I recently got myself a Raspberry Pi (512 MB). My purpose for it mainly is to be able to stream video from an attached USB (NTFS) hard disk (attached and powered by an USB hub) on two iPads (iPad 2 and iPad3) and possibly listening to some music from the same hard disk on the iPhone 4 when in the car with the kids in the back.
I first started by downloading RaspBMC. Very good for playing files from the Raspberry onto the audio system; using the iPhone or iPad as a remote control (xbmcRemote); but not what I wanted to do.
Then I downloaded and installed SqueezePlug. I managed to get SqueezePlug working with miniDLNA and using a LAN cable. On the iPhone 4 using Ace Player my .m4v files (converted using HandBrake from .mkv using the Universal setting) play perfectly, but on the iPad3 the image freezes, while the sound just continues.
When I tried to add my WiFi dongle (TL-WN723NV2), after reboot both the LAN and wireless are not working. I was unable to revert to a working LAN connection, so I repeated the complete setup about four times
So I tried Wheezy. A lot harder to install and configure, since it misses the nice setup interface of the SqueezePlug build, but using several form posts, I managed to get AirVideo installed and working. Unfortunately my AirVideo app on both the iPhone and the iPad doesn't seem to allow to add the Dutch subtitles that are available for selection with Ace Player.
Since this doesn't seem to be the optimum configuration, I haven't tried to get the WiFi to work.
So probably the best choice is to stay with the SqueezePlug and try to fix the WiFi.
As a general discussion, I would like to ask the forum what you think is the best configuration/setup to accomplish my goal.
In the meantime, I going to read some more to hopefully solve my WiFi challenge.
Thanks.
Arnold