Raspbmc Distribution now in Beta

[milhouse]

Raspbmc public beta announced.

Discussion on the developers forum here.

[rey]

Got this up and running! Just need to configure LIRC and it's pretty much perfect!

The addons seems a lot faster loading than on OpenElec which I'm happy about.

[intraclast]

I've also got this up and running. It took a really long time on the first boot. I gave up and went and mowed the lawn. When I came back there was XBMC. I only got openelec running yesterday, but this does seem more responsive than that. Played back some content pulled from a CIFS share on my FreeNAS box, seems good! The GUI locked up on me when I set my weather location, but I could still ssh in to restart it cleanly.

I'm new to XBMC so don't know what to expect, or how best to test it, but I'm impressed so far.

[praest76]

I haven't got a Pi yet to try this on so I'm going to go and unravel toilet-roll tubes in frustration instead.

[abishur]

How does it stand up to using xbmc on the debian image?

[welshblob]

How does it stand up to using xbmc on the debian image?

Depends which xbmc build you were using. I've only used raspbmc's test build on the debian image which was a lot more responsive than the equivalent openelec build a few days ago. This is as responsive as that one if not more with the added bonus of streaming plugins working now and being quite responsive themselves especially the one for the bbc iplayer which was very slow on the openelec builds when scraping the web site.

Rob

[abishur]

How does it stand up to using xbmc on the debian image?

Depends which xbmc build you were using. I've only used raspbmc's test build on the debian image which was a lot more responsive than the equivalent openelec build a few days ago. This is as responsive as that one if not more with the added bonus of streaming plugins working now and being quite responsive themselves especially the one for the bbc iplayer which was very slow on the openelec builds when scraping the web site.

Rob

Oh, I consider the openELEC to be a different entity from straight XBMC (or raspbmc now for that matter )

[Mr_Pi]

Just got this. Works really well. Great piece of software.

[welshblob]

How does it stand up to using xbmc on the debian image?

Depends which xbmc build you were using. I've only used raspbmc's test build on the debian image which was a lot more responsive than the equivalent openelec build a few days ago. This is as responsive as that one if not more with the added bonus of streaming plugins working now and being quite responsive themselves especially the one for the bbc iplayer which was very slow on the openelec builds when scraping the web site.

Rob

Oh, I consider the openELEC to be a different entity from straight XBMC (or raspbmc now for that matter )

openelec and raspbmc are similar in that they are very much distros for xbmc although implemented in different ways with differing strategies. The challenge is to work out whether issues are distro or xbmc related or just fundamental limitations of the device. Hence why I'm comparing them. The good news is though is that from what I've seen over the past week xbmc is a very good fit for the pi and I intend to be buying more when I can.

Rob

[sam nazarko]

Hi,

(My first post here, be kind).

I hope everyone is enjoying Raspbmc and would appreciate some feedback to fine tune the release.

Thanks

[RussIT]

is there anything i need to do to enble the analog audio output? At the moment I have output set to analog but have no sound just video on all the files i have tried.

[dom]

is there anything i need to do to enble the analog audio output? At the moment I have output set to analog but have no sound just video on all the files i have tried.

Make sure you have "analogue(OMX)" enabled as audio output device (as well as analogue setting at top of screen).

[RussIT]

thanks must have missed that the first time, as all woking now.

[LastSilmaril]

Raspbmc public beta announced.

Discussion on the developers forum here.

Sweet, looking fwd to trying it out

[Ogoshi]

I can't seem to download any add on's, they go onto the downloading screen but sit on 0%. Also when viewing the weather screen it can't seem to get the data (I have set my location). I've checked the network connection and I can SSH into it so not sure what else to check!

[RussIT]

I tried a few , two of them stayed on 0% but the youtube one worked fine and played youtube videos quite well. I'd like to know if theres a bbc iplayer /itv /ch4 plugin available?

[sam nazarko]

To install iPlayer, SSH in:

wget http://xbmc-iplayerv2.googlecode.com/fi ... 2.4.14.zip

Go to XBMC, navigate to:

settings > system > addons > install from ZIP

select /home/pi/iPlayer-v2.4.14.zip

Give it a minute and you will get a notification that it is installed.

Performance on iPlayer seems acceptable.

[sam nazarko]

The downloading issues will be looked into

[milhouse]

To install iPlayer, SSH in:

wget http://xbmc-iplayerv2.googlecode.com/fi ... 2.4.14.zip

Go to XBMC, navigate to:

settings > system > addons > install from ZIP

select /home/pi/iPlayer-v2.4.14.zip

Give it a minute and you will get a notification that it is installed.

Performance on iPlayer seems acceptable.

Wouldn't it be better to install from the repository? List of repositories here, the one you want is Hitchers Repo:

Code: Select all

wget http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19745842/Repo/xbmc.repo.hitcher/xbmc.repo.hitcher-3.0.1.zip

Then you can install iPlayer, and also I think 4OD, ITV Player and the one for Channel 5.

[RussIT]

Thanks thats made my day

[LastSilmaril]

SD card issues preventing this from booting completely on 2 diff cards. tried switching to stock start.elf, then stock kernel, then both - nothing (0x900), so I guess I'll have to wait to try this...

[milhouse]

SD card issues preventing this from booting completely on 2 diff cards. tried switching to stock start.elf, then stock kernel, then both - nothing (0x900), so I guess I'll have to wait to try this...

I finally got this to boot on a Transcend 4GB Class 10 SD card using just the Raspbmc supplied firmware - it probably took over 30 minutes for the XBMC GUI to finally appear.

Apparently the mmc issues should be fixed in the final release (according to Sam there won't be another beta) although it's interesting that none of the other distributions exhibit this problem on the same card, not even Debian Squeeze from mid-April which presumably pre-dates this Raspbmc build (unless Raspbmc is using very old firmware for some odd reason).

As for Raspbmc itself, it's a bit of a curates egg. It seems to play most media a little better than OpenELEC, but it's also exhibiting the same "sepia" colours in thumbnails, and the missing thumbnails/fanart problem (OMX timeouts), also browsing by thumbnails beyond the first 10-15 movies is almost impossible (GUI hangs/freezes, the missing thumbs/fanart etc.) so using it for any length of time in anger is next to impossible (just saying, I know it's only a beta!)

Great to have an alternative to OpenELEC though - kinda think we'll be spoiled for choice where XBMC on the Pi is concerned!

[sam nazarko]

@milhouse - Raspbmc doesn't use old firmware, the installer does. That is why you will notice that after install, all the issues are gone. If that's the case, then it means I just need to update the installer firmware in time for release.

[Mr_Pi]

Thanks for the info about iplayer. Silly question. How do you ssh into the pi?

[sam nazarko]

Username of pi
Password of raspberry

Use a tool such as Putty on Windows or run ssh from the command line on OSX or Linux