Raspberry PI as a media player

the_monkey

Hi , a few months ago I was thinking of using a Raspberry PI as a media player, but decided against it as it didn't do 1080P very well, I have since been told that the B model can handle 1080P well, anyone here have good/bad experience with it ?

I can't justify spending €200+ for an Arctic media player when a PI is about €30 ...

Cheers

M

bonnieprince

My model B works wells but initially takes a few moments to display ful res. when starting a movie from external usb.
It runs XBian (which i find better than Raspbmc, easier to setup/update etc)
Hope this helps.

Bacchus

Sorry to slightly hi-jack the thread but I'm in a similar boat to the OP, caught between the inexpensive Raspberry Pi running Raspbmc vs the Roku 3. Reports of sluggish performance on the Pi have put me off a bit but it's hard to get a good idea of how sluggish it really is. I've seen vids of people showing smooth running Raspbmc and some showing incredibly slow responsiveness. Whereas the Roku 3 is a complete, polished package that can do pretty much everything I want but would cost me about €150.

How well does Raspbmc (or some other Raspberry Pi media setup) handle the following?
- Play media from external USB device
- Stream from another device on network (laptop or Android tablet/phone)
- Does it work with Plex?
- Are Youtube, TuneIn, Netflix and Google Music available?

AntiRip

Another person here who is quite interested in the Pi

@Bacchus - I'm pretty sure Netflix doesn't work, on xbmc anyway.

I have my order in the basket on CPC website about to buy it until I realised I may need a bluetooth dongle to run the xbmc android/ios remote app. Then I read here there's some coding to do to get this working on the Pi plus getting working dongles is hit and miss. Just thinking will it break my heart trying to get this to work.

I've also seen the Youtube videos and the talk of sluggishness and no high-res fanart has me wondering. The price is pretty amazing though

the_monkey

bonnieprince wrote: »

My model B works wells but initially takes a few moments to display ful res. when starting a movie from external usb.
It runs XBian (which i find better than Raspbmc, easier to setup/update etc)
Hope this helps.

So this means it sluggs a little during playback ? or it just takes a while to load up the file, but then plays ok ?

cos if it's the 2nd it wouldn't bother me, my current media player and bluray player take a while to boot up anyway ..

wandatowell

AntiRip wrote: »

I have my order in the basket on CPC website about to buy it until I realised I may need a bluetooth dongle to run the xbmc android/ios remote app.

I've also seen the Youtube videos and the talk of sluggishness and no high-res fanart has me wondering. The price is pretty amazing though

First I heard of needing a bluetooth dongle for a remote. I can control my Pi from my Android phone over wifi. Works a treat.

Im not sure about the fan art as I dont bother with the whole "scraping" thing with movies and download.


As for playback its perfect. It can take a few seconds to load (im talking 5 or 6 seconds) so its not an issue at all. Playing back full HD work fine for me also with no lag and any such issues.

the_monkey

wandatowell wrote: »

First I heard of needing a bluetooth dongle for a remote. I can control my Pi from my Android phone over wifi. Works a treat.

Im not sure about the fan art as I dont bother with the whole "scraping" thing with movies and download.


As for playback its perfect. It can take a few seconds to load (im talking 5 or 6 seconds) so its not an issue at all. Playing back full HD work fine for me also with no lag and any such issues.

Whats that mean ?

sorry...

AntiRip

wandatowell wrote: »

First I heard of needing a bluetooth dongle for a remote. I can control my Pi from my Android phone over wifi. Works a treat.

Im not sure about the fan art as I dont bother with the whole "scraping" thing with movies and download.


As for playback its perfect. It can take a few seconds to load (im talking 5 or 6 seconds) so its not an issue at all. Playing back full HD work fine for me also with no lag and any such issues.

Thanks for that. Thought I had to get bluetooth to use the remote app. Looks like I'm good to go again

AntiRip

the_monkey wrote: »

Whats that mean ?

sorry...

Getting the fanart and info for the movies and tv shows from IMDB etc.

Sofiztikated

wandatowell wrote: »

First I heard of needing a bluetooth dongle for a remote. I can control my Pi from my Android phone over wifi. Works a treat.

Im not sure about the fan art as I dont bother with the whole "scraping" thing with movies and download.


As for playback its perfect. It can take a few seconds to load (im talking 5 or 6 seconds) so its not an issue at all. Playing back full HD work fine for me also with no lag and any such issues.

Same as, mine was working fine until I needed the SD card for something else.

I controlled mine through CEC with my TV remote. Took a bit to find out the buttons, some required one button then another after a second (return to menu) but otherwise was hunky dorky.

Currently planning on moving it.

the_monkey

AntiRip wrote: »

Getting the fanart and info for the movies and tv shows from IMDB etc.

ah yeah !! hehe of course ..

:P

the_monkey

I take it , it deals with unpowered external HD's ok ?

Also presume it has a HDMI output ... .

BionicRasher

I had a Pi a while back and it was a nice media player but it depends what you are in to.
Pros and Cons I found are below

Pros:
Small easy to hide away if needed
Cheap
Runs quickly – boot up time was very quick for me
Looks cool in a kind of geeky way!
Easy to control from Android phone via Yatse remote control (but that's the case for anything running XBMC really I think)

Cons:
Set up can be difficult and a lot of tinkering is expected (I prefer more works out of the box type things that I can customise if I want)
Slow and pixelated HD playback from a network share (wired connection)
Playback of photos and music from an attached hard drive was spotty at best and sometimes didn’t work at all (maybe it was my initial set up that needed more attention)
Lack of power off button (I know the Pi sucks very little juice in standby but my TV is connected to a power block that turns off all attached units when the TV turns off and I would have liked to be able to switch off the PI before the power went down)


So I sold the Pi and now use a dedicated HTPC but also on the lookout for a media player to attach to a second TV and I am seriously looking at Roku and Android quad core boxes

Johnboy1951

The one major fault I have with the Pi is the lack of a convenient means of shutting it down .... that is shutting down the OS running on it.

Because of this I would not have it connected to an external drive ..... my set up also turns off power at night to all devices.

bonnieprince

the_monkey wrote: »

So this means it sluggs a little during playback ? or it just takes a while to load up the file, but then plays ok ?

cos if it's the 2nd it wouldn't bother me, my current media player and bluray player take a while to boot up anyway ..

The second one! Its just the initial loading up/starting movie that seems to be sluggish for all movies. Doesn't bother me also

Great little computers!

Access

Have a Pi running Raspbmc strapped to the back of the tv in our bedroom.

It is constantly on (runs @ maximum 5 watts from a powered usb hub and if it was left for an entire year, it will cost me €8.44 approx.

Calculated at an electric Ireland Kw rate of 0.1928cent (inc. Vat), it would use 1Kw in 8.33 days or about 44Kw in 365 days - so to me, unless we are gone on holidays there is no need to be constantly booting it up or shutting it down.

(one boardie did run it off the usb port power from his samsung tv but to me when you switch off the tv or put it in standby, you would lose usb power and it would shut-off the Pi the incorrect way and possibly corrupt the SD card).

I run the Quartz skin (sort of like the apple tv interface) as its smooth and i also have the fanart on. It is by no means as fast as our HTPC downstairs in the living room when navigating menus - but that extra second or two doesnt matter to me personally.

I was running off a Wifi usb dongle, but got powerline adapters (in bargain alerts from amazon uk) and it runs a good bit quicker with them.

I stream from a NAS, so have not tried an external usb drive with mine. Others report that using an external usb hard drive is as quick as any other machine, but i do notice that when i go to play a 1080 movie, it can take upto 20 seconds to start playing. But normally a 480 movie or tv show will start within 5 seconds.

I have a samsung tv in the bedroom, so the pi is controlled via the samsungs remote due to CEC built into samsungs which is handy... the play buttons/arrow buttons etc on the tv remote controls the Pi which is pretty cool, but we can also control it from our android phones via the free official XBMC remote app from the play store (also available for apple devices) so no shortage of ways to control it.

For anyone who is thinking about getting a Pi for XBMC, just do it... It will drive you insane setting it up to your liking (took me about a week of evenings to get it right and a lot of online research) but since i bought the Pi back earlier in the year apart from that first week of setting it up, i have not had to mess with it and it works fine.

If all fails and you dont like it, you are only €30 to €40 euros down and you can always sell it on adverts or donedeal if its not your cup of tea.

Pros:
The same as tui0hcg above.
Its always ready to run and works well.

Cons:
Its not as fast navigating menus (add a second or two to the normal HTPC speed. (but you can turn off fanart to make it a bit faster)
The setting up of the Pi and whatever software you choose - (i recommend Raspbmc - see the thread on it here in the HTPC forum) - will wreck your head.

AntiRip

Got my Pi yesterday from CPC. Must say extremely fast shipment from them. Downloaded Raspbmc and installed to SD Card. Extremely easy. I had the addons and networks shares set up pretty quickly as I had it all done before multiple times on the iPad.

Takes about an hour for it to set up your xbmc, partitioning sdcard, etc. Once you setup fusion and install from zip into it, you have all the addons you need such as RTEPlayer, 4OD, NotFilmon and the rest.

I tried a variety of files and they all played flawlessly. One of my biggest 720p file of 6GB no problems. Very very impressed.

There is a slight lag in the menus alright. Also it's extremely slow updating library, but its a 3TB network (SMB) share so I can forgive this as it's only the once you have to do this.

Overall not bad at all. I may get a faster HTPC in time and attach this onto the router as a server to use it as a torrentbox/SABnzb+/Jdownloader maybe but well worth the money to play around with.

Oh, the XBMC Remotes are just fantastic. On my Android phone I'm using the official Remote which is nice and simple (no bells and whistles) but Yatse is just brilliant for the Pi. You can view all the media with fanart on it so it saves you from going through any menus on the Pi which is really cool.

On the iPad the apps xbmcRemote is excellent and also Constellation is awsome. And all free.

Access

Cheers, will try out yatse and the Constellation apps.

Bacchus

Media kit for Raspbmc (Pi not included) that will have you set up in minutes. Got a good review on engadet.

http://uk.farnell.com/jsp/search/productdetail.jsp?SKU=2310263&isRedirect=true?CMP=PRR-GLO-13-0015#

AntiRip

Bacchus wrote: »

Media kit for Raspbmc (Pi not included) that will have you set up in minutes. Got a good review on engadet.

http://uk.farnell.com/jsp/search/productdetail.jsp?SKU=2310263&isRedirect=true?CMP=PRR-GLO-13-0015#

I think that's fairly expensive at nearly e60. I have an 8GB Class 10 card but used a cheap 4GB Class 4 for a friend and I found it better than mine. A HDMI cable is no more the e3-e4 at dx or ebay and the remote app is free and is brilliant and responsive.

So all in it cost me e47. If I had to add another e60 it wouldn't be worth it really.

Anyone else notice the new Pi Confluence theme with the update? I quite like it

jonski

AntiRip wrote: »

I think that's fairly expensive at nearly e60. I have an 8GB Class 10 card but used a cheap 4GB Class 4 for a friend and I found it better than mine. A HDMI cable is no more the e3-e4 at dx or ebay and the remote app is free and is brilliant and responsive.

So all in it cost me e47. If I had to add another e60 it wouldn't be worth it really.

Anyone else notice the new Pi Confluence theme with the update? I quite like it

Any chance you would throw up a link to what you bought ?

AntiRip

jonski wrote: »

Any chance you would throw up a link to what you bought ?

No problem.

Cased Raspberry Pi
Power Supply
HDMI Cable e2.89
8GB SD Card (Class 6 is plenty) for a tenner

So you're set up for e63.89

When you get the card put it into your PC (Make sure you have an adapter if your PC doesn't have an SD slot) and download Raspxbmc.

All you have to do is tick the box for your card and accept the terms and conditions. Let it do its thing and when finished pop it into your Raspberry Pi and let that then finish off the installation. That's it

illdoit2morrow

I purchased this on ebay.(I know i know, crazy expensive but i didn't feel i had the know how to do it myself at the time).

I have a weird connection issue with it.

When i try to install add ons from fusion, i never get to the fusion add on link, nothing happens. I have xbmc running on my phone and tablet (both android) and it works fine on both. My ISP is Eircom and i am connecting to the pi via a working power line connection. I can however watch movies on Icefilms so there is definitely a connection there.

There is a link to fusion provided which didn't work, i added another myself and the same thing happens.

I've sent the SD card back to the seller, he tried it and it worked grand for him, he's sending me out the card again with a newer version of Openelec. I haven't tried using the pi in someone elses place to see if it is my router, but i will when i get the SD card back and it doesn't work in my place.


Has anyone else had an issue connecting their pi to an Eircom router? It's the Netopia 2247-02 if that makes any difference.

Cheers in advance.

Sofiztikated

AntiRip wrote: »

I think that's fairly expensive at nearly e60. I have an 8GB Class 10 card but used a cheap 4GB Class 4 for a friend and I found it better than mine. A HDMI cable is no more the e3-e4 at dx or ebay and the remote app is free and is brilliant and responsive.

So all in it cost me e47. If I had to add another e60 it wouldn't be worth it really.

Anyone else notice the new Pi Confluence theme with the update? I quite like it

Run into your local Dealz, €1.49.

I used a 4GB Class 4 as well, no problems either. (I used the XBMC boot from usb stick, don't know if that's still the best option, been a while since I mooched about with it.)

28064212

AntiRip wrote: »

I think that's fairly expensive at nearly e60. I have an 8GB Class 10 card but used a cheap 4GB Class 4 for a friend and I found it better than mine. A HDMI cable is no more the e3-e4 at dx or ebay and the remote app is free and is brilliant and responsive.

In fairness, you're missing the biggest single item that comes with it: the wireless mini keyboard. While a remote app is useful, it's nowhere near as good as a keyboard

AntiRip

Does anyone know how I can put a py file onto the Pi using Putty to SSH?

On PC/iPad the location of the resolvers py files are in \XBMC\addons\script.module.urlresolver\lib\urlresolver\plugins

robertxxx

Excuse the dumbness, but is the raspberry just a DIY media player.
If so, what's so special about it?

AntiRip

robertxxx wrote: »

Excuse the dumbness, but is the raspberry just a DIY media player.
If so, what's so special about it?

Far from it. Being a media is just one of many things you can do with it. It's actually a computer developed in the UK by the Raspberry Pi Foundation with the intention of promoting the teaching of basic computer science in schools.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi

superleedsdub

AntiRip wrote: »

Does anyone know how I can put a py file onto the Pi using Putty to SSH?

On PC/iPad the location of the resolvers py files are in \XBMC\addons\script.module.urlresolver\lib\urlresolver\plugins

Download winscp (for free) and ftp into the pi, hostname is the pi`s local IP, username is pi and password is raspberry

AntiRip

superleedsdub wrote: »

Download winscp (for free) and ftp into the pi, hostname is the pi`s local IP, username is pi and password is raspberry

Cheers. Putty does the same, might try that as well. Just can't list the directories. I thought ls would work seeing its Linux but says its an unknown command.

ComputerKing

Any one else having problems with repos being empty in openelec I've tried force refreshing and reinstalling openelec and the repo but no luck.

arodabomb

ComputerKing wrote: »

Any one else having problems with repos being empty in openelec I've tried force refreshing and reinstalling openelec and the repo but no luck.

I had that problem before with RASPBMC, I deleted addons.db or the addons15.db (think its in .xbmc/userdata/Database). Deleted that, rebooted and the repos were full again. Though if you've reinstalled the OS, that should have worked first. Might be an OPENELEC bug. Unless you are preserving/restoring your xbmc userdata. You could try removing the repo, deleting the addons.db and then reinstalling the repo.

Blank repos are normally caused by a repo being updated by the developer, he deletes the info for the old one, and the user hasn't updated to the new repo. But if you've force refreshed that should have updated.

One quick fix if you want the repo is to install it on xbmc on a pc, then use filezilla or similar to send it to the pi, just copy the entire addon folder over, reboot and it should work. Works with raspbmc anyway.

ComputerKing

arodabomb wrote: »

had that problem before with RASPBMC, I deleted addons.db or the addons15.db (think its in .xbmc/userdata/Database). Deleted that, rebooted and the repos were full again. Though if you've reinstalled the OS, that should have worked first. Might be an OPENELEC bug. Unless you are preserving/restoring your xbmc userdata. You could try removing the repo, deleting the addons.db and then reinstalling the repo.

Blank repos are normally caused by a repo being updated by the developer, he deletes the info for the old one, and the user hasn't updated to the new repo. But if you've force refreshed that should have updated.

One quick fix if you want the repo is to install it on xbmc on a pc, then use filezilla or similar to send it to the pi, just copy the entire addon folder over, reboot and it should work. Works with raspbmc anyway.

Tried uninstalling addons15.db to no avail.
Edit: Reinstalled openelec and deleted addons15.dB and it worked thanks.