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XBMC Running On Raspberry Pi
jones_supa writes "The Raspberry Pi Foundation has a news release about Raspberry Pi running XBMC smoothly, turning the board into a media center the size of deck of cards. Looking at Pi's low price, small size and hardware 1080p support, this could make an interesting HTPC project. Included is a video demonstration of the setup. For this to be possible, the XBMC team created a customized version that targets the beefier Raspberry Pi model."
The big news is that the GPU on the Raspberry Pi doubles the performance the iPhone 4S -- on a board that costs a fraction of the iPhone. Now that's impressive.
No, I'm just happy to see you.
That is pretty cool. .mkv containers usually). .mov files and I don't know how much decoding is required for playing back those files. All I know is, .mov files tend to be really big. .mov beforehand?
I have a HTPC that does that for 10x the price. But even my box needs to use gpu hardware (an Ion2) to play back 720p h264 files fluently (those come in
This demo shows
So will the Raspberry be able to play common file formats, or will you have to encode everything in
while the specs for decoding video are AWESOME (especially for the price point), what I continually point out to people is that the low CPU can still kill you on some things. I have an NVIDIA ION / Atom D330 HTPC that can destroy the 40Mbps x264 killasample absolutely no problem, yet has trouble on some of the even medium-flashy skins for XBMC.
like i said, performance/dollar this thing is still awesome, but you do still have to think of the whole package.
I know that the Raspberry Pi is specifically advertised as supporting hardware decoding of H.264 up to 1080p30 at up to 40 Mbps. What I want to know is if it also supports VC-1 and MPEG-2 decoding at the same resolutions and data rates. I know that the underlying SoC has this capability, but will it be blocked or omitted from the SDK for licensing/patent reasons? Any of these three codecs can be found on Blu-Rays, and transcoding the rips to H.264 would reduce the quality.
Also, what about bitstreaming the HD audio codecs (Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD MA) over HDMI 1.3? I know Raspberry Pi didn't want to pay for audio decoding licenses, but simply sending the raw bitstream to a receiver over the HDMI link shouldn't present any licensing issues (and is the best quality method to use anyway).
For the Raspberry Pi to be a good media streamer, it needs to be able to do these things.
What's more, we're working on getting libCEC to support the built in CEC support so you won't need the USB - CEC Adapter to get built in remote control support!
XBMC | Pulse-Eight
You do know that they're shipping the things with Debian? You have an X Server, and SSH out of the box, and if you'd rather set it up as a thin client using XDMCP to log in to another system, set up your login screen to do it.
The plus side being that Raspberry Pi costs only $25... If you already have an external drive with media on it, then it's a bargain.
My suspicion is that its power consumption will also be quite low, which is a big plus these days. Looks like it'd suit me fine, I'm not an intense media consumer, so high-performance HTPC isn't especially something that I need.
FWIW, I suspect a large part of doing this is just because you can. To demonstrate that you don't need the latest and greatest (read: most expensive) hardware to do your basic things.
One thing I know, and that is that I am ignorant...
Its credit card sized.
I can't find the post now, but I saw a post by an admin on the board that the GPU supports H.264 1080p30 HP encoding as well, but they aren't advertising it due to not exposing the interface or something, but they do have plans to do so in the future.
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
You're mixing things: the video plays at full speed, it's the window below it that has 8 fps. Ie. It's as it should be.
Recording HD or even SD video can put a strain on a chip and the Raspberry was made to be low priced not high powered. But I have a feeling once you added all the stuff required to make it a fully functional HTPC you'd be better off just getting one the the AMD E-350s and calling it a day.
Recording HD or even SD video hardly puts any strain on a chip, since you would be foolish to record anything that didn't come pre-compressed, either from a digital tuner, or analog encoder. All the chip has to do is shuffle bits from the capture subsystem to the storage subsystem. The question then becomes one of whether the performance of a late-90s PC is sufficient for your metadata needs, running the database, processing guide data, performing scheduling decisions, post-recording analysis of the video, etc...
If you're actually looking for a fully functional HTPC, you're better off getting real hardware, and not some intentionally underpowered system. Electricity is cheap, modern chips idle very efficiently, and it's not like you can't just put the thing in standby or power it off if you're that concerned. Having some real meat behind your HTPC just opens up a bunch of new possibilities, and opportunity for expansion.
Because the storage devices are centralized, at least in my case with a media server in the basement.
The TVs and sound systems in each bedroom are NOT thousands of dollars. You can get 40" 1080p systems for around $300 now. Cheaper if you can deal with 720p.
Now, for under $50 (includes case, power supply, etc.) I can pop a box on the back of the TV to access everything I have centrally stored (400+ movies, 200+ TV episodes, 100+ short animations, 1,000+ music/audio) in each room. And if their Hulu and Amazon Prime plug-ins for XMBC work as well, get all that.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
No, it's credit card sized. How many times do you need to be told?
http://www.raspberrypi.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Picture-001-copy.jpg
(ignore the border - that's removed after manufacture).
Ummm, that's just the PCB. The finished Pi has connectors sticking out from all sides. Some of them are about 1cm long. Here's picture proof.
No sig today...
because you don't need to.
Reason I'm excited about Raspberry Pi, is that it's designed as a learning tool. I want to play, tinker, blah blah.
Reason I find XMBC on RP exciting, is that this is something I could 'theoretically' make. Now I know full well I don't stand a chance, but definitely provides some inspiration.
The really interesting thing, is that with the hardware price so low, it suddenly means you could make a physical product based upon their hardware, your software and sell it for a reasonable price. Consider how 'app-stores' suddenly allowed so many people to be produce and distribute to a large market. Limitation there, is that every one of your customers has had to fork over a large pile of cash for their hardware. I can quite easily see how I might buy a stack of RP's and just swap a dedicated app between them. XMBC for my TVs. One plugged into a drive as the NAS. Few hosting commodity webcams to make them IP enabled etc
Then the Raspberry Pi is not the ideal HTPC box for your needs?
How is that better than renting a VM?
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Do note that XBMC does NOT support ordered Chapters. I've asked for it but apparently ffmpeg needs to update to support it and they (ffmpeg) refuse for "security reasons"?! I want it so I can rip BD that have multiple cuts and create just one vid but cannot currently get XBMC to allow me to select "tracks". Likewise XBMC won't do MKV menus so far as I know - not that I know how to make them lol.
I happen to use XBMC on Atom\ION hardware. Under $300, full blown Linux installs, plays anything I throw at it (many of my movies hit 11meg bitrates), and I draw no more than 25watts at full tilt. I can mount my ION systems to the back of my TV if I wish, some of them even came with mounts for that purpose (Zotac).
The Raspberry pi on the other hand draws a whopping 2 watts though so it's even better but it sounds like other codec than H.264 could be a problem, I'd like to see a longer demo with higher bitrate video too - say "killa' sample" for instance. Yeah it's a crappy clip but if it can play that it's doing pretty good :-)
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