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No point at all in an SSD if all the media is piping in over the ethernet cable via shared folders. I suppose it would access the xbmx core files a fraction of a second faster, however how much of the harddrive activity does that actually account for?
I also fail to see how a flash drive could be significantly slower that a flash based hard drive.
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Can the Raspberry PI play uncompressed BluRay?
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Yes, the SSD makes a big difference when it comes to the fanart - at least that is what I observed. For a while I was using MySQL on my Synology but that lead to a whole bunch of other problems so I went back to having them local. Also, boot up in general is much faster of course.
@Nu7s: I was able to get the Pi to play my BR ISOs smoothly IF it did not have to decode a DTS track, otherwise it would stutter. Overclocking helped alot but it was still there. I was running it on a SandDisk extreme 45 MB/S SD. Supposedly the super-dupper-whatever extreme (like 80 mb/s) would had solved the stuttering but I dont have any and didnt want spend that kind of money just to find out it didnt work - they are approaching SSD prices at that point.
Ernie
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Well, the ID61 has USB 3.0 slots on it.
And as I am looking for a box that I can buy 3 to 4 of to stream media to, I believe that 3.0 port will be perfectly acceptable for me needs while cutting quite a bit of money out of the builds by not having to buy an SSD drive for each machine.
My client machines stay on 24/7, so boot time isn't a concern. If the fanart is an issue, then I will consider adding SSD's over time as I find them on sale. However I'm not sure I am ready to justify $65 bucks per machine just for snappier fanart loading.
If I expected to have just one machine with all of my media on it, then an SSD still wouldn't work for me as I have 25+ tb of tv shows and movies. SSD drives haven't really gotten into that range yet =)
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2013-08-05, 14:28
(This post was last modified: 2013-08-05, 14:30 by whitebelly.)
^ That approach makes sense. I have a low cost Foxconn NT-A3700 that just uses a 2.0 flash drive w. OpenELEC....works just fine for me, fanart loads quickly, IMO. Get a good flash drive and you will be OK.
Unfortunately the BIOS does not allow boot from the USB 3.0 ports. So I have my 3.0 drive plugged into the 2.0 port instead.
Keep your eyes out for deals, sometimes you can find those 32 GB SSDs for around $40 or less.
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2013-08-05, 15:45
(This post was last modified: 2013-08-05, 15:53 by exoscoriae.)
I don't care what it says it can do technically, the simple fact is that in reality - it can't. I have one. I have tried it. It stutters like Simple Jack. and I'm not the only one.
google: raspberry pi + xbmx + bluray
You will find 90% of pages saying not to bother with it. And 10% saying, "But we are working on it..."
edit:
In fairness, if the user gives it the exact file it likes (h.264, no hd audio, no DTS) on media hooked through the USB 3.0 port then you have a decent chance of it playing. I say chance, because even then users have reported stuttering.
The ethernet port is 100T, If you are streaming your media via the port, it *will* stutter.
So if you want a highly temperamental device that you have to bring your media too every time you want to use it, not use high quality audio (unless you have a high end receiver to handle that for you), and even then not be assured it won't skip sometimes - then yes, by all means use a Pi. I am sick though of Pi apologists acting like it is a decent device for the aevrage person and that it has any place in an HD setup for people who don't want to deal with an entire list of caveats everytime they go to watch something.
Can the Pi do uncompressed 1080p video? Yes, in very perfect circumstances, but even then, not always. Just because it is capable of this in those conditions does not mean it is worth the headache of dealing with to meet those conditions.
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Can you provide an example? I would love to test it on mine.
