Anyone here use a Raspberry Pi as a media centre?

Joebob

Joebob

Joebob

Soldato
Joined
27 Sep 2005
Posts
5,909
Location
Burbage, Hinckley
I have started using a Raspberry Pi running openelec XMBC as my main media centre and for NAS drive. I have to say I'm really impressed.

I haven't come across a format for movies yet that it wont play and with the addition of a small heatsink I have it overclocked to 1000Mhz and it plays 1080p faultlessly.

Anyone else here use one and if so then what are your experiences or recommendations etc?
 
That's great news- having read that it couldn't cope with 1080p I have been looking at the Android USBSticks instead - out of interest, what speed does the processor need to be running at to get smooth playback?
 
I have one - but for some reason I still can't get 1080p uncompressed blu-ray rips to work. They work fine on other devices on the network so I can only imagine it's the Pi :(
 
I have had a RP now for around three weeks or so and I have found....

All HD material played fine, 720p and 1080p. I enabled DTS passthrough as the TV supports it.

My Sandisk Extreme 16GB SD card works a treat, even when overclocked. It does not need to be that big, as I'm streaming (wired) from my Server but I had it "spare" from my camera bag. I would imagine a 2GB card (fast) would be fine.

There was absolutely no advantage (performance wise) from me running it on the above card or a super fast USB 3 stick. I imagine that those who get an improvement is due to using a slower SD card. As I have had no SD card corruption, as yet, then I am fine with continuing to use that.

I have overclocked it to 900mhz and I have found that helps with the GUI of XBMC, I did not seem to have an issue with running at std clocks for any HD material. I use the default Confluence skin. Even the bigger 1080p with the larger bit rates seemed to be fine.

I am using OpenELEC build 3.0.5 at the moment. I have tried Raspbmc but not Xbian. OpenElec runs well with only slight delays when opening certain menus etc, but that might be down to my large collection of media files indexed.

I did buy myself a decent power supply (about £8), clear case (less than £2) and a set of heatsinks (about £2.50) - but I'm not sure how effective they are as I never tried the Pi without them.

I was uncertain on how well the Pi would suit my needs for a second HTPC, without the costs of building a more traditional PC type box, and it does surprise me on how well it performs.
 
Last edited:
cavemanoc said:
That's great news- having read that it couldn't cope with 1080p I have been looking at the Android USBSticks instead - out of interest, what speed does the processor need to be running at to get smooth playback?
Click to expand...
Everything plays absolutely fine at stock speed of 700mhz but overclocking really improves the menu systems etc otherwise they are a bit sluggish!

oli collett said:
I have one - but for some reason I still can't get 1080p uncompressed blu-ray rips to work. They work fine on other devices on the network so I can only imagine it's the Pi :(
Click to expand...
Never tried any uncompressed rips so can't really comment. Seems to handle avi and mkv without any hassle at all and I know you can actually buy licences for different codecs from the raspberry pi store - really cheap too.
Vimes said:
I have had a RP now for around three weeks or so and I have found....

All HD material played fine, 720p and 1080p. I enabled DTS passthrough as the TV supports it.

My Sandisk Extreme 16GB SD card works a treat, even when overclocked. It does not need to be that big, as I'm streaming (wired) from my Server but I had it "spare" from my camera bag. I would imagine a 2GB card (fast) would be fine.

There was absolutely no advantage (performance wise) from me running it on the above card or a super fast USB 3 stick. I imagine that those who get an improvement is due to using a slower SD card. As I have had no SD card corruption, as yet, then I am fine with continuing to use that.

I have overclocked it to 900mhz and I have found that helps with the GUI of XBMC, I did not seem to have an issue with running at std clocks for any HD material. I use the default Confluence skin. Even the bigger 1080p with the larger bit rates seemed to be fine.

I am using OpenELEC build 3.0.5 at the moment. I have tried Raspbmc but not Xbian. OpenElec runs well with only slight delays when opening certain menus etc, but that might be down to my large collection of media files indexed.

I did buy myself a decent power supply (about £8), clear case (less than £2) and a set of heatsinks (about £2.50) - but I'm not sure how effective they are as I never tried the Pi without them.

I was uncertain on how well the Pi would suit my needs for a second HTPC, without the costs of building a more traditional PC type box, and it does surprise me on how well it performs.
Click to expand...

I'm using a standard 4GB class 4 SD card and have no issues at all. I did buy a class 10 card but have read online not to use high speed cards if you are overclocking as it can corrupt the card. I use my class 10 one now for ReadyBoost on my laptop and that works nicely :)



The one issue I am having, which is probably more of a general XMBC problem, is that my scrapers don't always report back properly on the film info etc! i.e. I get Avengers 2 rather than Avengers and The Amazing Spiderman 2 rather than The Amazing Spiderman.... can anyone advise here?
 
If I name my films exactly, and include the year, as noted on IMDB I rarely get any scraping issues. If I do I then just refresh the film and note what the scraper finds as the correct one (naming wise) and then remember that title for the renaming of the file, if that makes sense.

Example...

The Amazing Spiderman would be named...

The Amazing Spider-Man (2012).mkv
 
Last edited:
Didn't over clock, works fine. Love that my tv remote controls it. Plays everything under 20GB.have three of them with a shared mysql database so that I can stop/resume and share watched status.
 
I have an older 256mb Pi, it's a brilliant little media center. It's running Raspbmc on a class 10 card. Overclocking the CPU will not help with playback of x264 content as this is hardware accelerated anyway. All 1080p content I've tested has played well.

I've added the MPEG-2 licence and it's playing live/recorded TV (including HD) using Argus TV as a server.
 
I hadn't thought of a common / shared mysql database, I will have a read about that and look to set one up on my server.

I was truly amazed at how good the CEC remote aspect is, I have almost all the remote controls from my TV remote.
As I have a spare MCE remote I am using that but I did not expect to find how good the CEC type would be.
 
niggyg said:
I have an older 256mb Pi, it's a brilliant little media center. It's running Raspbmc on a class 10 card. Overclocking the CPU will not help with playback of x264 content as this is hardware accelerated anyway. All 1080p content I've tested has played well.

I've added the MPEG-2 licence and it's playing live/recorded TV (including HD) using Argus TV as a server.
Click to expand...

Argus TV... never heard of that. Is it a just a plugin or do I need any hardware to get it working?
 
I have been using my Pi for XMBC for about a month now without issue.I have installed iPlayer and Tvcatchup addons and they work flawlessly.

The menu can be a bit sluggish at times but I have the xbmc remote installed on my phone sob rarely use it. My phone lists everything my Pi has access too and I just select it to play from there. I can also click a youtube link on my phone and have it play on the Pi, that is pretty cool.
 
Joebob said:
Argus TV... never heard of that. Is it a just a plugin or do I need any hardware to get it working?
Click to expand...


It's a piece of software that runs as a service on a Windows box. It interfaces with your TV card. You then run an Argus TV plugin on xbmc and vola... live TV. Live TV via an aerial on the TV is easier, I mainly use it for recordings. You can schedule recordings through http while your away from home too.
 
oli collett said:
I have one - but for some reason I still can't get 1080p uncompressed blu-ray rips to work. They work fine on other devices on the network so I can only imagine it's the Pi :(
Click to expand...

You need to purchase the VC1 codec/hardware decoder.
Also you may struggle to play large blu ray rips over the network as you get buffer issues (the exact same files run perfect locally) with raspbmc. That said it's a software issue as I have managed to stream these files with openelec without issue.
 
Last edited:
I started with RaspBMC, but had issues with it freezing in screensaver mode, and some general glitches. Moved to OpenELEC and its been smooth sailing since, a bit less snappy as I haven't reapplied the overclocks to OpenELEC yet. Would recommend it hugely, works well and handles all my NAS media flawlessly. Love the subtitle search as well, hasn't let me down yet!
 
C.R.A.Z.Y said:
You need to purchase the VC1 codec/hardware decoder.
Also you may struggle to play large blu ray rips over the network as you get buffer issues (the exact same files run perfect locally) with raspbmc. That said it's a software issue as I have managed to stream these files with openelec without issue.
Click to expand...

The buffer issues maybe because of the network protocol your using. SAMBA has more overhead than NFS, if your not already, and are able to, use NFS.

I've found Raspbmc's reliability has improved loads over the last 6 months and its definitely usable as the main media center.
 
I got my Pi yesterday and I'm massively impressed. I purchased the heatsink kit and a cheap mix and match case for about £2. Installation via OpenELEC was a doddle, I'm using a 4GB Class 10 SD card with the XBMC stuff on a USB3 8GB stick. It's a great bit of kit for what it is.

I didn't get much of a chance to do much with it last night so top of the list tonight is to get it overclocked and tucked behind the TV neatly. The HDMI-CEC feature is a massive help though, I've got nearly every function accessible via my Panasonic TV remote so it's saves on me having yet another control lying on the table.

Very impressed so far indeed.
 
I'm also using my pi as a media centre and very impressed! Anyone have other suggestions for addons other than the standard tvcatchup iplayer etc?

AirPlay works flawlessly on mine also.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom