[mythtvnz] Raspberry Pi as a multimedia frontend: first impressions.

[jfp]

Jut got myself a Raspberry Pi (Model B) and just tried it as a Multimedia Player running XBMC.

The good: It will play Mythtv Freeview DVB-T HD recordings (As well as standard MP4/MKV/AVI's). I've tried TV3 and TV2 recordings, that was quite impressive.

The bad:
- The interface is a bit sluggish (to be expected)
- While it plays Mythtv recordings it only does so over NFS, using SMB/(Windows shares) it shows something like a frame a second. Apparently SMB is very expensive CPU wise compared to NFS. 

The really bad:
- Starting playback for HD content takes about 30 seconds.
- NFS is a bit flaky currently.

It's early days, but it looks promising.

This is using the Openelec distro, you copy it to the SD card and it just works.
I also tried the Raspbmc distro but it's harder to install and seems to freeze fairly often. 

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Jean-Francois Pirus | Technical Manager
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