512MB Raspberry Pi Project Board Model B for $35

I have a Dell Zino dual core (thanks to SD) dedicated for xbmc. I also have another WDTV SMP I got last year. I was tired with booting up Dell Zino with standard windows. I was also tired with thumbgen for jukebox support in WDTV SMP. I preferred xbmc over the wdtv interface. Yes I could have gotten a XIOS and call it a day. But I was intrigued with raspberry pi. Ordered it from MCM with the clear case. Received it within 3-4 days. Today I installed raspbmc. It scraped my media collection. Agreed I dont have any blu-ray rip. But I have lots of 720p videos. The scraping is nice. Video plays smooth as butter over SMB and its bit streaming DD/DTS to my receiver. Some day I will set up a NAS to host my video collection. For now its SMB. The only issue I am seeing so far is while at overlay, it chokes, so FF/RW are going to suck. This is the stock raspbmc kernel, without any overclocking though. I am now planning to buy the MPEG2/VC1 license as well.

Quote from bubun76 : I have a Dell Zino dual core (thanks to SD) dedicated for xbmc. I also have another WDTV SMP I got last year. I was tired with booting up Dell Zino with standard windows. I was also tired with thumbgen for jukebox support in WDTV SMP. I preferred xbmc over the wdtv interface. Yes I could have gotten a XIOS and call it a day. But I was intrigued with raspberry pi. Ordered it from MCM with the clear case. Received it within 3-4 days. Today I installed raspbmc. It scraped my media collection. Agreed I dont have any blu-ray rip. But I have lots of 720p videos. The scraping is nice. Video plays smooth as butter over SMB and its bit streaming DD/DTS to my receiver. Some day I will set up a NAS to host my video collection. For now its SMB. The only issue I am seeing so far is while at overlay, it chokes, so FF/RW are going to suck. This is the stock raspbmc kernel, without any overclocking though. I am now planning to buy the MPEG2/VC1 license as well.

if you are tired of the overhead of windows... get rid of windows!

I like the Raspberry Pi. I've got two of them; however, at $35 + ~$10 shipping, you are fast approaching the Chinese TV stick pricing. The chinese TV sticks (ie. MK808B [geekbuying.com]) are about $47 come with built in wifi & bluetooth and dual core A9 processors + 1G of RAM & 8GB of Flash and are literally 10x faster than the raspberry pi. You can pick up the even cheaper MK802 (single core A8 @ 1.5Ghz) for around $35 shipped and throw linux on it and still be 5x faster than the Raspberry Pi. If you are running a server and don't mind WiFi, then the MK802 or 808 series will literally blow the Raspberry Pi out of the water in terms of performance.

If you need a fast GPU and/or need GPIO, then better stick with the Raspberry Pi, as Linux on the Chinese TV Sticks has no GPU acceleration.

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Quote from gururise : If you need a fast GPU and/or need GPIO, then better stick with the Raspberry Pi, as Linux on the Chinese TV Sticks has no GPU acceleration.

There you said it loud and clear.. all these MK802 have zero HW acceleration for H.264 or any other video. I am not interested in android. You can see how android is faring in media playback if you look at Vizio co-star. Plus, you will be stuck with stereo sound (AFAIK, andorid doesnt have bit streaming because codec licensing issues) with your MK802 hardware. Also the linux route is slowly getting closed for Gbox like hardware, because Pivos has become smart enough to encrypt their xios firmware, so gbox owner will be stuck with the old version. Yes.. those boxes are good for playing some android games. As of me, I am thinking of getting one more to employ it as ultra low power NAS.

Quote from bubun76 : I have a Dell Zino dual core (thanks to SD) dedicated for xbmc. I also have another WDTV SMP I got last year. I was tired with booting up Dell Zino with standard windows. I was also tired with thumbgen for jukebox support in WDTV SMP. I preferred xbmc over the wdtv interface. Yes I could have gotten a XIOS and call it a day. But I was intrigued with raspberry pi. Ordered it from MCM with the clear case. Received it within 3-4 days. Today I installed raspbmc. It scraped my media collection. Agreed I dont have any blu-ray rip. But I have lots of 720p videos. The scraping is nice. Video plays smooth as butter over SMB and its bit streaming DD/DTS to my receiver. Some day I will set up a NAS to host my video collection. For now its SMB. The only issue I am seeing so far is while at overlay, it chokes, so FF/RW are going to suck. This is the stock raspbmc kernel, without any overclocking though. I am now planning to buy the MPEG2/VC1 license as well.

I feel you..
I went from Win 7 on a desktop to an Android stick which worked ok for SD and some streaming light streaming...
I really did not expect the Pi to work better than the stick, but it just blows its doors off.
Plugged in a IR cheap remote and it worked with no setup...
I did try Xbian, but it kept crashing but Raspbmc works without a hitch.

I fixed the slowness I mentioned ealier with overlay, when I switched the output resolution from 1080p to 720p within xbmc settings. Now no more slowness wheile doing FF/RW or overlay operations with some compromise. If anybody wants full 1080p, they should avoid the overlay feature within xbmc (small compromise) with the 512MB model 'B'.

What kind of gpu does the rp have, I want to know more about the hardware acceleration and performance you guys get in xbmc vs these android sticks. Some of the sticks coming out now are quad core with even quad gpu's, and they must support at least the same or better hardware video acceleration I have on my android phone which is stuck at gingerbread. Android does in fact have hardware acceleration, contrary to what someone said earlier, but not all file types are supported. I have a dual core 1ghz with tegra2, and unfortunately it doesn't have the muscle I need to decode most of my stuff smoothly with hw acceleration, most of my file types aren't hw supported and I'm not about to re-rip everything or transcode.

Someone else said they were looking at this for a low power NAS... The currently $15 pogoplug is a better option. Cheaper, simlar or better cpu, everything included case and power supply, cables, and runs linux too. I just received mine the other day and now have archlinux and samba on it for $15 all inclusive. Pretty sweet, works good. Who woulda thunk it, a $15 server that eats 3w at full load.

I'm ready for my next project, the best frontent be it android stick or rp I don't care but I do want a low power solution. I really like not having to have my xeon quad burning 300 plus watts going just to view some video files and no noise, no fans, no big boxes, no worries about leaving them on 24/7.

Quote from MyBallsItch : What kind of gpu does the rp have... Some of the sticks coming out now are quad core with even quad gpu's, and they must support at least the same or better hardware video acceleration I have on my android phone... Android does in fact have hardware acceleration... I have a dual core 1ghz with tegra2, and unfortunately it doesn't have the muscle I need...

These aren't the droids you're looking for.

Quote from gigaboom : These aren't the droids you're looking for.

Duh... I never said they were. They are both competing to be my next frontend device, either can run linux, I don't care what they run all I care about is which plays back my videos better.

Video's I have on the archlinuxarm/samba/slickbeard server I just set up.

Quote from MyBallsItch : Duh... I never said they were. They are both competing to be my next frontend device, either can run linux, I don't care what they run all I care about is which plays back my videos better. Video's I have on the archlinuxarm/samba/slickbeard server I just set up.

Android xbmc hw acceleration current state http://www.armtvtech.com/armtvtec...f=6&t=1529
Video decoding requires brute horsepower, adding more cores doesn't solve the issue. This is why gpu helps a lot in this aspect. The pi gpu is a videocore gpu, totally different from all droid hw.
Btw, I was surprised that my Samsung anynet(aka hdmi CEC) enabled tv can control the pi even though, the pi is connected via HK AVR 1700. So bye bye Lenovo wireless keyboard and mouse. I am now controlling the xbmc via the Logitech harmony now.. This is beyond my expectation. For android, even though, they might add hw acceleration in the future... bit streaming multichannel audio is never gonna happen because of codec licensing cost.

Quote from bubun76 : Android xbmc hw acceleration current state http://www.armtvtech.com/armtvtec...f=6&t=1529 Video decoding requires brute horsepower, adding more cores doesn't solve the issue. This is why gpu helps a lot in this aspect. The pi gpu is a videocore gpu, totally different from all droid hw. Btw, I was surprised that my Samsung anynet(aka hdmi CEC) enabled tv can control the pi even though, the pi is connected via HK AVR 1700. So bye bye Lenovo wireless keyboard and mouse. I am now controlling the xbmc via the Logitech harmony now.. This is beyond my expectation. For android, even though, they might add hw acceleration in the future... bit streaming multichannel audio is never gonna happen because of codec licensing cost.

Thanks. Found a link there for xbmc that worked on my phone and gave it a go...
Looks good, but i was limited to the version which uses xmplayer because of tegra2. I already use mx and already know it's limitations.

I disagree completely about android never getting bitstreaming audio though. It's the most popular "linux" variant ever and only gaining ground. When there is enough lmarket desire for more features they will come either via official or hacker builds.
It's a matter of time. You may not like android but like it or not it's the market leader now. I really like it limitations and all, and give it tiime, those limitations will go away. Imagine what we'll have in a decade, i see android consuming windows and other competition because its just ideal for the average person including work or play.

Already there are features in android the unix community is adopting for mainstream linux, so it's also leading development for the linux flavor you enjoy.

We're all on the same team, and same track.

Quote from MyBallsItch : Thanks. Found a link there for xbmc that worked on my phone and gave it a go... Looks good, but i was limited to the version which uses xmplayer because of tegra2. I already use mx and already know it's limitations. I disagree completely about android never getting bitstreaming audio though. It's the most popular "linux" variant ever and only gaining ground. When there is enough lmarket desire for more features they will come either via official or hacker builds. It's a matter of time. You may not like android but like it or not it's the market leader now. I really like it limitations and all, and give it tiime, those limitations will go away. Imagine what we'll have in a decade, i see android consuming windows and other competition because its just ideal for the average person including work or play. Already there are features in android the unix community is adopting for mainstream linux, so it's also leading development for the linux flavor you enjoy. We're all on the same team, and same track.

I want android to succeed too. I am also heavily invested in android, and my main phone is a Galaxy S3. However for HD video/audio playing in a home network environment, its lagging in comparison to main stream linux. I went back with your suggestions on pogoplug and ordered an E02 grey. Hopefully, it will be able to serve all my media 24x7. Whatever research I did, seems to me that pogoplug is superior to pi, because USB data bus dedicated in pogoplug, whereas in pi its shared between network.