want to put together a kit order but...

[happyhacker]

there are a few things I would like to consider for a media centre in my lounge:

Do I need a wireless keyboard and if so which is a good one and compact to look unobtrusive in my lounge?[/list]

I Would like to operate wirelessly as I have no rj45 there. What is the best kit as I have a BT router on G signal.

What kit do I need to store music and video files? I have a W7 laptop upstairs but not sure how I would access the folders from the lounge. Anyway I would prefer to not have it on whilst in the lounge.

I see that it is best to run the Pi xbmc from a USB. Can I use that to also store files as well as the flash card which I assume will not have any OS on it?

• I also want to go on the internet with the Pi. What is needed to do this in conjunction with the iPAD?

• The other thing whilst playing music via the TV hookup is it possible to have some video like the WMP uses when it plays files?

Thanks.

[MoosePi]

http://bit.ly/Iaf2yF

[happyhacker]

I thought someone might do that to my post - cool point taken but some of my queries do not seem to be directly answered by many of the searches and there is always a chance someones beaten me to it and willing to give a specific reference.

[MrJake]

I thought someone might do that to my post - cool point taken but some of my queries do not seem to be directly answered by many of the searches and there is always a chance someones beaten me to it and willing to give a specific reference.

What a trashy reply from the dude above, I have googled those very search terms and they don't answer the questions asked here. So, instead of trying to make yourself look ultra cool why not teach your knowledge instead of being an arrogant ass.

To the OP, I have similar questions. I want to but a PI to replace my 360 as a media hub but I don't want to store the content on microSD cards, I want to use my laptop as a server on the network and stream it to the Pi. I have no idea if that's even possible, and judging from the post above it seems like i'll never find out.

[DougieLawson]

I wrote a basic shopping list for a RPi
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... 0&p=453257

Get lots of 4GB SDCards and you can have various flavours of operating system available to run with a card switch and reboot.

XMBC works with my daughter's iPhone, so should work with your iPad. I'm using the OpenELEC version of XMBC.

My RPi normally sits under the TV running Raspbian. I've got a hardware breakout board & breadboard attached with a few resistors and LEDs (on pins 18, 27 & 22) and a switch (pin 17). So I can run GPIO experiments without having to fiddle with any H/W.

Anyone who posts a RTFM or LMGTFY in the Beginner's Forum should be cast into the sin bin for a week by the moderators. We were all beginners once. Although doing some searches before posting can reveal the answer. Using Google with "foo bar site:raspberrypi.org" will restrict its searches to the forum. BUT, that assumes you know the words to search for.

[happyhacker]

As far as I am aware streaming is entirely possible and somewhere I have read that streaming in a certain way can be done to improve performance. If I can touch base with the article I will post it back here.