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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."

5 of 177 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Excellent by SJHillman · · Score: 5, Funny

    No, I'm just happy to see you.

  2. Audio and video format support? by JDG1980 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. Re:x264 specs ain't everything by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    It's mouthwatering .. waiting is the hard part.. I want one in my car, at my desk, at work, everywhere. Do you think they'll sell these as a six pack? :)

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  4. Re:Excellent by Malard · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  5. Re:Excellent by Gaygirlie · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.