[poor_red_neck]

Hi guys/gals,

Me and my Fiance just purchased a new home, and are planning on cutting the cable when we move. In order for this to happen, I have to make the HTPC experience as painless as possible for my future wife... she's not technically inclined to say the least.

I've been toying with XBMC for PC and am currently building a HTPC. Until I get all of our DVDs and BluRays ripped and into HD storage, I'm setting everything up using 1channel (primewire.ag) and IceFilms. Currently I have it setup so the shows we watch are subscribed, this way XBMC gives us nice poster art and easy browsing of seasons/episodes using android XBMC remote. Can't get much easier than that.

Now this takes care of the living room. This is where RaspBMC comes in. The bedrooms...

My plan or rather my train of thought is to use Raspberry Pi's as "dummy boxes" sort of like a whole home DVR system, where there is a "master" box (in the living room, Windows 7 box) and the raspberry Pis will be pulling content and such off of the windows 7 box.

Now I am not very experienced with Linux, but I'm a quick learner. I have toyed with some linux distros in the past but ultimately fell back to windows. I grew up with DOS and started with windows 3.11 and it's just stuck with me.

What I'm hoping to accomplish with this, is having all the subscriptions hosted on the main HTPC in the living room. Essentially all of the XML subscription lists are retrieved off of the master box, and not stored locally to make this easier for my fiance. If we subscribe to a TV show from a content provider on the living room box, and then goto the bedroom it shows up on the raspbmc box as well. If these were all windows boxes I would probably just setup a file share server on the master box, and make the other bedroom terminals access the XBMC userdata from the master box. Also of course, when our DVD and BluRay collection is ripped onto the windows boxes' 3: 2TB hard drives the raspberry pi's can access this content as well. From what I've read alot of the scrapers don't work with raspbmc so if the main windows box can do all of the scraping and just push the content to the raspbmc "dummy" boxes it will accomplish what I'm looking to do.

The reason for going with raspbmc is obviously cost. I just can't build 3 other windows boxes for the same price as 3 raspberry Pis. Not to mention how small the raspberry pi's are.

I hope I have described my intent clearly enough. Is the raspberry pi right for me or am I barking up a tree that's just too tall to climb?
If something wasn't explained correctly please let me know and I'll try to elaborate.

Thanks!
-Jonathan

[cwide]

For your Linux concern: Openelec/raspbmc is about as easy as it gets. I'm not sure how your addons will run on it though. Maybe check xbmchub for some of the addons you mentioned.

Raspberry pi is going to be slow. If your library is huge then it will be even slower. It cannot effectively run a heavy skin with fanart. However, it can run a simple skin with minimal fanart decently.

This may not be a popular suggestion, but I would suggest putting xbmc on your main windows box. Then I would suggest trying rokus and plex for your bedroom clients. Will be the same price as raspberry pis but much less hassle.

That being said. If you are dead set on having a house wide xbmc feel, then pick a simple skin and try one raspberry pi and see if it works for you. If not you can turn it into something else.

[Willhelm]

Hi poor_red_neck,

the setup of raspbmc is fairly easy. You do not need to have a linux background for this setup. But be warned XBMC is a little bit slower on the pi. It is not a fluent as on a "real" PC.
To gain more performance I recommend to overclock it slightly to 800-900mhz

The pi is able to play HD material over Ethernet. The most easiest way to do so is to share your folders via windows (samba).

The Pi is a nice platform to learn linux and in case of Raspbmc you have a full Debian distribution underneath. If you want to learn Linux you could also install raspbian on a second SD card. This would turn you Raspberry Pi into a desktop computer.

all the best
willhelm

[poor_red_neck]

Thanks for the fast replies!

I also posted this over on the raspbmc forums, and a user recommended running a SQL database to keep everything synced up.

I think my biggest concern with this project, is keeping the "subscriptions" in sync between the boxes in the house.

I know talking about 1Channel and IceFilms is frowned upon, but it is what I'm left with. I currently pay for Netflix streaming, Hulu Streaming, and Amazon Prime. So the content that I'm streaming from 1channel is 90% of the time on one of those premium/pay streaming services. I choose to use 1channel because it just plain WORKS. So it's not like I'm not paying for it, it's just Netflix doesn't really work with XBMC and using the content scrapers, XBMC organizes the content better and makes for a better user experience.

I'm not too worried about the performance, we're used to HORRIBLE Time Warner Cable DVR boxes, and believe me... there is MUCH to be desired there. As long as the video playback is smooth, I'm fine. I also have no preference for the skin, or keeping the skin the same among boxes. As long as my fiance can scroll to "TV Shows", select a show, pick a source (streaming from various providers) and hit play and it plays we're fine. I'm currently using Aeon Nox right now, but again I have no dead set preference. Can the raspbmc support internet streaming content?

After doing some more reading, I think I'm just going to have to go with other windows boxes. They don't need to be spectacurlar, my HTPC is running an older P4 with 2GB of RAM and it handles it just fine. Even my core2 duo 2.2Ghz laptop runs XBMC perfectly fine.

The main goal of having the various boxes, is keeping the subscription information scraped to the TV shows database in sync.(sorry, I'm lacking alot of the XBMC terminology still)

Here's how it's setup on the PC right now:



And how the android remote looks:

[Mick1152]

One thing you may be overlooking, the sharing of the content via SMB. The Raspberry Pi doesn't have the most power or resources in the world and I've found obtaining content via SMB shares causes issues. My content is stored on an unRAID server and shared via NFS. I'm not technical enough to explain the whole thing properly but from what I've read this is my understanding:

The SMB networking drivers on the Pi use up some extra resources that the NFS networking doesn't. So it can sometimes cause skipping and freezing in shows/movies you are watching. This is especially true when using the Pi on bedroom TV's where you have to downmix the audio to stereo. This works the Pi quite a bit and in my case needs the Pi to be overclocked just a tad to keep everything smooth. But using NFS shares, my Pi's can play DTS or DD movies completely fine without any skipping or freezing. I used to have one in each of my bedrooms. I have since made a new system for my bedroom but both the kids' rooms have Pi's in them and I have one on my garage TV too.

[cwide]

Maybe you could share these libraries through UPnP from your main Windows box to the other Raspberry Pi boxes?

I don't know much about it, but would that be better than SMB?

[poor_red_neck]

One thing you may be overlooking, the sharing of the content via SMB. The Raspberry Pi doesn't have the most power or resources in the world and I've found obtaining content via SMB shares causes issues. My content is stored on an unRAID server and shared via NFS.

This was my greatest concern... whether A) it was even possible to access a SMB share from the Pi, and whether it could handle it.

I think I'm just going to bug a bunch of friends for their older PCs that they don't use and go that route.

Thank you very much for your help guys!