OpenELEC

[Alex Volkov]

I run RasBMC on Raspberry Pi as a media center and can assure you raspberry
pi has no problem playing 1080p videos, 96% of the area of the main chip is
used for video encoding/decoding and I successfully played files  encoded
as mp4, avi, and mkv -- I've even played the videos over the network using
NFS. Sometimes it takes a couple of seconds to load the video, but
otherwise playback is perfect.
(Several people working on raspberry pi project mentioned that the chip was
originally designed for stand-alone media players, and the remaining vacant
4% of the die area was used for a general-purpose cpu).

Raspbmc setup is pretty easy, just dd an image to SD card and connect
raspberry pi to your tv -- http://www.raspbmc.com/download/. I suggest
using standalone image, as network updates could be annoying.

Several issues I've noticed with raspberry pi as a media center player:

 * if you are playing a video over samba  it may cause some issues as samba
protocol is rather CPU-intensive (thanks Microsoft!).

 * No youtube videos, and this seems the biggest downside

 * All proprietary formats such as WMV aren't playable.

 * Obviously, no netflix.

By the way Beagle Bone Black, though superior to Raspberry Pi in almost
every other respect, has video decoder chip that not nearly as powerful and
can only play 720p video at best.


Alex.


On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 2:36 PM, teddy <teddymills-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:

>
> It is a linux distro so it is relevant.
>
> http://openelec.tv/
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHDddt4LhEk
>
> Unless you like to fuss with Raspberry I do not see the need for a
> Raspberry or a Beagle.
> I think these small units have trouble with 1080p playback.
>
> I just used a normal PC.
> Dual Core with a decent DVI video card (6770) and a 2TB WD Green
> Get a projector and setup your sound and your good to go.
>
> I prefer OpenELEC since it is very easy to install and setup.
>
> It can be running in 5 minutes and most addons work.
> In XBMC or MythTV that may not be the case.
>
> A remote will be best, as a keyboard is clumsy.
>
> Teddy
>
>
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