec2. At least it doesn't show an error in the audio section setup but still won't pass through HD AUdio

Successfully configured SMB to allow access via Windows 7 drive letter. There was talk that NFS is better - any comments - suggest any links to get it working to see if there is any speed difference?

Difficulty there might be in finding a way to setup a NFS server on Windows. I think there was Unix Services for Windows but it really only works now for Windows Server (that I can tell) and not for Windows 7/ But then apart from the significant pause at the beginning when playing a video (buffering?), SMB works fine for me over 100Mbs for streaming 1080P video.

Thanks for the info. The R Pi is replacing a Lynksys NSLU2 and an Xbox1 running XMBC - on both fronts it is winning hands down; speed (NSLU2 was so slow at file transfer), functionality (I now have a DLNA server for my smart TV's and a cost effective file server) and format support (original XMBC no longer supported and Xbox1 incapable of 1080p/MP4/MKV etc).

Cost me around $100 so far - I'm a very happy man :) Will be even happier when the case arrives.

Procrastination eventually pays off.

gzt

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#684535 11-Sep-2012 18:12

New board revision will be manufactured in UK. It's an amazing tribute, no serious issues occurring in the first revision.

http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1929

lchiu7

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#684613 11-Sep-2012 21:16

StarBlazer:

Thanks for the info. The R Pi is replacing a Lynksys NSLU2 and an Xbox1 running XMBC - on both fronts it is winning hands down; speed (NSLU2 was so slow at file transfer), functionality (I now have a DLNA server for my smart TV's and a cost effective file server) and format support (original XMBC no longer supported and Xbox1 incapable of 1080p/MP4/MKV etc).

Cost me around $100 so far - I'm a very happy man :) Will be even happier when the case arrives.

Well mine has cost me only the cost of the Pi. I had a SD card lying around, Logitech wireless USB keyboard and I just threw a case together based on this design.

https://imgur.com/a/AZIZN#0

To tell the truth it took me longer to make the case than to setup the Pi and that included two different XBMC distros and scanning all my content.

But it won't be replacing my main media players which are Popcorn Hours. They peform much faster, play much more content and have a snappier GUI. But for a fun exercise, the Pi is hard to beat.

For me to be prime time they need to

- support an IR remote (I think the MCE remote is supported) and be able to then use a Harmony remote
- pass through HD Audio (at the moment my experience is, DTS HD MA is passed through as DTS and TrueHD causes the Pi to hang). That might be solve by later XBMC releases
- snappier GUI. That could be hard given that there is a limited CPU speed and memory.

Staying in Wellington. Check out my AirBnB in the Wellington CBD. https://www.airbnb.co.nz/h/wellycbd PM me and mention GZ to get a 15% discount and no AirBnB charges.

rvangelder

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#684726 12-Sep-2012 08:53

I bought a Raspberry Pi with great expectations. Had thoughts about having fun configuring it and running Rasbian and unlocking all the great features. It actually got me pretty excited.
I even splashed out on a cool case!

It worked ok, but it wasn't straight-forward. I had heaps of problems getting an image onto my SDCard (Not the Pi's fault!).
Lots of fiddling and configuration. Once I did get it running, it ran well, but shutdown was a problem. I couldn't iron out the remaining problems, mainly because I had like a couple of hours per week and in the end I realised I'm not the at-home geek I once was. I just don't have the time *sigh*.

I've put my Raspberry on trademe. Maybe I'll break even.

reven

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#684741 12-Sep-2012 09:12

rvangelder: I bought a Raspberry Pi with great expectations. Had thoughts about having fun configuring it and running Rasbian and unlocking all the great features. It actually got me pretty excited.
I even splashed out on a cool case!

It worked ok, but it wasn't straight-forward. I had heaps of problems getting an image onto my SDCard (Not the Pi's fault!).
Lots of fiddling and configuration. Once I did get it running, it ran well, but shutdown was a problem. I couldn't iron out the remaining problems, mainly because I had like a couple of hours per week and in the end I realised I'm not the at-home geek I once was. I just don't have the time *sigh*.

I've put my Raspberry on trademe. Maybe I'll break even.

huh, download the installer for raspbmc, click "install" (one button install) plug SD into pi connected to network, turn pi on, walk away and come back 30mins later and you're done.

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