Bloody technology

Handsome_Chris

@Emp_Fab, how old is your X-Box?  I've had mine since early 2008 and it's been a good friend to me.

digitalscream

Myranda said:

Like http://www.digikey.com/product-highlights/us/en/texas-instruments-pandaboard/686?

Yes, exactly like that...only without the price tag

Emp_Fab

Handsome_Chris said:

@Emp_Fab, how old is your X-Box?  I've had mine since early 2008 and it's been a good friend to me.

Mine was made in 2003, but I've only had it about three years.  Solid bit of kit...  can't fault it hardware-wise.

Emp_Fab

digitalscream said:

You don't need a remote - there are remote apps for any Android phone (I use Yatse, but there's an official XBMC remote app too). All you really need is an SD card, the Pi and a USB power supply with micro-USB lead (I use the USB socket on the back of our TV). I think it came to about £40.

EDIT: If you've got a desktop PC, you can just keep all your media files on there and use Windows file sharing over the network (RaspBMC does this). That way, you can get away with a 2GB SD card because you're not storing anything on the Pi itself.

Right.... I'm in.  I do love my old Xbox, but....  even now that I've battled with the bugger for two days, and I've finally got it running in 720p, the cheapo cable I bought (I'm presuming) is causing vertical bar shadowing on the screen and XBMC keeps resetting back to NTSC 16:9 rather than 720p.  Half the fecking plugins no longer work on the Xbox and there's virtually no development of XBMC on this platform anymore.  I've bought the sodding cable and a box of DVD-RW's I have no use for now.  Those alone came to half the cost of a Pi !

Are there different versions of the Pi ?  If so, which one should I get ?  Speed of the display is important to me - I've read that some older Pi's were sluggish on the XBMC menus.   Is this still the case ?

Drew_TNBD

PEBCAK

chillidoggy

Actually, when I saw the thread title, I thought it was something to do with sanitary towel manufacturing.

monquixote

Emp_Fab said:

Are there different versions of the Pi ?  If so, which one should I get ?  Speed of the display is important to me - I've read that some older Pi's were sluggish on the XBMC menus.   Is this still the case ?

Yes, and you want the one with more RAM. 

Make sure you get a class 10 SD card as that improves the boot time, but as DS says you don't need it to be very big. 

You can power it with a mobile charger provided you have one producing a decent amount of current and be careful as some of the Micro USB chargers on sale for cheap don't produce the rated output. 

If you are feeling flush the Pibow cases are awesome:

http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0174/1800/products/Rainbow_v2_large.jpg

Emp_Fab

Ooooh....  me likey !!!  What about heat ?  That case doesn't look like it's got much ventilation.  I know nothing about Pi's but I have seen heatsink kits for them on sale !

What is the SD card used for ?  Just local storage for the Pi (i.e. booting, OS & apps) ?

Have you got one MQ ?

monquixote

Yes I have that very case. 

It seems to crash about once a month, but I don't know if it's heat related. I have got it mildly overclocked. I think you need the heatsink if you have it seriously clocked up. 

The SD card is the system disk so it determines boot time etc. There is nothing to stop you putting media on it if you want to though. I have a 2TB USB disk on there and use it as a NAS (which it isn't the best for as it is quite slow at transfers.)

Axe_meister

In my experience (working with very high end enterprise systems), these problems are not just something that hits consumer electronics.

Systems these days have become so vastly complex, they make your average rocket ship seem quite simple in comparison.

Unfortunately budgets are always so constrained that quality control suffers (also a lot of coding is outsourced to the lowest bidder, I HATE OFFSHORING).