Book Image

Raspberry Pi Media Center

By : Sam Nazarko
Book Image

Raspberry Pi Media Center

By: Sam Nazarko

Overview of this book

<p>Low-cost and high-performing, with a massively diverse range of uses and applications, the Raspberry Pi is set to revolutionize the way we think about computing and programming. Using it as a Media Center allows everyone to have a low-cost device that is always on, attached to their TV. <br /><br />Imagine controlling your TV with your smartphone, dynamically streaming content that you have on various devices across your home, as and when you want. Raspberry Pi Media Center will show you how to configure the complete experience using readily available and accessible tools, so that you too will soon be enjoying your media from the comfort of your own sofa. <br /><br />With this practical guide, you’ll discover how you can transform your Raspberry Pi into a powerful media center. Using Raspbmc (based on the XBMC distribution), you'll be shown how you can deploy and configure your own media center, including coverage of all the essentials from controlling your device with a TV remote or smartphone, to the creation and customization of your very own media library (including the conversion of any existing collection). You'll even be able to stream multimedia from your devices or directly from the Internet!</p>
Table of Contents (17 chapters)

Why use a Raspberry Pi?


The Raspberry Pi is a small, credit card sized computer launched in 2012 for the purpose of rekindling a dwindling interest in Computer Science. The device therefore had to be affordable, have a low power consumption, and a small form factor. These characteristics are also what make the Raspberry Pi such an appealing solution as a media center. The Raspberry Pi is silent, and a quiet system is essential for an ideal media center experience. The Raspberry Pi may seem like a low performance device for education, however it has HDMI output. Its Ethernet capabilities and powerful GPU capable of decoding full HD videos has attracted much attention. Furthermore, as the operating system runs on an external SD card, a type of memory card, the device itself cannot be bricked, and can always be restored to a working state by reinstalling Raspbmc.