- Thread starter ronan
- Start date
Went through similar should I / shouldn't I do it
In the end I caved in and got a Raspberry PI running XBMC ...works brilliantly for streaming from saved/crunched/downloaded video's on my network or streaming from ipads/ smart phones
Not tried streaming anything else (4OD youtube etc)- but it would not surprise me if it did that without much effort
The TIVO does all the TV catchup and on demand/youtube stuff so not had any cause to try ....yet
Interface is simple enough that the Mrs and my 2 year old can operate it (after it was all setup)
The Raspberry PI is a bit geeky and can involve a little reading...but theres shed loads of how to's and documentation about for it
(and plenty of support should you need it)
It will also do all sorts of other pretty amazing stuff if you get into it
(got another PI and got it playing loads of retro games via emulators...then realised how bored I get playing retro games so its awaiting its next adventure-only limited by by my own imagination/talent- so it will probably gather dust for a while
)
Regards
Rob
In the end I caved in and got a Raspberry PI running XBMC ...works brilliantly for streaming from saved/crunched/downloaded video's on my network or streaming from ipads/ smart phones
Not tried streaming anything else (4OD youtube etc)- but it would not surprise me if it did that without much effort
The TIVO does all the TV catchup and on demand/youtube stuff so not had any cause to try ....yet
Interface is simple enough that the Mrs and my 2 year old can operate it (after it was all setup)
The Raspberry PI is a bit geeky and can involve a little reading...but theres shed loads of how to's and documentation about for it
(and plenty of support should you need it)
It will also do all sorts of other pretty amazing stuff if you get into it
(got another PI and got it playing loads of retro games via emulators...then realised how bored I get playing retro games so its awaiting its next adventure-only limited by by my own imagination/talent- so it will probably gather dust for a while
)Regards
Rob
- Messages
- 13,536
- Location
- England
Roku... the Mrs bought a Roku1. Must have spent about 3 hours getting it to connect to our Wifi (not normally an issue with anything else)
Must have had it 24 hours, then took it back for a refund.
Our BB is generally about 8mb, but the box kept jumping and stopping which personally I find highly irritating.
Don't have that issue when watching iplayer or similar on the laptop.
The leaflet said about the 1000s of channels....yeah, about 10 channels you have to subscribe too, like netflix....iplayer, flickr, facebook.... and 990 channels of utter rubbish.
Must have had it 24 hours, then took it back for a refund.
Our BB is generally about 8mb, but the box kept jumping and stopping which personally I find highly irritating.
Don't have that issue when watching iplayer or similar on the laptop.
The leaflet said about the 1000s of channels....yeah, about 10 channels you have to subscribe too, like netflix....iplayer, flickr, facebook.... and 990 channels of utter rubbish.
shenion
Tool Pack Rat
- Messages
- 7,586
- Location
- Stone Mountain, GA USA
I have a Roku3 and love it. I don't have cable or satellite, it is all I watch.
I have about 70 channels installed (like phone apps.) Netflix and Acorn.TV and PBS are probably the ones I watch most. They finally have an official youtube channel but still don't have a browser. Lots of the "channels" have the same public domain old B-movies (EVERY channel seems to have Plan 9 From Outer Space.)
I used it on my 3mbit DSL with no problems.
THe main reason I got it was I was using an old laptop to watch Netflix and PBS and it was just a pain to use. I bought a wireless keyboard for it but it had software issues (got confused after sleep) and needed rebooting too often.
Robocq, does the R-Pi doe 1080P video streaming? I here it can't keep up on decoding it.
I have about 70 channels installed (like phone apps.) Netflix and Acorn.TV and PBS are probably the ones I watch most. They finally have an official youtube channel but still don't have a browser. Lots of the "channels" have the same public domain old B-movies (EVERY channel seems to have Plan 9 From Outer Space.)
I used it on my 3mbit DSL with no problems.
THe main reason I got it was I was using an old laptop to watch Netflix and PBS and it was just a pain to use. I bought a wireless keyboard for it but it had software issues (got confused after sleep) and needed rebooting too often.
Robocq, does the R-Pi doe 1080P video streaming? I here it can't keep up on decoding it.
shenion
Tool Pack Rat
- Messages
- 7,586
- Location
- Stone Mountain, GA USA
They are all listed on the Roku web site: http://www.roku.com/channels/#!browse/most-watched
As far as I'm aware it will keep up. I got the type B 512mb Pi . I'm pretty sure some of our stuff is 1080 ( lad is just watching turbo on it soo don't want to disturb him!)
Our tv is only 720...so not sure if that makes any difference(early adopters loose out)
Only things that caused any strangeness playback wise was some home recorded movies from our cameras .it doesn't seem to play all. Think it's due to codecs... mjpg?
It will play isos natively...which was a pleasent surprise.
Just means converting our old stuff before I archive/ play it back on the PI
Regards
Rob
Our tv is only 720...so not sure if that makes any difference(early adopters loose out)
Only things that caused any strangeness playback wise was some home recorded movies from our cameras .it doesn't seem to play all. Think it's due to codecs... mjpg?
It will play isos natively...which was a pleasent surprise.
Just means converting our old stuff before I archive/ play it back on the PI
Regards
Rob
Id give the Pi a miss personally. Ive got three here, two of them regulary corrupt their sd cards and require a new sd before they can be recovered. The third has never had a problem. All the same brands of sd card, all running off the same regulated psu rail, all of them running headless with no usb devices, hardwired ethernet connections etc, same cases, same environmentals. The bad ones have even corrupted a card that was doing service in the good one for a month first as a soak test within two days. The only difference is the good one was ordered when the model b first came out and the bad ones later on.
Afaik it is a known problem by the foundation, but they stated when I looked into it that they weren't interested in fixing it as in a education setting with them being re-imaged every few days anyway it wasn't a problem.
Shame, as its a really capable little device apart from that and the network card sharing the usb bus issue, managing to play back high quality 1080i mpeg streams when you pay for the mpeg licenses. It outperforms the beagle bone and the other players in this respect.
For tv we have some of those small nettop pc's mounted on the back. I might get a roku and see if they are as capable and open to playing content I want them to play, and not just what roku want me to
Thread about sd corruption on a Pi. I even tried having my filesystem on usb stick with just a barebones bootloader on the sd card, and it corrupted the usb stick instead!
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=36533
Whoops just noticed theres some more fixes in the nov 2013 build. I'll pull my bad ones out of storage and give them one last chance...
Afaik it is a known problem by the foundation, but they stated when I looked into it that they weren't interested in fixing it as in a education setting with them being re-imaged every few days anyway it wasn't a problem.
Shame, as its a really capable little device apart from that and the network card sharing the usb bus issue, managing to play back high quality 1080i mpeg streams when you pay for the mpeg licenses. It outperforms the beagle bone and the other players in this respect.
For tv we have some of those small nettop pc's mounted on the back. I might get a roku and see if they are as capable and open to playing content I want them to play, and not just what roku want me to
Thread about sd corruption on a Pi. I even tried having my filesystem on usb stick with just a barebones bootloader on the sd card, and it corrupted the usb stick instead!
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=36533
Whoops just noticed theres some more fixes in the nov 2013 build. I'll pull my bad ones out of storage and give them one last chance...
If its in mpeg-2 or vc-1 you have to buy a license file before it will decode in the hardware. Its not expensive, but they decided not to include it as not all users would want that capability at a slight increase in price, which given their educational target is fair enough. Theyre not dear, see :-
http://www.raspberrypi.com/license-keys/
Yes I bought both license hoping it would just play the raw footage taken from our cameras but no joy. Seems they all use mjpg as a format which is not supported. Not a major issue as it is fairly trivial to convert....just time consuming as it's lots of short files baby's first steps/words...that kind of thing.they play just fine on the pc and it's the sort of thing we would like to show him in 20 years or whatever..I suspect they will need re encoding a few times before they will get watched by the target audience they are really intended for.
I hardly use the cameras that save as mjpg these days ...ipads and smart phones have kind of obsoleteted them.
Regards
Rob
I hardly use the cameras that save as mjpg these days ...ipads and smart phones have kind of obsoleteted them.
Regards
Rob
I had an SD go corrupt (it would possibly have been around November time...co-incidentally) I just downloaded a newer image onto a brand new class 10 card from ASDA (no where else open at 10 at night!) - and hey presto it found a few updates and all has been good since (touch wood)
I have added a couple of heatsinks to the main (xbmc) one as it is on 24/7 - not bothered overclocking it as I never get stutters or delays as far as I have noticed
Not had cause to reboot it since the SD card corruption issue
(I should really check for other updates...but as it just works flawlessly I haven't)
Deffo worth dragging out and giving it another go
If only it had dedicated sata ports, optical audio out it would be a dream machine for me
USB network has never been an issue (yet) for the files I tend to push through it
(mind the rest of the network is more likely to be a bottleneck - unmanaged gig switch / drobo fs NAS (known for NOT being rocket fast) for movies and video's / dual P233 linux samba server for MP3's)
Regards
Rob
I have added a couple of heatsinks to the main (xbmc) one as it is on 24/7 - not bothered overclocking it as I never get stutters or delays as far as I have noticed
Not had cause to reboot it since the SD card corruption issue
(I should really check for other updates...but as it just works flawlessly I haven't)
Deffo worth dragging out and giving it another go
If only it had dedicated sata ports, optical audio out it would be a dream machine for me
USB network has never been an issue (yet) for the files I tend to push through it
(mind the rest of the network is more likely to be a bottleneck - unmanaged gig switch / drobo fs NAS (known for NOT being rocket fast) for movies and video's / dual P233 linux samba server for MP3's)
Regards
Rob
