Raspberry Pi - the easiest and most affordable htpc solution

[Shephard]

Why do we need to post video to justify our own experience and satisfaction of the Pi to you? We stated over and over, if you prefer a full PC and the cost + power consumption behind that, do it and exit this thread.

Otherwise, you can watch all the youtube videos you want. For every one youtube video you find that bashes the Pi, there will be another who raves about it. It all boils down to what you expect out of it vs. what you pay for it. It's been stated a thousand times, it is NOT as powerful as a full PC. It doesn't have the features of a full PC. Can it handle video and such well? Yes. Does it do it for less than a full PC? Probably.

If you buy a 10 speed bike expecting to go drag racing and win, you will inevitably be disappointed with your results.

I have not watched a single negative video on the raspberry pi. The last one I watched was with a guy setting one up. I also watched a 30 minute one with Leo Laporte.

 

[wirednuts]

I think where you can question the pi's place is when you compare it to an android phone. Especially now that XBMC is on android.

But HDMI out from android phones is not nearly as robust as the pi's. The sound from cellphones isn't as good (you can hear it, even flacs sound like 128kbs mp3's).. maybe the newest $600 phones sound good I dunno but that's besides the point.

USB is still rocky on android. trying to connect a harddrive isn't as seamless as it is with the pi.

then, to top it off, its just plain easier to modify the pi's software. its just Linux, nothing is really more then a wiki search and a command line away then, when it comes time to save everything, just copy the sd card. with an android phone, its not quite as straightforward.

 

[Gillbot]

The point being, you have no 1st hand info. While there may be many reports of people "complaining", many more might be very well satisfied and don't bother to comment.

 

[Shephard]

I am going to order a Model B and post my experiences here.

I assume there is no newer model coming out anytime soon? Enough demand for Model B.

 

[SolMiester]

Hi all, I have Pi...!

My first attempt didnt go down very well with the wife though!..LOL. We have since bought a new TV with its own media player so that is hard wired to the network.

The reason I thought the first attempt wasnt the best, was of course cosmetics, even in the TV cabinet, it was a bit of a mess, and the browsing around the media was quite slow, though not sure if that was due to the little D-Link 323 NAS no really being up to the streaming and disk access or just the slow device.

I now have the old plasma in the garage (Wahoo), and I have scored a decommissioned ML350 G5 from work, so will put Plex on one of the server VMs to serve up the media. Apparently you can get a Plex plugin for XBMC, so I will try the Pi in the garage connected to the TV and see how we go....I must admit, I felt a little deflated after the first effort, however with a gigabyte network and decent server perhaps it will work out..

 

[wirednuts]

see that's where people get confused... its not ready for wife time yet. the hardware has been around for less then a year, so I was actually excited to see how well it has progressed in such a short time.

I just found more options in the aeon nox skin! holy crap! it can do picture shows for the music visualization! just like I wanted. I can pull the pics off dlna from my server. I also turned on the lyric generator, but so far im not seeing any lyrics.

another option I saw was to have music videos play as the visualization. I tried it but I don't know if I have to set something else up to get it to work..

 

[tential]

it does show its weakness at 1080p. but you might have a slow sd card too because mine does any 1080 movie i have without skipping. but i agree the menus are a bit slow at that resolution.

i am running mine at 1024x768 right now, and a DVI 19" monitor. its pretty much lag free at this resolution. very fast.

in my eyes, for $45 shipped there is nothing like it. dont complain that you need a tv to run this. because you dont. and if you need to run 1080p at uber speed then you have enough money to buy a better computer.

Maybe I'm a little lost or somethig but you're running yours at 1024x768. What about anyone who is running it at full 1080p resolution? How does 1080p video run then? From everyone over at avsforum, the general consensus was not good enough, hence why I haven't looked at Raspberry pi. When running at full 1080p resolution (At least I thought they were running at it I don't even know what resolution Raspberry pi goes to), they said that only 720p videos were achievable.

I really have no need to run 1080p video at 1024x768 and would never run that resolution in a theater setup. My 70 inch tv would look horrific at such resolutions so I would prefer to know how it works when connected to a HDTV and run at full 1080p resolution. This is the HOME THEATER, pc section so if anyone knows how it performs in a theater setup that'd be great!

I don't understand all the hate in the threat, if a 50 dollar device can truly run XBMC at 1080p resolution, that's like christmas for so many people.

Edit: Rereading, people who have been outputting at 1080p simply say using passthrough and letting their AVR decode works. Since I have an AVR this isn't a problem, but not every TV has this capability so meh meh?

 

[Shephard]

Yeah 1024x768 is ages ago. I would say most people have a 1080p computer monitor since that's what is popular and cheap. Most TV's are 1080p, some real cheap ones are 720p.

1080p streaming to 1080p resolution is way more taxing than 1024x768.

 

[wirednuts]

I use it on my tv too at 1080.

I also overclock mine to 900mhz, which does help a LOT with menu speed.

but really, I haven't used mine for video. just playing my 100gb's of music, or streaming online radio... and I run it headless.

video would be fine for me if I could get live tv working. I haven't got the hardware for that yet, so making movies work just isn't a priority. I would imagine I wouldn't have problems though, because all of my blurays are compressed to 6GB or less files.

 

[ericlp]

Yeah, I thought about getting one for the very least one could use it for bit torrenting in the wee hours instead of leaving your expensive computer on all night sucking down 100 watts... Just let Pi do it @ 1 watt.

I decided to get a tablet (nexsus 7) but it's not designed to run 24 hours. I still give the tablet a few chores to do... But I don't use all that much. I dunno... Is there any software to remote into a Pi?

I also own a E350 on my laptop. I don't use that as well. My problem is I don't need another box I don't use... Just built a new PC. Tho, if I could figure out a way to ONLY use the PC for games and internet surfing and what not left up to devices that only used 1 watt would be awesome! I suppose I should bite the bullet and check it out.

It's amazing that there are tons of these USB computers popping up all over on the net. Maybe if I could install DDRW to replace my router with the same performance than I'd be all over it! A router with a built in HDMI ports! Soon I think.

 

[SPBHM]

can the raspberry pi run splashtop ("remote desktop" software which I think works with h.264 video and runs pretty well even for videos and gaming, at least here from PC to PC)?