Raspberry Pi and XBMC/Android 4.0 ICS as media player?

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timmmay

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#106944 3-Aug-2012 09:35

So the Raspberry Pi can almost run Android 4, and XMBC has been ported to Android. Could this be the ideal low budget media player? I understand it can do 720p but 1080p is a bit much for it, which is fine for me.

Add a case, plug it in to power, ethernet, and HDMI, find some way to control it perhaps with a Harmony remote, no need for a big expensive power hungry PS3 any more?

reven

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#666728 3-Aug-2012 09:38

you would be better off just running xbmc on a debian based OS like openelec or raspbmc, would be faster.

xbmc on android is cooler for stuff like the mk802 or the upcoming ouya

timmmay

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#666735 3-Aug-2012 09:47

Good point, it may be faster. They're both effectively linux though, Android just has a nice interface that lets you play Angry Birds, surf the web with a nice interface, etc. I guess you can do that under the dedicated Rasbperry pi distribution.

What's mk802 and ouya?

reven

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#666750 3-Aug-2012 10:11

android is java running on top of linux, so you have some overhead there, but xbmc has only like 1 line of java code in it to run, so not sure how well it will perform on the pi.

ouya is a kickstarter project for a game console using android as its OS, made some press because how quickly it raised funds and all the records it broke (just google ouya), basically a USD$99 game console that you can officially hack to run custom software like xbmc.

mk802 is a usb key size android device, basically it has a usb port for keyboard/mouse and hdmi output, so just plug it into your tv like a usb stick and power it via usb and bam, you're running android on your tv.

timmmay

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#666785 3-Aug-2012 11:00

Is Android in Java, or does it just run Java programs? I've never looked into it.

Ouya sounds interesting, so does mk802. I'll look into them both when I have some spare time, thanks :)

reven

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#666794 3-Aug-2012 11:08

the OS for android is written in java (there will be some c++ though), and most apps i believe are written in java. however you can now write apps in c++ for android.

timmmay

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#666799 3-Aug-2012 11:19

I guess since it's based on Linux there's a lot of C/C++, with a UI or custom layer perhaps written in Java.