Raspberry Pi

Steve

Steve

TD Admin | Bacon
I'm looking into setting up a media server for my TV and got turned onto these slick little devices, anyone looked into them before?

My sole use will be streaming/downloading for use with tv

I'm looking into model b since it comes with the network. Not worried about wifi or hdd size, I have plenty of externals.



Also suggestions for a good(extremely light) linux distro for it ?
 
Gatherix

Gatherix

Death by Darkly
Raspberry Pi's are very fun. Just keep in mind that you can't use any 'externals' or Linux OS you want; your options are limited. For OS, the most commonly used is the Debian distro, Wheezy (not Raspbian), and I'd recommend sticking to it unless the software you want to setup for your streaming requires otherwise. The most commonly used software for media streaming on Pi's is XBMC, mainly since its reliable and retains good uptime compared to others, but there are certainly alternatives.

For WiFi dongles, check the forums; people have compiled lists of external WiFi adapters that are compatible.
 
Steve

Steve

TD Admin | Bacon
What about the xbmc Linux distro? Also can you elaborate on external hdd comparability???
 
Gatherix

Gatherix

Death by Darkly
Steve said:
What about the xbmc Linux distro? Also can you elaborate on external hdd comparability???
Click to expand...


There shouldn't be any external hard drive compatibility issues, just keep in mind that you'll be limited to the transfer rate of the USb cable. Since you're just streaming stuff and you'll be running the OS off the SD card (which is the Pi's only source of storage, other than drives connected via USB or another extension), that shouldn't be a problem. Just make sure that you have a high-quality SD card (most say class 10 or higher), and not a crappy one.

XBMC is just a piece of software designed specifically for media hosting, streaming, et cetera. It's well developed, it's reliable, and does pretty much all you need. Regarding the distros: if you're looking for a complete OS, the Debian variant (Raspbian or Soft-Float Wheezy) will generally be the better choice in my opinion, unless you specifically want to play around with Fedora, ArchLinux, Android, whatever.

Something you may opt for is OpenELEC, a Debian distro that's made solely for a media center. It comes with XBMC already installed/configured, and sacrifices the ability to do anything else (i.e. install other programs) in exchange for being really lightweight compared to a full OS. Since you'll be loading your OS's on SD cards and your data on external hard drives, you can install different OS's onto several SD cards and swap them when you want to use the Pi for something else. So, you could install OpenELEC on an SD card and use that with the Pi for the most part, and when you occasionally want to use it for something else you can have Debian or whatever installed on another SD card, all configured. That's all up to you.
 
Steve

Steve

TD Admin | Bacon
Okay so I'm going to do some research before going out and buying parts but what I want to get out of this is:

Cheap, Streaming, Ability to download(torrent), Can run 1080 rips(my laptop cant well).
 
Dean

Dean

TD Member
this hardware might fall short on the 1080p streaming video playback part, not sure though.
 
$alvador

$alvador

TD Member
I'd recommend a CubieBoard over the Pi. The Pi is best for GPIO-related programming but when it comes to media stuff it's weak because it lacks a SATA port and the audio/video out quality is garbage. Your only options for storage space are an SD card (AFAIK cannot be >8GB) or doing an HDD via the USB port but the drive has to be powered separately from the board which is just... awful. It's also a bitch to get working. I had to buy some extra shit just to power it because it requires a constant 1mA current and typical USB ports don't push that much juice. So that inflated the price to a good $50 CAD even without the considerations to add a proper drive.

The CubieBoard has a SoC proven to work well with high-def media (I have the same chip in my tablet and 1080p mkv playback is b-eeeeootiful), more on-board memory than the Pi, a SATA port so you can hook up a big, fatass HDD, and a proper 5V power connector so you can actually use the USB port to hook up a WiFi dongle, something which is too much for the onboard power of a Pi to handle reliably. So in the end the CubieBoard probably comes out to about the same amount of money you'd need to spend on the Pi and has more power on-board to handle everything.

There are also a lot of Android-based devices using the same SoC as the Cubie on dx.com, so that may be the best place to get something for cheap if you don't need all the bells n whistles
 
Steve

Steve

TD Admin | Bacon
Thx salv im considering alot of options

Another option I have is to get a cheap used Lenovo ultra sff, 4gb mem(SoDIM), 2.8 ghz c2d(e7400), sata hdd 500gb, 5
$50..
 
dead mike

dead mike

TD Member, Legend, Puncher of Faces, Chatbox King
man there's gotta be some elegant android thing out there for under $100 that will do everything and more, you can get utorrent from the google play store, and probably will come with the useful parts u need like a remote.

if it can run xbmc, i recommend it, i still use it on my old xbox 1 and it is awesome
 
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