Raspberry Pi - The $35 extender?

Interesting project. Build the $25 Fedora open source computer.

Here's more about the project and the product.

They apparently have ordered parts for the first 10,000 units but I don't think it's for sale quite yet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=E-NzMfyYfRU

Very cool.

I was checking this out today and focusing on the BCM2835 SOC. Pretty cool possibilities re XBMC. Here's a thread on it on another site that goes into more detail.

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=113824

Certainly worth a try. I can imagine that they will sell out of these things very quickly once they go on sale.

Would this be another 'small-cheap-linux-cool computer' that you can't easily buy one?

Entirely possible, but it looks relatively simple and inexpensive compared to, say, the $100 laptop.

Might be worth merging this thread with the other Raspberry Pi thread here : http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1375757

Looks like this is going to happen. Here is a video of XBMC running on Raspberry Pi.

http://youtu.be/iKhnoQMwjmQ

The board is said to be in production.

FYI - $35 does not include a case, just a bare board.

I think that's a crazy bad mistake, but the creators think they are making an educational/hacker device, not a consumer device.

They say they're going to sell a case in addition. We'll have to see what it looks like and the price.

Personally, I might not buy a case and just attach it to the back of the TV with tape.

Hmmm, I might just put it inside my HTPC... I have room. My AV closet is between my living room and bedroom. Could have everything in one box but serving two rooms!

Can't wait to get my hands on one.

I'm sure people will get all creative with making their own boxes for these things.

Hmm, isn't Windows 8 supposed to support ARM?

Here's a somewhat fuller demonstration of XBMC on Raspberry Pi that came out today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NR57...ature=youtu.be

There is some delay on moving between menu elements. But it looks acceptable to me. YMMV.

Announcement re codecs supported...

http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/592


A little underwhelming for me, considering that I would like to use the R-Pi as a PVR and ATSC maxes out at 1080i MPEG-2, but maybe there is a way to offload at least some of the work to the graphics engine.

It would be kind of cool if they offered an "all codec" firmware update for a small fee, which could be used to offset the licensing costs (and put a tiny bit in their pockets for the effort).

EDIT: Which if one were to read the comments to that article, one would learn that that is exactly what they are considering doing...

These are starting to ship in volume and I have received mine. $35 plus about $7 in shipping and handling to the States from Newark.

Haven't been able to play with it because I am still assembling all of the pieces. Apparently, the latest builds of XBMC on Pi have been slick and now the PVR functions of XBMC are being worked on. I'm holding out hope that HD MPEG-2 will be somewhow hardware decoded or partially decoded through XBMC.

I've also been following the A10 Allwinner boards and tablets that will be supported by XBMC. Prototype and low volume computers/sticks are running $70 or $80 shipped from China. As I understand, XBMC has a guy at Allwinner who provided some docs, so XBMC will be able to do hardware decoding on MPEG 1/2/4.

Bottom line is that we should have a good selection of very nice XBMC streamers for dirt cheap.
Edited by dschmelzer - 7/11/12 at 12:39pm

Early reports over at the xbmc forums were fairly disappointing from what I read.

How long ago? I've been hearing otherwise in the last week. Of course, expectations play a large role in this.

FYI, I cross-edited you.

Here are just a few I remember reading. I need to get one of these to test it out myself...

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=135415&pid=1141451#pid1141451

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=133267&pid=1135751#pid1135751

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=135133&pid=1138319#pid1138319

We will have to see what isn't possible with the R-Pi. My sense is that it is mostly limited by the documentation and information that has been released by the SoC manufacturer.

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=126995&pid=1139307#pid1139307

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=119961#p119961

I will get a better sense of the current state of things in a few days when I start playing with the R-Pi.
Edited by dschmelzer - 7/11/12 at 1:39pm

I read a review on engadget or wired (don't remember which) that wasn't very glowing. the reviewer felt the cpu was underpowered and the gui was sluggish. hd decoding may work just fine, but if the ui is slow then it quickly loses its appeal.

edit:

I think this was it:

http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/01/raspberry-pi-impressions-the-35-linux-computer-and-tinker-toy/

What i read was basically the same conclusion, decoding works because of the dedicated decoder in the GPU (at least for H.264 content, i don't think it supports anything else), but the XBMC GUI was very slow, sometimes changing button selection could take over 5 seconds.

the reviews remind me of the atom/ion netbooks. played video just fine, but doing anything else was maddeningly slow.

I see the raspberry pi as more of a supercharged arduino that can handle video and networking natively, not as a media streamer or general use computer replacement.

it is a great concept, but I think people are trying to make it something it was not meant to be.

I think it's tough to know how much this thing can be optimized. My sense is that people need to have it in their hands for a while. Here's the demonstration of what is described as a "hard float" optimization of the Raspbian distro that answers some of the stuff in the Engadget article.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0pLdY2Ap5Q&feature=player_embedded

It looks like he overclocked the R-Pi, so YMMV.
Edited by dschmelzer - 7/12/12 at 2:46pm

a new version of raspbian has been released that is arm optimized and is supposed to improve performance. anyone here have one?

http://www.memetic.org/raspbian-benchmarking-armel-vs-armhf/

I loaded up Raspbian on my non-overclocked Pi with a Class 4 SDHC card and it is still more or less useless for web browsing on the popular sites.

In a few days when I get a chance, I will reload XBMC and try some test clips. Does anybody have a link to some challenging clips that they would like me to try?

When I tried XBMC several days ago (Raspbmc), the menus were reasonably snappy and the Youtube plug-in seemed to work fine on 1080p material.
Edited by dschmelzer - 7/19/12 at 9:33pm

Here's a link to a collection of files:

http://www.networkedmediatank.com/showthread.php?tid=28259&pid=253569#pid253569

Haven't tried it myself.