Raspberry Pi for XBMC, some myths and truths
#76
I use an alpha version of OpenELEC with Gotham on it. It is blindingly fast now, even the menus. Over the past 6 months a lot of work has been done on the Pi version of OpenELEC, and now it a lot faster than Raspbmc. If you're a Windows users, I hear Raspbmc is easier to install, however a little perseverance with OpenElec means you get a great customisable HT.

I have my Pis overclocked to 1GHz with a heat sink on the processor.

I have my Pis connected via Ethernet to a gigabit NAS via a gigabit hub. I did experience buffering initially but once I replaced my rubbish VirginMedia superhub with a Netgear WNDR4500 router, the buffering issues stopped. Basically my VM Superhub did not have a good enough throughput for videos - nothing to do with my Pis.

The menus are very responsive as are all the fanart. The only slight slow down I experienced was when I put my XBMC database on a remote mySQL server. If I leave each Pi to store it's own database the fanart appears fractionally quicker, however obviously the "played" status etc is not common across my house.

The built in ability of the Pi to respond to CEC signals is the main reason I use a Pi. On my Samsung TV, I power my Pi from the TV's USB port, and simply control XBMC / OpenELEC using my TV remote - no need for a mouse or keyboard. XBMC/OpenELEC on the Pi has transformedall my TV into the smartest of smart TVs.

XBMC/OpenELEC on the Pi is caspable of full 50Hz, 1080p streaming from a NAS. I use lots of different video formats and XBMC/OpenELEC handles all other them that I throw at it without any buffering. Admittedly I have had to customise some of the settings to get the playback working perfectly, jowever I now have a Raspberry Pi working shockingly fast and playing full 1080p video from a NAS.

OK the hardware may be out of date, however a lot of OSs use bloatware and need faster processors only because the software is poorly written. The point with the Pi is that you don't need the latest hardware, you just need to use well written programs such as XBMC / OpenELEC.
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#77
(2014-01-29, 17:37)mildenhall Wrote: I use an alpha version of OpenELEC with Gotham on it. It is blindingly fast now, even the menus.

I have my Pis overclocked to 1GHz with a heat sink on the processor.

The built in ability of the Pi to respond to CEC signals is the main reason I use a Pi.

Thanks for sharing this, three pieces of dynamite info!!! Nerd
Where do you download the gotham build and what heatsink are you using?
Cheers
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#78
(2014-01-29, 23:47)cognitive alien Wrote: Thanks for sharing this, three pieces of dynamite info!!! Nerd
Where do you download the gotham build and what heatsink are you using?
Cheers

Compared to the stable Frodo build, the Gotham build is a little bit buggy - it is a alpha build after all, however there are fixes released daily, sometimes twice daily and it will be going into beta very soon. With a little tweaking, the Gotham build works fine for me.The one thing you will notice is the speed difference between Frodo and Gotham.

Download it here : http://netlir.dk/rbej/builds/?dir=MilhouseVH/

Heat sink from : http://thepihut.com/search?q=heatsink

Have a read of http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...t=openelec or even http://openelec.tv for more info.
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#79
[edit: Just realized I might a bit late...]

Great post, many thanks!

I thought this would clear my question but I got the following question:

My system is set up as follows:

Synology NAS -> (Wifi) Router/Fritz Box -> Power LAN -> Gigabit Switch -> Raspberry Pi 2 with Openelec, overclocked to high settings.

I had the issue with some 1080 movies with DTS that it stutters and it is practically unwatchable.

My AV Receiver (Pioneer VSX 924) can handle DTS so I thought audio passthrough would be the solution. Unfortunately some movies still stutter, e.g. a 9gb movie:

Audio.............: German DTS 5.1 1509 Kbps
Audio2............: English DTS 5.1 1509 Kbps
Video.............: 1920x808 24 fps 8195 Kbps

I recognized that the display of my AV receiver shows "DTS" on Passthrough but as soon as it starts to stutter, no input audio is displayed - once it continues it shows DTS again.

I only operate to large speakers on the AVR.

Any hints, what the issue can be? Regular TV Shows or AAC works fine as well as streaming Full HD via Wifi on my laptop.

Many thanks for your feedback!
Tom
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