Raspberry PI Questions

[stustunz]

Thinking of buying one to have a play
A few questions

1. Does it play H264 1080 smooth?
2. Which model to buy or are they all the same?
3. Am i best to buy a pre loaded xbmc sd card with the device?

Feel free to add anything, comparisons to other media players etc

[lost@c]

I got 1 of these about 6 months to play with and have been reasonably impressed. I have the "B" model which I think is the latest. I am running it with the raspbmc image from the xbmc.org site and the Nextpvr plugin connected to my main Nextpvr HTPC.

1. Does it play H264 1080 smooth?. Yes it does.
2. Which model to buy or are they all the same? I think there is just 1 model but I'm not sure
3. Am i best to buy a pre loaded xbmc sd card with the device? As above, get the image from XBMC.
I also got the "NOOBS" image from Raspberry Pi which has various things on it including Raspbmc and Openlec. I think the Raspbmc 1 works the best.

2 things have worked out well for me with this. Firstly as raspbmc has built in CEC, my TV remote drives XBMC really well with no additional mapping required. Secondly I have been able power it from the USB connection on the TV meaning that apart from the network connection it’s pretty well self contained and is stuck with foam tape to the back of the TV. Indecently I tried it with wifi but found it too sluggish on my network. (Perhaps a power line product would be an option).
Startup from cold is about 30 seconds
The interface is quite responsive.
It takes about 10 seconds for an HD movie to start but once going it skips and rewinds pretty quickly
All in all, an OK experience and great vale for money

[JavaWiz]

I have a B and a B+ (newest model). I use the OpenELEC distribution for XBMC and PVR Client to interface with NextPVR


1. Does it play H264 1080 smooth?
Yes, very pleased with the playback of recordings, live TV works well also, however Live HD channels do get stalls over Wi-Fi.

2. Which model to buy or are they all the same?
The B+ is the most current model, very similar to the B, but with 4 USB ports, micro-SD (rather than standard size SD). This link describes all the differences.

3. Am i best to buy a pre loaded xbmc sd card with the device?
I've bought bundles with a NOOBs SD included (latest purchase), however, it's not required, lots of info on how to create your own.... (PM me if you have questions...)

[stustunz]

Thanks heaps guys just all sounds to good to be true, they are so cheap. I will order one and see how I go.

[stustunz]

Does it need the heatsink kit ?

[lost@c]

Mine is stood off on a small piece of perspex which is foam taped to the back of the TV and it only gets warm. I think if you had it in an enclosed box you may need something but in free air it seems fine

[stustunz]

Are you using x-newa (makes it look like nextpvr)?

[jcjefferies]

My son bought the MPEG decoder license which I think is needed to use hardware decoding. He is using OpenELEC but I am far from certain about under what circumstances the decoder is used!

Chris

[mvallevand]

To me the RPi is kind of like using the lowest end PC you can imagine with a reasonable h/w accelerated video card. Almost everything works just slower than then I'd like. Not just just CPU, memory, network etc are all bottlenecks. You also need to consider how you want to control it, I've bought a few mine USB keyboards that I use for most devices. Installing an IR receiver isn't hard but you have to be a hobbyist so if that if fun for you it can be rewarding. For NextPVR recording that aren't h264 you will need the mpeg2 decoder.

Martin

[mvallevand]

Are you using x-newa (makes it look like nextpvr)?

I made this video of x-newa web client on the RPi https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=UUeUa...sFwLvdao_o last year. It show 1080i and 720p

Martin