Any alternative to xbmc?

Hello,

I tried all currently available XBMC based images and, while video playback is good enough, xvmc, the media center part itself, is way to slow and bloated for my taste.
Anyone can point me to an alternative, that boots up and allows me to use my tv’s remote control, shows a simple ui to access my usb drive? I need no databases, no apps, no scrapers, just the directories on my hd how they are.

Hello,

I tried all currently available XBMC based images and, while video playback is good enough, xvmc, the media center part itself, is way to slow and bloated for my taste.
Anyone can point me to an alternative, that boots up and allows me to use my tv’s remote control, shows a simple ui to access my usb drive? I need no databases, no apps, no scrapers, just the directories on my hd how they are.

Go back to the quickest of the ones you tried and replace the skin with the SLiK skin.

It's very simple, uncluttered, and fast.

Additionally, you may want to overclock using the Raspi-Config program to find your best UN-Over-volted performance, then set it to forced overclocking by changing your config.txt file

If I am not mistaken that is the one both Xbian and Raspbmc report as broken. I tried some other, simpler skins, but this did not make directory browsing any faster. I will check SLiK, but I am under the impression xbmc was developed for a way more powerful computer than the raspi is. It just does not give a good experience being what it is...

If I am not mistaken that is the one both Xbian and Raspbmc report as broken. I tried some other, simpler skins, but this did not make directory browsing any faster. I will check SLiK, but I am under the impression xbmc was developed for a way more powerful computer than the raspi is. It just does not give a good experience being what it is...

Based on your posts, it sounds like you should probably sell the Pi and buy a pre-made, or build one yourself

Any other idea, anyone? Is xbmc the only media center application available on the raspi? Seriously?

Are you sure you have a good configuration ?
Your experience doesn't correspond with mine. Perhaps some benchmarks would
be more informative. Else : Yes there is only XBMC.
Or omxplayer , but thats Debian command-line.

ghans

I like my electronics responsive, and unfortunately, xbmc on RPi isn't there yet.
I have resorted to wiring my PC up to the TV to act as my media center.

My guess is that xbmc never will be there. It was developed for a class of computers completely different from the raspi. What would be necessary was something similar, quite stripped down, similar to wiimc or the original geekbox, that does not suck the life out of a small raspi.

Are you guys talking about a full distro of XBMC? Have you tried RaspBMC?

With a 900mhz CPU, 300mhz GPU and 500mhz MEM overclock, I'm able to play 1080i videos over wifi from a SMB share on my main media centre running Win7 with a full XBMC install.

I grafted a USB wifi dongle chipset directly to the USB hub on the RPI so it still fits in the ModMyPi case. The kids sit upstairs with the RPi plugged into an old TV, and powered from the TVs USB port, and using my old Samsung Galaxy S Android with the XBMC app installed, they controlling movies, TV shows, and music without a glitch. They dont have any mouse or keyboard, which is good as they are only young. The app is more than enough to do the job of controlling everything. I do everything I need with it via SSH.

Worth a try if you havent already

Do you have a guid on how you set it all up
Much appreciated

Paul.

I'm also looking for an xbmc alternative.
For me, xbmc just gives too many problems. I'd like to use my raspberry pi for listening to music, photo frame, and playing games through emulator, on an 1920x1080 monitor connected through hdmi. The data is on an HD connected through USB.
I tried raspbmc, but it currently has some problems with external audio (i.e. playing audio outside of xbmc) - I didn't manage to get any emulator to produce any sound.
openelec and darkelec had problems with the slideshow - pictures are displayed with the wrong aspect ratio, and resolution artifacts, same with xbian.
Currently I'm therefore using raspbian, with xbmc frodo rc3. my CPU is always close to 100% - even 10 hours after starting xbmc, doing nothing. (checking CPU with top/htop logging in through ssh)
I tried everything - dds is disable, no rss, I removed all addons, set screensaver to dark.
algorithmdirtyregions=1 or 2 gave horrible artifacts, and did not solve the cpu problem. (which I think means that there is a bug)
nofliptimeout =1000 turned screen dark all the time, and also didn't solve the problem.
In addition I haven't been able to start a program (i.e. emulator/emulatorstation) from xbmc. Advanced Launcher keeps xbmc running in a small screen, and I have a problem with keeping the keyboard input when starting a script from xbmc that kills xbmc. So, I have to exit xbmc to start the emulator, and when I do that, often the xbmc picture remains on top of the framebuffer, so I can not see anything typed. alt-Fx doesn't help.
In short, for me xbmc is too buggy and I'm looking for an alternative. I'll probably try what I had on my previous center - mpd + gpmc on top of X11, with some screensaver for the picture frame.
It would still be nice to have a more integrated solution....

XBMC has heritage , thats what the name suggests .
AFAIK the main "Game Loop" is eating all the CPU , that
is a design thing that seems to never been overthought.


ghans

You can just use omxplayer directly from the command line. Works especially well if you log in via ssh from your laptop to do it. Spacebar pauses, arrow keys jump forward and back, Q to quit. No overhead, very fast.

Yeah, try RaspBMC. It works fine on mine, running HD vids with no problems.

Try android for the pi. Its quite cool!

Android?

rasplex.com, i dont know if you have got experience with plex, me neither, but it will support netflix and hulu i think