[lu6272]

Hello everyone,

I'm new here.
Since a few days I am the owner of a Raspberry Pi type B.
There are lots of references on the internet that XBMC is the mediaplayer to have on the RPi.
However I'm a bit worried.
In order to learn about XBMC I've installed it on my iPad first but I have to say that the performance is, well..., a bit disappointing.

Accessing a SMB share containing a whole lot of music files is extremely slow. At first it can't find the share but after about 15 seconds and a second attempt it suddently can, but that could be just a network problem or bad luck.
What really annoys me is the weather plugin. Apparently it did an educated guess based on the location awareness of the iPad but it is off by several tens of kms and even more annoying I can't change the location anymore, whatever I type in it ignores and even if I delete the set location it simply sticks with the location it determined by itself.
But since the RPi is not location aware this will not be a problem on the RPi, I guess.
Also the interface does not respond to well. Some buttons need to be clicked on several times.

Any way: this forum is about the RPi.
What worries me is that the processor of a RPi seems to be slower than that of an iPad.
So that might be result in even worse performance problems on the RPi.
I'm willing to invest time and effort to install XBMC on the RPi, but only if I don't run in severe performance problems.

Does anyone have interesting opinions and/or user experience for me, please?
I read some subjects on the forum so I'm happy with general pointers.

[Swifty]

I have to say after my initial experience with the Pi (shortly after release) I was very sceptical about being able to ever use it for XBMC due to the weak CPU.
But I'm happy to say thanks to the hard work of Popcornmix and a bunch of other skilled people, I now have replace both of my Intel Atom boxes with Pi's.

I don't think you can compare raw clock speeds with things like the iPad as those areas seem to be much more involved these days and you have to consider a whole raft of other factors.

Some points though:-

*If you use the Pi, you will want to get a fast USB stick for maximum performance, and use this as the 'storage' partition (if you use openelec) - or the .xbmc folder if not.
*Overclocking seems to be key to getting the most out of the Pi - it's very easy and I've clocked straight to 1Ghz without any issue.
*Make sure you are using library modes - you mentioned in your post about it taking 15seconds to open an SMB share containing music, I assume you are talking about 'files mode' ? - This does seem to be very slow (not just on Pi) since it seems to scan the media for a bunch of information. Whereas the library views have it already stored in the database.

-Edit
Btw, check out a video by Popcornmix here; http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=174485 to see how well XBMC performs on Pi.

[Smobbo]

First thing I have to say is: don't compare it with an iPad!
Just install XBMC on your home PC to test the program, if you like it go for a raspberry!
The raspberry is strong enough to let you enjoy xbmc and all your videos and music without much fuzz.

Xbmc is highly optimized for the pi, it run a lot better than you would expect from just looking at the hardware! (Tnx popcornmix and all the others!)

For the rest I have to agree with swifty! All those pointers are simple to do (overclocking in raspbmc for example is just a setting like any other).
I'm running raspbmc on an USB 3 stick with 'super' overclock and it just works.

[Karnagious]

Like they said, overclock is a must, and the gains in user experience you get from even a moderate OC are massive.

A robust power supply is also important. It allows you to overclock more and reduces random crashes down to zero.

Also use a lightweight skin; I recommend Amber by pecinko.

[awp0]

I think the OP should take a step back and learn about XBMC's library technology. When configured properly, XBMC should not need to access the Samba shares regularly (except when checking for new media, playing content, or certain batch jobs like caching artwork). All of that info should be cached locally. Browsing content and flipping through the UI can be very fast on the Raspi, as evidenced by the video linked above.

I have mine running Openelec, overclocked with the "medium" settings, running the Amber skin, and also I have all of the artwork pre-cached using the texturecache.py (which is also important IMO). I'm quite happy with the performance.