RASBERRY AND WEB TV

[stratis63]

At the moment there are a number of new TV sets that are called "smart" and are web enabled, enabling users to play Web content. the Interface is far from user friendly.

At the same moment there are BILLION OF OLDER TV SETS  that have no web capabiity.

I think that rasbery would be ideal to bridge that gap and  make  all older Tv sets in affordable and above all User friendly way WEB enabled!!!!

What do you think?

[Ogoshi]

Completely with you on this. I want one to learn/try out things and if the likes of tvcatchup.com work on it then I will def be getting another one to attach to the bedroom tv as Freeview is a bit funny here.

[jamesh]

If the Roku 2 does what you are thinking, then hey presto - the Raspi uses the same SoC.

It's custom Linux software though, and private to Roku so new software would be required.

[cnxsoft]

You might be able to use XBMC, they are working on a port for the R-Pi. There is also a Youtube XBMC plugin.

[petemcfc]

The dev guys at the XBMC forum have put up a video of XBMC running on a Rasberry, so things are looking good.

[1aws]

Here is a video from the XBMC forum:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/143414.....100700.ogv

Allow time for the download, it may be slow.

[ErikV1970]

This is cool! Can't wait to 'build' one of my own

[cnxsoft]

The same video on YouTube

[tjwal]

I have XBMC running on a mac mini and I can't say I'm overly impressed with the interface.  It looks like it is still designed around using a game controller as a remote and the structure looks a lot like the DOS(linux??) file structure including ".." to go up a level.

Other than that it works pretty well and does add a lot of content.

I want to replace the mac with a raspberrypi if possible.  I have a networked drive so on board storage shouldn't be an issue.  From the specs it looks like I should be able to power it from the USB port on the TV so I won't need any more wall warts.

Can't wait!!!!

[cnxsoft]

There would however be some limitations like it might only support videos encoded with h.264. So if you have videos encoded with wmv, divx, xvid, real media, they might not play.

A solution would be to transcode your videos to h.264 or setup a server that can transcode videos on the fly based on the playback device. (something like Coherence media server).

[Generalkidd]

I'm hoping that whatever version of Linux that can be installed on this will support Adobe Flash Player. That way, assuming the browser is not a mobile browser, we'll be able to easily watch video content from websites like Youtube and Hulu.

Does anyone know if there's an ARM version of Adobe Flash Player available that will work with Linux Distros. I know there's an Android version of Flash Player, but I'm not interested in installing Android on Raspberry Pi. I want a full fledged OS that won't show up as a mobile OS online.

[jamesh]

cnxsoft said:


There would however be some limitations like it might only support videos encoded with h.264. So if you have videos encoded with wmv, divx, xvid, real media, they might not play.

A solution would be to transcode your videos to h.264 or setup a server that can transcode videos on the fly based on the playback device. (something like Coherence media server).


The GPU supports most of those BUT, licencing costs may mean they are not included.

[jamesh]

Generalkidd said:


I'm hoping that whatever version of Linux that can be installed on this will support Adobe Flash Player. That way, assuming the browser is not a mobile browser, we'll be able to easily watch video content from websites like Youtube and Hulu.

Does anyone know if there's an ARM version of Adobe Flash Player available that will work with Linux Distros. I know there's an Android version of Flash Player, but I'm not interested in installing Android on Raspberry Pi. I want a full fledged OS that won't show up as a mobile OS online.


It's not Linux that is the problem with Flash compatibility, it's Adobe. The source for Flash isn't open, so you need to rely on Adobe to recompile it for the appropriate Linux/architecture. And they are pretty slow at doing that. I know the graphics side can be made to work (as I've worked on accelerating it on the VC3), but I didn't get video acceleration working (time issues) - this was on an Arm device attached to the VC3. But really, it's down to Adobe, and they are pretty uninterested in desktop Linux on x86, so unlikey to be much more interested in Raspi.

Roll on HTML5.

[Generalkidd]

JamesH said:


Generalkidd said:


I'm hoping that whatever version of Linux that can be installed on this will support Adobe Flash Player. That way, assuming the browser is not a mobile browser, we'll be able to easily watch video content from websites like Youtube and Hulu.

Does anyone know if there's an ARM version of Adobe Flash Player available that will work with Linux Distros. I know there's an Android version of Flash Player, but I'm not interested in installing Android on Raspberry Pi. I want a full fledged OS that won't show up as a mobile OS online.


It's not Linux that is the problem with Flash compatibility, it's Adobe. The source for Flash isn't open, so you need to rely on Adobe to recompile it for the appropriate Linux/architecture. And they are pretty slow at doing that. I know the graphics side can be made to work (as I've worked on accelerating it on the VC3), but I didn't get video acceleration working (time issues) - this was on an Arm device attached to the VC3. But really, it's down to Adobe, and they are pretty uninterested in desktop Linux on x86, so unlikey to be much more interested in Raspi.

Roll on HTML5.


I did a bit of research on this and it seems that the only ARM version of Flash Player is for Android and a few other tablet OS's. There are a couple versions available for Ubuntu, but it seems they're only optimizied for a specific ARM SoC and that there's no generic Flash Player for ARM. Do you know if Ubuntu will at least be able to install on Pi?

[jamesh]

Generalkidd said:


JamesH said:


Generalkidd said:


I'm hoping that whatever version of Linux that can be installed on this will support Adobe Flash Player. That way, assuming the browser is not a mobile browser, we'll be able to easily watch video content from websites like Youtube and Hulu.

Does anyone know if there's an ARM version of Adobe Flash Player available that will work with Linux Distros. I know there's an Android version of Flash Player, but I'm not interested in installing Android on Raspberry Pi. I want a full fledged OS that won't show up as a mobile OS online.


It's not Linux that is the problem with Flash compatibility, it's Adobe. The source for Flash isn't open, so you need to rely on Adobe to recompile it for the appropriate Linux/architecture. And they are pretty slow at doing that. I know the graphics side can be made to work (as I've worked on accelerating it on the VC3), but I didn't get video acceleration working (time issues) - this was on an Arm device attached to the VC3. But really, it's down to Adobe, and they are pretty uninterested in desktop Linux on x86, so unlikey to be much more interested in Raspi.

Roll on HTML5.


I did a bit of research on this and it seems that the only ARM version of Flash Player is for Android and a few other tablet OS's. There are a couple versions available for Ubuntu, but it seems they're only optimizied for a specific ARM SoC and that there's no generic Flash Player for ARM. Do you know if Ubuntu will at least be able to install on Pi?


No Ubuntu  - they don't support the particular version of Arm chip in the Raspi.

Although they have asked to meet up at CES...