[ronbaby]

You just described an x86 pc in a media case.

From a purely hardware/functional perspective, perhaps, but otherwise, no. The daydreams I've thrown out in this thread have one important property that a PeeCee in a media case does not: A total cost of $99 or (hopefully) less, which is to say the current retail price point of a Roku3.

Dont know why you would power all that with a pi, but you could just modify this case with a few extra screws throw a PI, power strip, hub, usb hdd ect.. and be done.

It may perhaps have escaped your attention, but the current price of that case alone is $71.99 + $7.99 (shipping) + about another $6-7 for California sales tax...

... and after spending all that, you still wouldn't even have a power supply!

[ronbaby]

seriously guys?

Lets break it down
Pi $35 (not $25)
SDHC card $10
Micro USB charger $10
Case $10
Remote $20
HDMI cable $5
maybe a Wifi adapter $10

I'm not 100% sure that an SDHC card will be needed with the Pi compute module. Apparently it will come with an on-board "4Gbyte eMMC Flash device". (I don't really know what that is, so I can't say if it would make external storage in the form on an SDHC card unnecessary or not, but I do suspect that it might.)

just buy a FTV.

The new Amazon FireTV is apparently priced... perhaps not coincidentally... at $99... exactly the same as current retail on Roku3.

The dream I was speculating about would (in my dreams) cost less than that.

or put in abit more and get yourself a NUC.

Last time I looked, cost on that option was over $250 USD. Have things changed?

If you still set on the Pi. Cubox i, will soon take over this and you can get a dual core for $69 plus shipping.

That's certainly an interesting looking box. I remember seeing pictures of it perhaps 6 months ago, and then writing it off as "vaporware" at the time. Unfortunately, according to the web site, it still is, as of the present moment. (But I will definitely be looking at it again in 30 days from now, when it is alleged to start shipping.)

I feel compelled to note however that since you went to some lengths to point out the total cost of a useful Pi, it would be unfair not to do that also for one of these Cuboxes:

Cubox-i2 - $69.99
Power supply - $8
4GB SDHC card $7
WiFi - $10

Now we are right up smack dab next to that psychologically important $99 price point. That's apparently what I'll need to spend in order to get a useful Cubox-i2.

Not that that is a bad thing.

[nickr]

I am not sure your dream is either necessary or cheap.

Your dream device is just a deconstructed rpi paired with a specialised PCB to build it back up to being a full rpi. Why not just use a model B in the first place.

Secondly, how much do you think this PCB will be? Unless you make a hell of a lot of them, I'd have thought the PCB alone would be around $80.

[ronbaby]

I am not sure your dream is either necessary or cheap.

Your dream device is just a deconstructed rpi paired with a specialised PCB to build it back up to being a full rpi. Why not just use a model B in the first place.

There are several things that make a Pi Model B sub-optimal from my perspective, and I think, from the perspective of most folks who consider using it as a dedicated Home Theater (XBMC) box.

Starting just from the esthetics, who wants a box with wires & connectors sticking out of all four sides? Or even three (if you don't use the audio & composite video ports/sockets, which no self-respecting home theater is going to be using).

Second, the number of USB ports (2) is less than optimal. Three would be better.

Third, I'm not sure what kinds of (power) loads those Pi USB ports will handle. Might be better to have a dedicated (motherboard integrated) hub.

Fourth, there's no WiFi. Every modern home theater gadget these days has built-in WiFi.

Lastly, and most importantly, there is one hell of a big difference between a hobbist/maker/tinkerer and somebody who just simply wants to put a box in his/her HiFi cabinet and use it to play ripped ISOs. The latter are happy having to buy individual parts & pieces, one at a time, from numerous different suppliers. The former want a single packaged solution... not another problem which requires hours of scrounging around for reasonably priced parts (e.g. case, power supply, WiFi dongle, heat sinks). Yes, one can buy Raspberry Pi "starter kits" off eBay that include all these things, but by and large, those are too expensive and you still don't end up with either WiFi or enough USB ports.

Secondly, how much do you think this PCB will be? Unless you make a hell of a lot of them, I'd have thought the PCB alone would be around $80.

In quantity, I was thinking maybe like $20-$25 apiece.

I will admit however to being and unbridled optimist.

[calev]

... and after spending all that, you still wouldn't even have a power supply!

Thats what the power strip I mentioned was for.

And I agree with Nikr, Your not going to get your day dream from the pi for less than 99$. Having the pi come in two pieces will just make it more expensive. My PI set up cost more than a 100, but its pretty pimped out and looks pretty good.

Lastly, and most importantly, there is one hell of a big difference between a hobbist/maker/tinkerer and somebody who just simply wants to put a box in his/her HiFi cabinet and use it to play ripped ISOs. The latter are happy having to buy individual parts & pieces, one at a time, from numerous different suppliers. The former want a single packaged solution... not another problem which requires hours of scrounging around for reasonably priced parts (e.g. case, power supply, WiFi dongle, heat sinks). Yes, one can buy Raspberry Pi "starter kits" off eBay that include all these things, but by and large, those are too expensive and you still don't end up with either WiFi or enough USB ports.

Yeah you will have to pay a premium to make it look nice. Or sacrifice a little functionality and go android.

[noggin]

I'm not 100% sure that an SDHC card will be needed with the Pi compute module. Apparently it will come with an on-board "4Gbyte eMMC Flash device". (I don't really know what that is, so I can't say if it would make external storage in the form on an SDHC card unnecessary or not, but I do suspect that it might.)

You will be able to boot from the eMMC in the same way that you can boot from SD Card. The eMMC is a better solution for embedded applications which the Compute module is partially aimed at. (It's more reliable, potentially faster I believe, and designed for purpose)

Quite a few other ARM devices use eMMC or offer it as an option (Beagle Bone Black, ODroid U series etc.)

[nickr]

@ronbaby

Personally I think you are wrong about wifi, wired is the way to go. Wifi is a world of pain for sustained data throughput.

Handy is all you are using it for is scraping or software updates, but for serving media, bleech. It's probably a selling point, followed by being an immediate source of frustration for Joe Public.

That case in post 2 http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...pid1686966 would make a pi into a very nice looking media machine, albeit at a cost of $32 for the case ($17) plus power supply ($15). The remote can be solved with a cheap IR sensor soldered to the GPIO pins (which is what I suspect they sell you, with a tidy pcb, a resistor and a capacitor for $18).

Why would you need more than two USB ports if you have internal IR? Occasionally you may need a keyboard, unlikely to need a mouse for anything XBMC related.

External USB storage? I'm a server kinda guy.

Also I suspect that by the time you bring an appliance based on this to market, the likes of the FireTV will be so reliable and cheap that you'd be pushing to sell many of them.

In short my friend, I suspect you have a solution looking for a problem

[Ned Scott]

Let's not forget that the Pi has a freakishly good video chip that allows it to have top-of-the-line picture quality, despite the weak CPU specs. An important factor for any comparison to other hardware.

[ronbaby]

Quite a few other ARM devices use eMMC or offer it as an option (Beagle Bone Black, ODroid U series etc.)

Wow! I had already looked a bit at the specs for the BB Black, but I had never even heard of the ODroids until now. I spent at least a couple of hours tonight looking over the specs for all of those, and I came away really impressed, particularly with the -U3 model. It appears that the regular retail for that is going to be $65 USD (but it is on sale now, one-per-customer, to non-Koreans only for 59). The features/price ratio seems very attractive for that model, and it appears that XBMC may be getting close to being production quality on that (but may need a bit more fermenting yet).

Quad core @ 1GHz with 2GB RAM? I'd say offhand that that ought to beat the living poop out of the Pi... once the XBMC bugz are all worked out. (The claims is made in some places that it will do 1080p. but there may be caveats, and for me at least, it is just as important to know that it will also play 480p video, which I have a lot of, and it seems that it may perhaps not like videos that aren't in one of its few "supported" resolutions.)

Anyway, thanks for mentioning that.

[ronbaby]

@ronbaby

Personally I think you are wrong about wifi, wired is the way to go. Wifi is a world of pain for sustained data throughput.

Not to disagree, but...

You've undoubtedly got more experience that me, but I can say the following things from direct personal experience:

(1) As of recently, I own a Roku3, and it talks wirelessly (N) to my Linksys E2000 which in turn is hooked to my lowly 6Mbps DSL line.
(2) My flatscreen only does 720p, so I don't really have any need for streaming anything above that.
(3) Netflix itself recommends just 5Mbps for 720p.
(4) I've clocked the WiFi between my E2000 (with aftermarket big ass antennas) and my living room HTPC at 12-14Mbps.
(5) I run Netflix all the time (using the Roku3) and also The Daily Show & Colbert Report (using the HTPC & XBMC) @ 720p and it all works perfectly. No hiccups at all with either.
(6) if there ever were any hiccups with either of those, I'd be blaming my DSL line before I would be at all concerned about my WiFI.
(7) I've even streamed some modest bandwidth (12Mpbs or less) 1080p videos from the server in my office out to the HTPC/XBMC and had no problems at all.
(8) But yea, WiFi for an actual Blu-Ray rip is out of the question. Other than that however, it's just dandy... in my experience.

Why would you need more than two USB ports if you have internal IR? Occasionally you may need a keyboard, unlikely to need a mouse for anything XBMC related.

I said already... (1) for either a WiFi or twistedpair dongle, (2) for local mass storage, and (3) for keyboard/mouse, or at any rate, for the unexpected... which I, at least, have come to expect.

External USB storage? I'm a server kinda guy.

If I didn't think that I'd have to pay for repairing it later on... when I move out... I'd start drilling holes and running twisted pair in my apartment, out to the living room, and then I would be "a server guy" also. But I don't really feel like doing that, so I have set up my own modern style sneaker net instead. I rip my Blu-Rays on the office server machine and drop them onto an external 2.5" portable USB3 drive, and then a hand carry that out to the living room and plug it into the HTPC.

Thus my fixation with local USB mass storage.

Also I suspect that by the time you bring an appliance based on this to market, the likes of the FireTV will be so reliable and cheap that you'd be pushing to sell many of them.

I was about to retort "Yeabut can the FireTV run XBMC?" I googled and see now that it already can. (Wow, that was fast! The bloody thing was only released a short time ago, no?)

But I am still compelled to ask: "Yeabut, what is the state of XBMC on that? Is it really fully working? Is all of the HW accell working for everything? Audio passthrough?"

More worryingly, this document seems to suggest that the FireTV will never be able to play any H.264 over 20Mbps:

https://developer.amazon.com/appsandserv...ifications

Is that true or false?

In short my friend, I suspect you have a solution looking for a problem

Either that, or else I are one. :-)

[jammyb]

Do this test.

Put a media file on to a USB stick/HDD. Plug into your player and play it.

It plays nigh on instantaneously. Jump around in the file a little bit. Wind and rewind it. Responds and resumes as quickly as when you pressed play, yeah?

Now stream that file [or any other it doesn't matter] over wired.

It again, plays nigh on instantaneously. Again, wind and rewind and jump about and press play. Straight back into t, yeah?

Now stream it wirelessly.

It loads after a few seconds, ok. We can cope with that. It's playing. Now jump forward. Slightly delayed in getting back on track. Now jump back. Is it buffering yet or has it frozen. Then it finally resumes. No where near where you were or where you wanted to be. But it's playing!!!


So, sure. WiFi can play media. But you gotta compare WiFi streaming to a raspberry pi. It can do it. Just not as quickly/smoothly as a full blown HTPC or wired connection can.


That's my experience of it in more than one situation. It gets better when someone uses a microwave or a DECT phone and you start getting artefacts on the screen.

[RockerC]

I think that for XBMC use this new compute module would be perfect for something like the Fairywren Mini-ITX motherboard by GeekRoo

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kwan...i-fairywre

http://www.geekroo.com/products/795

Fairywren Mini-ITX is basically a HTPC motherboard but uses a Raspberry Pi instead of an Intel or AMD socket CPU and RAM.

Using a Raspberry Pi Compute Module a such board could be made smaller a overall make a cheaper product too

[nabberuk]

Trouble is with the firetv as mentioned above is that some people (like me) don't want android but an OpenELEC version. If they can get openelec to run on the firetv then I would buy one straight away.

[ronbaby]

So, sure. WiFi can play media. But you gotta compare WiFi streaming to a raspberry pi. It can do it. Just not as quickly/smoothly as a full blown HTPC or wired connection can.

I won't disagree with you at all, and in fact, it isn't just my ripped blu-rays that I have on my portable external 2.5" USB drive, but also my ripped ordinary DVDs and my other stored videos. But for a lot of things, including streamed Netflix and streamed Comedy Central and PBS 720p content, WiFi streaming works just fine. To say otherwise would be less than truthful.

---

Trouble is with the firetv as mentioned above is that some people (like me) don't want android but an OpenELEC version. If they can get openelec to run on the firetv then I would buy one straight away.

Maybe you'll get your wish:

http://www.droidforums.net/forum/android...ooted.html

[Budwyzer]

seriously guys?

This thread is for discussing new Pi hardware. Pi haters will now be asked to exit. Thank you and have a good day.

It isn't a "discussion" unless both sides are allowed to participate. If haters aren't allowed, then it's just a big virtual circle jerk.

I have made a paper case for one of my Pi's does that count as $10?
What about my other lego case?

Paper? No
Legos though... Probably, yeah. Legos are expensive!