Comcast/Xfinity rant.

[analog_kidd]

I just bought a Raspberry Pi computer that I plan to use as a Media Center in the bedroom, and maybe another one in the basement if it works out. Rasberry Pi is a computer about the size of a deck of cards. It was designed for educational purposes, and has really taken off in the electronic hobbyist world. There are several Linux distributions that work with it, with a couple of them being set up just for use as a media center. Mostly they run an application called Kodi (formerly named XBMC),

 

Kodi can pull in content like video and audio that you have stored locally or on your network, or it can pull it in from Internet sources. It has a bunch of stuff it knows about natively, like Youtube or the DIY Channel's video library, but people have written add-ons that make it easy to watch other content, like video from other cable channels, and Crackle for free movies. I've even seen add-ons that stream live TV.

 

The Rasberry Pi cost me $69 on Amazon for a complete setup: board, case, SD Card, WiFi, cables. I just snapped it all together and two minutes later it's ready to plug in. If it sucks as a media player, I'll find some other use for it. If nothing else I can use it to surf the web and check email.

[rmiddle]

I just bought a Raspberry Pi computer that I plan to use as a Media Center in the bedroom, and maybe another one in the basement if it works out. Rasberry Pi is a computer about the size of a deck of cards. It was designed for educational purposes, and has really taken off in the electronic hobbyist world. There are several Linux distributions that work with it, with a couple of them being set up just for use as a media center. Mostly they run an application called Kodi (formerly named XBMC),

 

Kodi can pull in content like video and audio that you have stored locally or on your network, or it can pull it in from Internet sources. It has a bunch of stuff it knows about natively, like Youtube or the DIY Channel's video library, but people have written add-ons that make it easy to watch other content, like video from other cable channels, and Crackle for free movies. I've even seen add-ons that stream live TV.

 

The Rasberry Pi cost me $69 on Amazon for a complete setup: board, case, SD Card, WiFi, cables. I just snapped it all together and two minutes later it's ready to plug in. If it sucks as a media player, I'll find some other use for it. If nothing else I can use it to surf the web and check email.

 

Don't forget to enable the MPG2 decoder that will cost you like 2 bucks but worth it.

 

Thanks

Robert