experience with pi

[reven]

when the ouya comes out ill be giving that a go, as long as that has a good remote option (hopefully the motorola nxyboard remote works with it) that will probably be used as my main client in the lounge with the pis in bedrooms.

i like not having a full operating system underneath it which needs to load up and run, thats why openelec on a htpc is really good, it boots really fast, install from a usb thumb drive in like 10 seconds (xbmcbuntu takes around 10minutes, windows about 30minutes). but every small/thin htpc ive seen have large power adapters/bricks you cant easily hide away (the newer mac minis have it built in, and just a small power cord, but expensive compared to pis etc and cant run openelec or similar on it, also remote support is pretty meh).

[jksmurf]

Thanks for the replies folks - there are some nice "what works well" items being raised. Is it primarily a client device - could it replace the NMT e.g.?
Moving onto reven's first post though and acknowledging the device is "very early doors", http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php...ce-with-pi "what doesnt work well" seems to be quite a list.
I assume some of these will be surmountable, but channel changing is sticky.
By the time you add on the extra bits, codecs, Remotes, USB Disk, is it close to a the PCH e.g. ?

[dgeezer]

It is a client device only. I am not sure if it will ever be able to replace the NMT. The menus are kinda slow, but fully functional.

Cost wise it really depends on what you have lying around already. I had a 1 amp charger from an old cell phone and an mce remote and dongle from one of my pc's so the only additional purchase that I made was an 8gb SD card for $14.00 US. Therefore my total cost withe shipping was about $55.00. I recently had a jailbroken apple tv running xbmc and the pi seems at least as capable if not a little better. I sold the Apple TV on ebay for $225.00 so I'm ahead money wise....

If you had to buy all the bits and pieces then the Pivos XIOS at $114.00 starts to look like a real contender. You get a faster processor, a remote, power supply and a case.

I didn't buy the raspberry pi with the intention of using it with npvr. I originally bought the pi to stream music to my patio. My plan was to attach it, maybe install it inside of, a 20 year old Pioneer stereo amp, run it headless, and control playback using the android XBMC app. The apple tv didn't have analogue audio outputs so it wouldn't work with the amp. Just about the time I received the pi sub introduced his xbmc plugin and I've been playing around with it ever since.....

[reven]

the menus have greatly improved with raspbmc, original with rc1 they were a bit slow especially movies took a long time to load (i have about 400 movies in my collection, so not huuuge but still big) it use to take around 40 seconds to load. with the latest rc5 and a newer xbmc build (im running 20121015 or so) it takes about 3-5 seconds to load the movies item. so still not as fast as dedicated machine (which takes like 1 second or less) but perfectly usable now.

my only real issues left are
- HD tv channels still not work
- Locks up at times and requires a reboot (either via ssh into it or pulling the plug, want to assign a button on my remote to issue a reboot command, or get and external reboot button, if the pi is behind a tv, will be hard to reboot). this isnt often, but does happen if you open a certain addon (hulu at the moment freezes it) or just at random times. usually about every 3 or so days i need to reboot it.
- DTS still stutters (it was working well at one stage, updating xbmc i think broke it again, so i know it can work and will in the final, and hopefully sooner)

i also found it doesnt play some divx movies, which i suspect are divx3 which isnt too surprising, as thats a problematic codec (just some old cartoons i have lying around that i tried playing for my kid)

SD tv playback with npvr is really quite good now, and converting my ts files to 1080 mkvs work well, it just doesnt like the 1080 ts files.

[bigbus01]

Interesting issue with which TV I connect my Raspberry Pi to. I have an older Samsung TV (5 years old, LCD 40") with HDMI. The Pi plays everything flawlessly.

When I connect it to my new Samsung TV (LCD 40"), 1080i and 720p files play extremely choppy. When the Pi is connected to this TV, I get two XBMC "input" sources showing up on the TV. The Pi must be busy serving somehow so the video is choppy.

[mvallevand]

Since this is an "experience" thread, Element4 phone today to say they had credited me the shipping for the RPi case, and given me a 15% credit on my next order. The real store is my wife took the message and phoned me confused, over why I ordered raspberry pie online from the US.

Maritn

[boy914]

I received my RPi a few days ago, thankfully the 512MB version. I installed a recent (10/31 or so) OpenElec build, hooked it all up, and was pleasantly surprised to see the NPVR add-on in the list of PVR Add-ons. It connected to my NPVR server and I can see the channel list. Unfortunately, none of them play.

Questions:
1. Looking through this thread, it looks like I'll need to buy the MPEG-2 codec for my RPi if I want to watch HD channels, right? Anything else I'll need?
2. Is there a good reason to go with OpenElec vs RASPBMC? I went with OpenElec basically after flipping a coin, but it looks like most people here are using RASPBMC. Does the add-on function differently?
3. For other users of OpenElec: what's the best way to keep it on the latest builds without losing config?

I have two Windows PCs running Eden right now, so this RPi is my first attempt to work with Frodo and the new PVR features. I hope to dig into it more this weekend.

Thanks!
-Rick

Update 11/7/2012:

A few more days with the RPi, and I have some answers to my questions:
1. Bought the MPEG-2 codec, and with a few tweaks on the NPVR server side (latest patches, NEWA VLC streaming config for 64-bit), Live TV works GREAT in OpenElec. No problems with any channels, including HD. Wife and 5-year-old friendly.
2. I'm going to stick with OpenElec for now, and get a new SD card to try out Raspbmc when I have the time. So far I haven't hit anything in OpenElec that doesn't work, using the r12350 build (11/1/2012).
3. Unfortunately updating OpenElec is manual for now, until they implement the automatic updating feature in the RPi nightlies. Thankfully, the manual process is really simple: copy 4 files to a SMB share on the RPi, reboot.

[BrainStormer]

I Use Raspbmc. It feels a bit faster. especially the latest test build which can push the interface to ~70fps. The RaspBMC Settings script make it easy to load the nightlies as well..

[aceofclubs]

Hi all sorry to dig up this thread but maybe someone can steer me in the right direction here.

Using 512 raspberry pi running raspbmc latest release. USB installation and wifi setup.

Been having a problem with live tv via nevtpvr. While everything appears to be starting and streaming nicely after around 30 minutes my pi locks up requiring a reset.

Playing/streaming any recording is perfectly ok with no stuttering or dramas.

-----------------> start xbmc.old.log
17:54:46 T:2783966272 NOTICE: Thread COMXPlayer start, auto delete: false
17:54:46 T:2783966272 NOTICE: OMXClock using video as reference
17:54:46 T:2783966272 NOTICE: Creating InputStream
17:54:48 T:2783966272 NOTICE: OMXClock using video as reference
17:54:48 T:2783966272 NOTICE: Creating Demuxer
17:54:54 T:2783966272 NOTICE: Opening video stream: 0 source: 256
17:54:54 T:2783966272 NOTICE: OMXClock using video as reference
17:54:54 T:2783966272 NOTICE: Creating video thread
17:54:54 T:2775577664 NOTICE: Thread COMXPlayerVideo start, auto delete: false
17:54:54 T:2783966272 NOTICE: Opening audio stream: 1 source: 256
17:54:54 T:2783966272 NOTICE: Creating audio thread
17:54:54 T:2750411840 NOTICE: Thread COMXPlayerAudio start, auto delete: false
17:54:54 T:2783966272 NOTICE: Opening Subtitle stream: 2 source: 256
17:54:54 T:2783966272 ERROR: OpenStream - Unable to init overlay codec
17:54:54 T:2783966272 WARNING: OpenSubtitleStream - Unsupported stream 2. Stream
disabled.
17:54:54 T:2783966272 NOTICE: OMXClock using video as reference
17:54:54 T:2775577664 NOTICE: Display resolution DESKTOP : 720x480 @ 60.00i - F
ull Screen (16)
17:54:55 T:2750411840 NOTICE: OMXClock using video as reference
17:54:55 T:2750411840 NOTICE: OMXClock using audio as reference
17:54:55 T:3041686144 NOTICE: Using GL_TEXTURE_2D
17:54:55 T:3041686144 NOTICE: GL: Using BYPASS render method
17:54:55 T:3041686144 NOTICE: GL: GL_ARB_texture_rectangle not supported and Op
enGL version is not 2.x
17:54:55 T:3041686144 NOTICE: GL: Reverting to POT textures
17:55:38 T:3041686144 NOTICE: NFS is idle. Closing the remaining connections.
17:58:54 T:2946933824 ERROR: AddOnLog: NextPVR PVR Client: Socket::receive: (e
rrno=104) ECONNRESET: Connection reset by peer
18:10:02 T:2775577664 WARNING: CRenderManager::FlipPage - timeout waiting for fl
ip to complete

---------------------> end log snippet

This is all I could get from the logs.

Im using HaneWin NFS and was wondering if the pi is having NFS prolems or SMB problems connecting to my win7 server?? Not really sure how NextPVR streams to the PVR client.

[aceofclubs]

More recent log from xbmc.log when it happened again. Was working for about and hour and a half before it died but this time it froze and I was able to press the stop button to recover from it.

22:14:32 T:2709517376 NOTICE: Opening audio stream: 1 source: 256
22:14:33 T:2692383808 NOTICE: Previous line repeats 1 times.
22:14:33 T:2692383808 NOTICE: OMXClock using video as reference
22:14:33 T:2692383808 NOTICE: OMXClock using audio as reference
22:14:33 T:2692383808 ERROR: COMXCoreComponent::SetParameter - OMX.broadcom.au
dio_mixer failed with omx_err(0x80001005)
22:14:33 T:2692383808 ERROR: COMXAudio::AddPackets error SetParameter 1 input
omx_err(0x80001005)
22:14:33 T:2988950592 ERROR: COMXCoreComponent:ecoderEventHandler OMX.broadc
om.audio_mixer - OMX_ErrorPortUnpopulated port 0, cannot parse input stream
22:14:33 T:2692383808 NOTICE: OMXClock using video as reference
22:14:33 T:2692383808 NOTICE: OMXClock using audio as reference
22:14:43 T:2709517376 NOTICE: COMXPlayer::OnExit()
22:14:43 T:2709517376 NOTICE: OMXPlayer: closing audio stream
22:14:43 T:2709517376 NOTICE: Closing audio stream
22:14:43 T:2692383808 NOTICE: thread end: OMXPlayerAudio::OnExit()
22:14:43 T:2988950592 ERROR: COMXCoreComponent:ecoderEventHandler OMX.broadc
om.audio_mixer - OMX_ErrorPortUnpopulated port 0, cannot parse input stream
22:14:43 T:2709517376 NOTICE: OMXClock using video as reference
22:14:43 T:2709517376 NOTICE: OMXPlayer: closing video stream
22:14:43 T:2709517376 NOTICE: Closing video stream
22:14:43 T:2700772416 NOTICE: thread end: video_thread
22:14:43 T:2709517376 NOTICE: OMXClock using video as reference
22:14:43 T:2709517376 NOTICE: COMXPlayer::OnExit() deleting demuxer
22:14:43 T:2709517376 NOTICE: COMXPlayer::OnExit() deleting input stream

The only other errors in the log are to do with epg repeated for each chanel.

22:19:05 T:2782917696 WARNING: EPG - UpdateFromScraper - channel not found, can
t update
22:19:05 T:2782917696 ERROR: EPG - Update - failed to update table 'ABC1'