Raspberry Pi now available to be ordered in bulk

Lol. But all I really wanna do with it is run XBMC on it and use my iPad as a remote control for movies and music and stuff on my tv
 
a-person said:
Cool! Can you tell me a little bit more about your set up?
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Dude, it's a computer. It can run a ported version of XBMC (Raspbmc). There's not much in it otherwise. Just keep it away from really high quality mpeg because that little ARM processor simply doesn't have the grunt to decode it. .H264 it handles very well though.
 
Messugga said:
Dude, it's a computer. It can run a ported version of XBMC (Raspbmc). There's not much in it otherwise. Just keep it away from really high quality mpeg because that little ARM processor simply doesn't have the grunt to decode it. .H264 it handles very well though.
Click to expand...

Stream over network? HDD through USB? Windows vs Linux? Why is it 1080p capable if it can't handle the files?
 
a-person said:
Stream over network? HDD through USB? Windows vs Linux? Why is it 1080p capable if it can't handle the files?
Click to expand...

Stream over network: Yes

HDD through USB: Yes, but you'll have to power the drive with external power, so either 'n USB hub or an externally powered drive.

Windows vs Linux: It's ARM-based, which means it's neither X86 or X64, so no Windows. There are several Linux distributions for ARM, however.

1080P capable: First you need to define what "1080p capable" actually means. The unit is a System On a Chip (SOC for short). This means everything is contained in processor, including the GPU. They have hardware support for .H264 which is what most HD media content is anyway. Without the hardware support, the CPU will have to decode the video in software. If you have a 30GB AVI file, for example, even a fairly modern desktop machine will have to work hard to decode it in software. Once you enable hardware decoding in VLC, for example, it allows your GPU to do the decoding of the video, which it is obviously designed for. Due to the size of the chip on the Pi though, they can't have all the functionality a full-fledged desktop GPU will have integrated on the chip, so they only added the most critical support, which is .H264. It decodes .H264 files without trouble, but if you go for other formats you're going to start struggling.
 
Messugga said:
Just keep it away from really high quality mpeg because that little ARM processor simply doesn't have the grunt to decode it.
Click to expand...

The processor is a decent GPU with a ARM core cpu tagged into it. RPi foundation paid for licensing H264, but licensing mpeg would have added to the price - AFAIK Mpeg decode functionality is there in the GPU but is locked, therefore the ARM core will soft decode it.
 
Vis1/0N said:
The processor is a decent GPU with a ARM core cpu tagged into it. RPi foundation paid for licensing H264, but licensing mpeg would have added to the price - AFAIK Mpeg decode functionality is there in the GPU but is locked, therefore the ARM core will soft decode it.
Click to expand...

Cool stuff, thanks for the additional info.
 
a-person said:
Cool! Can you tell me a little bit more about your set up?
Click to expand...

It's a raspberry pi with a 16GB SD card in it, ethernet cable..and a HDMI cable :p
I control it via my android phone - so no keyboard nor mouse necessary. I can do some basic linux stuff by ssh'ing from my PC. :)
 
cbrunsdonza said:
No suprise, is their nothing you don't run XBMC on? I'm sure you even installed it on your Dishwasher ... ;)
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Dishwasher not yet connected to the LAN. At least not the mechanical one, the biological is fully integrated:) And I'm not done yet. Need to build another 2 composite video XBMC boxes for my centralized media players, to replace the current Netgear units. Was hoping to drop Raspberries in but they are not there yet in terms of usability.
 
xrapidx said:
How you finding the performance?
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A buddy of mine runs XBMC on his (Mine is acting as a headless server for downloading, remote access, etc). Anyway, he's fairly happy with it. The distro's are a tad buggy still but they're definitely getting there. It manages to play back a 30-something GB 1080P h.264 copy of Lord of the Rings without any issues.
 
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