# Raspberry Pi XBMC



## Jasonpctech (Apr 20, 2010)

Well I did it, got a RPi ver 2.0 512meg a Class 10 Transend 16gig Sd card made my own usb power cord and hooked up a MS IR blaster from media center. The Transend card tested 14/16 down up speed, not bad.

*So first I'm going to tell you what you need to start playing with you RPi in XBMC land.*

I tested a few distros 

RASPBMC
XBIAN
And finally OPENELEC.

Except for Raspbmc that has its own installer you will need Win32diskimager to load your .img file to the SD flash card. I also recommend SDFormatter 3.1 to re-do those SD cards if you have problems, it will post a error just ignore that it works fine.
For the most part all distros had HDMI sync issues using my AVR and I had to hook direct to TV to setup without annoying screen blink. Once setup to correct resolution they otherwise worked fine via AVR. 

This setup will run H.264 video without codec licensing. You can use Plex server to live encode to it or read below. I imagine Plex Client will be working on RPi soon.

Once you have settled on a Distro then pop over to here for MPEG2 & VC1 licences
http://www.raspberrypi.com/license-keys/ the total cost there will be $5.80 so you can run other formats.

*Does it work?*
For XBMC yes incredibly well for a 700mhz system with video hardware acceleration for the most part it was slow compared to my main system to install add-ons and start the actual video and videos would take 1-3 seconds to clear artifacts and play flawlessly there after. I experimented with overclocking 800-1000 mhz and settled on 800mhz even though 100 worked fine. The RPi never got hot to the touch and was super stable "no crashes" across all the distros. I don't have a favorite distro yet but for ease of setup you might try Raspbmc 1st.

*Problems I had. *
Never got my Rosewill RNX-EasyN1 Wi-fi dongle to work. (You need a Broadcom based setup) there are several good choices out there that have tested fine however.

I'm still trying to figure out how to use the whole SD card instead of the image files default size.

I need an external powered (not bus powered) USB hub with at least 7 ports for drives and devices. Found a nice 12 port at Monoprice. You want a powered hub so if you unplug a device the surge won't reset the RPi.

*Final thoughts *
At 40 or less dollars it's a great thing to have. If you want to add a room, garage or just have a backup for guests or HTPC disaster. I plan to get a small box and load it with a Hub, wifi, ir blaster, 2.5 laptop drive 500gig use it with a stock WMC ir remote or a Rii mini keyboard and put a LED projector on top of it. The ultimate mobile drive in for the car, out on the deck or visiting. You can also use many IOS and Android free apps to control this too.

My next toy will be a Android 4.0 stick 

Oh, here is a guy using PVR support http://forum.stmlabs.com/showthread.php?tid=2648


----------



## jimbodude (Jul 26, 2011)

I've been using an RPi with XBMC (RASPBMC) in my movie room for about 2 months now. I have the older 256MB B-model. The setup directions on the RASPBMC site were just fine to get things going. Once you're up and running, things are mostly self-explanatory, especially if you've used XBMC before.

I'm running 1080p H264 high-profile encoded MP4s over NFS via Ethernet (100Mbps, since RPi does not have gigabit) with pass-through AC3 or DTS sound. I didn't need to buy the MPEG codecs for H264. At first, I had some performance issues with playback - it would drop picture and audio for a second every 2-5 minutes. I needed to up the hardware overclocking settings. Since then, things have been quite smooth. I'm guessing that the dropping was caused by the extra processing power required to fetch data over NFS vs a direct USB connection, since others have not had that issue. I like that it is incredibly low power and physically small. The price point is a major bonus.

There are options for IR receivers to make it so you can control it with your normal remote. There are some out-of-the-box options, but I don't own any of those. For now, I am just using the XBMC Android app to control the thing. Works great, minimal latency.

Previously, I was using UPnP from my XBMC server to view on the PS3. The main issue there is that the PS3's UPnP user interface is not well suited for browsing large media stores. It doesn't have searching and doesn't do much of anything with metadata. Of course, that is mainly a limitation of the UPnP protocol, not just the PS3. There was also some strange issue where if I paused playback, the PS3 video player would sometimes crash when I resumed. XBMC has fixed both of these issues, and for only about $50 plus an hour of setup. 

Great buy - highly recommend to all tinkerers.


----------



## Jasonpctech (Apr 20, 2010)

Thanks for the share! I should mention the only time I get video issues is the 1st 1-3 sec starting a video and sometimes not at all never got any "during" playback issues with the 512 2.0 model. I have used multiple videos ranging from hi-def 1080 on down. That leads me to think the current boards have solved that issue. The reason I overclocked was to speed up the XBMC interface. I'm having a ball messing with this as I start setting up a MAME arcade emulator this week.


----------



## jimbodude (Jul 26, 2011)

It could be new software too. The RASPBMC project is pushing out automatic updates fairly frequently. I've definitely received a few. It pulls the latest software from the server automatically when it boots up. In any case, I have not had any stability issues with the overclocking settings, so I will be keeping them where they are.


----------



## davidburn (May 10, 2007)

Jasonpctech said:


> Well I did it, got a RPi ver 2.0 512meg a Class 10 Transend 16gig Sd card made my own usb power cord and hooked up a MS IR blaster from media center. The Transend card tested 14/16 down up speed, not bad.
> 
> *So first I'm going to tell you what you need to start playing with you RPi in XBMC land.*
> 
> ...


Great write up Jason, I have set the same up for my bedroom for wireless playback off my media server.

Very good machine for the money for media playback, but very slow for anything else, have not overclock it yet which should see some improvements.

I use multiple SD cards so I can still surf the net using Raspbian.

Here is a tutorial on setting up Wi Fi adapters in XBMC. 






Dave.


----------



## ALPHUX (Nov 28, 2007)

Although I havent done it yet myself I'm reading that installing 'Berryboot' is the way to go! It provides every distro that you might want for many applications-and it will fill your SD card!lddude:


----------

