Newby questions
#1
Hi everyone!

Brand new poster here! Im interested in setting XBMC up on a device i can connect to my TV to stream live TV content. For a total beginner what is the best place to start looking and are there any good guides to follow? Without bordering on illegalities im interesting in streaming live sport....

thanks in advance! Smile
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#2
Welcome to forums...

Start by clicking >> General_topics (wiki) <<
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#3
thanks had a good luck through but tbh theres a lot of info (not a bad thing)! what i want is a smal box that will run xbmc, preferably remote control, the ability to watch premier league footie in the best res possible. can someone recommend such a box?
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#4
Raspberry PI look at wiki for it or forums.
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#5
what will you use as backend to serve you the live streams? cos if you want to use add ons i am willing to bet $2 that none will be legal and hence can't be discussed here
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#6
I would say start small...maybe a small HTPC (Nettop form factor) w/ a 1TB HDD.

Copy your media directly to that HDD (For sanity sake, create a another partition for it separate from the OS partition) in folders labelled as Movies, TV-Shows, Music, Music-Videos, Pictures.

Install XMBC.

Scan your media and take it for a test drive.

Once you familiarize yourself with XBMC, you can decide how complex or simple you want to keep your experience...
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#7
will take a look at the raspberry pi solution then....could be what i need, does it do wifi * hdmi out?
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#8
wifi u need a dongle, which is probably bigger than pi itself, but it has HDMI supports 1080p and has cec support, so your remotes around the house will likely do.
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#9
(2014-01-23, 15:33)mole81 Wrote: will take a look at the raspberry pi solution then....could be what i need, does it do wifi * hdmi out?

I am not quite sure; but the raspberry pi does not have storage (unless you add an external USB drive). Failing that, you would need some kind of networked storage (either a GNU/Linux; *BSD, or *Nix server running Samba; or a dedicated NAS appliance)...which will increase the level of complexity for you new setup (of course, that in turn depends on your level of familiarity with all the parts) .

Also, keep in mind that rapberry pi, however flexible it is, is a low power device; and that wifi, for all its improvements, is not gigabit Ethernet.

You need to make sure you understand the limitations of your choices and adjust your expectations accordingly.

Configured properly, XBMC is far superior to NetFlix, Hulu+, Amazon Instant and all the rest; but you have to be willing to spend the time and effort to attain that level of performance.

The quality of your experience will be DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to the amount of effort you are willing to put in.
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#10
im prepared to put the effort in! just want the best experience for my money.....what do you guys all run with? maybe pi isnt for me...
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#11
Another thread on what hardware you guy use? There is a whole subforum you can go explore and learn see http://forum.xbmc.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=112
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#12
(2014-01-23, 16:55)mole81 Wrote: im prepared to put the effort in! just want the best experience for my money.....what do you guys all run with? maybe pi isnt for me...
Well, There are several HTPCs out there (check out newegg.com, for example). You can either load Windows or OpenElec (for the OpenElec option checkout the OpenElec page for best hardware option).

I used a larger form factor to accommodate a dedicated Graphics Card (an NVIDIA GeForce if I am not mistaken) and 8GB of RAM with onboard Gigabit Ethernet (I used powerline since the wife did not want to let me re-wire the house with Cat6 cables).

I can throw anything at this setup (uncompressed plays intermittently, but only because the powerline cannot always keep up) and it just plays it without dropping a sweat.

For storage, the sky (and your pocketbook) is the limit. I have my media in Samba shares on remote servers (a NAS appliance will do just fine, of course) that I export to the clients. Mysql to synch the library and the userdata directory shared amongst the client (this is not recommended by the official wiki; but I do it anyways)..
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