My next HTPC will be Raspberry Pi

Originally Posted by sysadmin

I'm reporting that guy to the MPAA...

Originally Posted by benogil

Actually, the Cubox has an appeal as well, both it and Raspberry can handle XBMC.
http://www.solid-run.com/products/cubox
Although the chipset from Rhombus looks better, and should be cheaper and more powerful ( $15 ).

it (on passing glance) only accels h.264 video ... I'm thinking that even a DVD (standard def. mpeg2) would present it some considerable challenges.

A bit of googling turned up a thread in their forums which says that HD MPEG-2 acceleration is possible in the GPU, but may require code licensing

Originally Posted by waterhead

Following your link says that it is $135 USD, not $15.

Originally Posted by Rgb

I thought they were targeting $3.14

Raspberry Pi has confirmed the first batch of $35 PCs will be constructed on February 20. They've also coaxed Broadcom into releasing the datasheet for the board. Apparently the company hit a snag with the quartz crystal package so there was a manufacturing delay, but it's since been resolved and things are on schedule for later this month.

Originally Posted by CityK

Read through a blog post ( http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/592#comment-9929 ) and see that they've opted not to license mpeg2. Too bad.

Some other interesting Raspberry pi discussions:

- Some commentary on the apparent up roar about no kits: http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/592#comment-10075

- Phoronix news article makes mention about where the LIMA project might help out: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...tem&px=MTA1MTc

- a user comment in the Phoronix forums that I found interesting: "Raspberry Pi has had about 3 stories a day show up on Slashdot for about the last year. The level of hype has outstripped the actual device. While it looks like a nice, low-power board that could be handy in many cases, the Raspberry Pi is not the pure-open source Windows/iPhone/Apple killer that the hype machine has portrayed. ": http://phoronix.com/forums/showthrea...148#post249148

That user comment is probably over critical, but it strikes me that there is an element of truth to what he is saying. Anyway, now back to your regularly scheduled programming ...

"The Raspberry Pi Fedora Remix is ready for download! The recommended distro to run on the Raspberry Pi is a Remix of the Fedora open source software. The Remix is a distribution comprised of software packages from the Fedora ARM project, plus a small number of additional packages that are modified from the Fedora versions or which cannot be included in Fedora due to licensing issues - in particular, the libraries for accessing the VideoCore GPU on the Raspberry Pi."

Originally Posted by Rgb

ModMyPi Raspberry Pi case offers 5 percent kickback to Foundation

http://www.geek.com/articles/gadgets...tion-20120321/

Originally Posted by Rgb

First Batch Of £16 Raspberry Pi PCs Arrives

Read more: http://www.itproportal.com/2012/04/1...#ixzz1s1o3aU2R

Originally Posted by CityK

a user comment in the Phoronix forums that I found interesting: "Raspberry Pi has had about 3 stories a day show up on Slashdot for about the last year. The level of hype has outstripped the actual device."... it strikes me that there is an element of truth to what he is saying

We received a Model B ($35), which is powered by a Broadcom BCM2835 SoC that includes a 700MHz ARM1176JZF-S CPU core, 256MB of RAM and a Broadcom VideoCore IV GPU with OpenGL ES 2.0 that supports 1080p at 30FPS as well as H.264 and MPEG-4 high-profile decoding for smooth Blu-ray playback. Connectivity includes two USB ports, Ethernet, HDMI, RCA video, an SD card slot, a 3.5mm audio jack and two rows of 13 General Purpose Input/Output (GPIO) pins for further expansion.

The Model A ($25, to be released at a later date) ships without Ethernet and has a single USB port. Both models measure 85.60mm x 53.98mm x 17mm, although the SD card and connectors overlap the PCB board edges. Besides the Raspberry Pi itself, you'll also need various other items before you can configure and use the device:

5v micro-USB power adapter with at least 700mA (many micro-USB phone chargers work).
SD card, or micro-SD card in an adapter, with the OS preloaded (4GB to 32GB recommended).
USB keyboard and mouse (PS/2 to USB adapters might work, but we haven't tested this).
Powered USB hub if you intend to have more than two USB devices connected.
Display or TV with HDMI, DVI, Composite or SCART.
Ethernet cable.

The APC computer is a $49 Android system based on the brand new Neo-ITX form factor which measures in at roughly half the size of standard Mini-ITX based motherboards. It features an 800MHz ARM SOC (VIA WonderMedia ARM 11 SoC) with 512MB of DDR3 memory and 2GB of onboard flash memory for storage. A modified version of Google Android 2.3 uses up most of that 2GB of flash storage, but there are external storage options. On the back I/O is a microSD slot and of course you could hook in an external USB 2.0 drive. VIA spent a lot of time customizing Android to enable keyboard and mouse support which natively it does not support. The system also comes with the modified apps such as a YouTube player, Angry Birds, a file manager, web browser and more.


However, the VIA APC is not designed to be about local storage. It is designed to stream your content from the cloud and does so at an amazing price and within a very tiny footprint. The APC will fit in normal Mini-ITX cases with room to spare for something like a 3.5-inch or 2.5-inch hard drive. On the I/O panel you get VGA output, HDMI output (up to 720p playback with hardware acceleration), four USB 2.0 ports, gigabit LAN and audio out and microphone in.


There is not much on the motherboard / computer itself. There is just the few chips required to power the system along with a four pin fan header if you wish to add a cooling fan to the system, but it does not require it and enables a completely silent system. One of the other amazing aspects of this system is that at load it only consumes 13.5 watts of power and hardly anything at idle coming in at just 4 watts. The system will ship with just a small 15 watt external power supply.

VIA expects to start shipping the APC, "a bicycle for your mind", towards the end of June or sometime in July for just $49. The other big news is that VIA will be selling the APC directly on http://www.apc.io. Pre-orders will begin very soon. For a closer look at the Nano-ITX Neo-ITX APC, watch the video above.

Specifications (Model B) at a glance

CPU:
Broadcom BCM2835 SoC (700MHz)
RAM:
256MB (shared with GPU)
Storage:
SD / MMC/ SDIO card slot to boot and for storage. No built-in hard disk or solid state drive.
Graphics
Dual-core VideoCore IV GPU
Screen:
HDMI and Composite video out
Audio: HDMI, 3.5mm audio port
Ports:
2 onboard USB2 slots (which share a single USB 2 connection), SD card slot, 10/100 Ethernet
Size: 86 x 54 x 17 (width, depth, height)
Power: 2W (idle), 3W (peak)
Weight: 45g


The SoC provides OpenGL ES 2.0, hardware-accelerated OpenVG and 1080p HD video. As you can see from the above specification, the Raspberry Pi does not have onboard wireless capabilities, but it is possible to use a USB-connected wifi dongle, although only some devices are supported. Neither does the Raspberry Pi have a real time clock. Given that the machine will typically be connected to the internet, this is not an inconvenience and provides a cost saving. Further, if a real time clock is really needed, a third-party battery backed up real time clock module for the Raspberry Pi should be available very soon.

It is easy to overclock both the CPU, RAM, and GPU of the Raspberry Pi by editing a single text file (/boot/config.txt), although this activity voids the warranty. Some users have reported speed increases of about 20%, without apparently affecting the stability of the machine.

A lot of people are buying the Pi to run XBMC. Since it can support 1080p flawlessly and the Via APC cannot, well... for many people the choice is obvious.