First commercial HTPC "Slice" based on XBMC-Raspberry-Pi is launched

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Carn82 said:
Vidon doesnt seem to be open-source / hackable. Personally I prefer to be able to consult the OpenElec/XBMC/RaspPi community instead of relying on 'another Android by an Asian company'
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Vidon runs on Allwinner and the bsp is opensource unlike BCM2835 whose bsp is only available after sigining NDA. so its more open source than rpi actually is. That is the main reason I suggest allwinner based systems over rpi to all my friends. and from the forums over there they are actually running xbmc on android.

btw, allwinner is a member of linaro group.
 
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Too costly. And the 129 GBP version comes without the hard disk. The one with hard disk costs 179 GBP (some early bird spots for 169 GBP still left).
 
Please DO NOT buy this product and shell out 13k (which is disk less, WTF). rPi never meant to be used as HTPC. Its an educational device and fun for DIY. This kickstarter is just a rPi whoring project, minting money from Pi fans. And if you don't want to learn, then you shouldn't Pi at all. There are better products, user friendly, but bit costly.

Let me guys show you my Slice:
4WdAyHi.jpg

I am not using any cases, cos I like things naked.

Costs only 3500 INR (without HDD). Don't know if Slice can download torrents, but my setup can. I download over HTTP using Pyload, Torrents using Transmission and use Samba for media streaming. I control everything on my mobile. Transmission and Pyload comes with a Web UI. Here's the cost breakdown:

Pi - 2800 (with eBay coupons, it will be even less)
Good quality adapter - 400
Micro SD Card - 300 INR
Power for HDD - either external powered USB Hub (costs 1500) or SATA case to be used with internal HDD (costs 300)

So, with 1TB external USB HDD(3500 INR), the final cost is 8500 INR and with internal 1TB HDD (2000 INR), the final cost will be 6000 INR. It will be even lot less, if you use coupons etc.


booo said:
Just watch out before calling someone a troll.
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It hurts na? there there.

:P

TLDR; this shit is not worth the money, the design looks gay with bunch of LEDs on a black box. And please don't whore money in the name of rPi (unless you are donating large chunk of profits to Pi Foundation, which Slice is not doing)
 
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Good setup there. What OS is it running @avi ?

Not sure if you had time to look into fiveninjas' profile but two of the Engineers are members of Raspberry Pi Foundation. :)

James Adams - Director of Hardware Engineering, Raspberry Pi

James has spent more than 10 years doing electronic product design and chip design for both startups and tech gaints. James's current day job is Director of Hardware Engineering at Raspberry Pi. James has more recently spent most of his spare time designing Slice's electronics.

Gordon Hollingworth - Director of Software Engineering, Raspberry Pi

Gordon is director of software engineering at Raspberry Pi and was previously involved with the low level firmware software running on BCM2835. He also developed Amino's first high definition IPTV set top box so knows a great deal about multimedia streaming as well as mobile multimedia systems.
 
rahuljawale said:
@smnrock sweet! Would like to see some pictures of your setup. :)
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No special setup... Already had 16gb micro sd... I also had several Micro USB cables. So just bought b+ model and throwed behind the TV. Power supply is from TV usb port itself :) Running openelec/xbmc setup and also stream movies from nfs. Only thing I miss is, youtube search results are not playing automatically. Every item in the search results needs to be played separately, but in case of my TV's built in youtube app does not have this problem. Of course this is not rpi or xbmc problem, it's youtube plug-in issue. So now I can watch most of TV(tamil) channels including cricket :)
uploadfromtaptalk1409227191334.jpg
 
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@rahuljawale Raspbian.

I did saw names of those guys, but couldn't find any info how much money is going back to Pi foundation
 
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This must be a private enterprise and except for the Compute Module none of the profits will make it to RPi foundation.
 
sumchamp said:
Do you guys recommend this-
http://www.ebay.in/itm/Raspberry-Pi...?pt=IN_Desktop_PCs&hash=item3a96393d6b&_uhb=1
Or better to get individual components?
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frankly its time to retire rpi. I would suggest something like a cubiboard or bananapi etc...
bananapi is available at aliexpress for $50 and has onboard sata.

if you want some more adventures, you can try intel based minnowboard more reading here

but I would suggest allwinner processors because their linux kernel is open source and you will have access to the latest kernel all the time. others like humming board which has freescale processor may not give you out the kernel.

if you want no frills home server, you could buy vidbox or cubox-i2eX or cuboxi4Pro cubox is freescale cpu again.

OMAP also provides good development tools and you can try pandaboard also.

but if you want some serious fiddling, you should buy allwinner board.
 
^but problem is cubieboard or other new boards have community like rPi. which is really important and helpful for a beginner
 
^Allwinner has a big community. Allwinner is also member of linaro. once you have the basic kernel, everything else becomes very simple, you can put cyanogen on top of it to make it an android or install ubuntu to make it linux. though I dont like ubuntu, I it has better support for applications on ARM. other good distri is gentoo. I mean, once you have kernel, everything else becomes generic. Also gives you a lot of scope for learning new things.

Also a guy who started with rpi 3 years ago should not find any difficulty in setting up any other singleboard computer and compiling sources. ;)
I am not saying that rpi is bad, but it has become very old now. for today's specs its slow and costly. something like celeron processor. I was expecting rpi org to come up with new thing which would revolutionize the world again. fingers crossed. :)
 
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But at the end if you all going to do with this? When someone says it's for research purpose... What's that exactly? If it's just going to be a one more 24/7 download box based on Linux which is going to run transmission/pyload, then cheaper rpi with larger community always going to unbeatable!
 
smnrock said:
But at the end if you all going to do with this? When someone says it's for research purpose... What's that exactly? If it's just going to be a one more 24/7 download box based on Linux which is going to run transmission/pyload, then cheaper rpi with larger community always going to unbeatable!
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banana pi is cheaper in that sense. it has onboard sata and a stable distribution. All I need to buy are the board, a sata internal hdd and remote/keyboard thats all. with rpi, you will need a usb hdd (read costlier) and the import duty (banana pi is aliexpress free shipping no duty) . And sata is much faster than usb ;)
 
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^agree, but cubox and all, little over for the purpose... And review say xbmc is not smooth for the hardware it offers
 
smnrock said:
^agree, but cubox and all, little over for the purpose... And review say xbmc is not smooth for the hardware it offers
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as far as I understand, xbmc is not fully optimized for the ARM architecture. which means it will use cpu instead of gpu for processing. that is why the video is sometimes not smooth. which also means it wont be for any other ARM processor and everyone will have to wait for it to get better. even rpi. It also means that if a firm selling rpi based product with optimized xbmc and not releasing the source code, we should not support them. :rolleyes:

now, if you have more cpu real estate, you will benefit with smoother videos. :)
Also if you chose a processor with AMD Mali gpu, the chances of fixing the problems is better since MALI is open source too.
 
^May be its older days of RPI. but not now, since i never faced video playback issues, but i agree very rarely you can feel minor jittery feel when you traverse between libraries that also when something is played in background. Most of the time, CPU usage is hovers around 15-20% in openlec/raspbmc.
 
smnrock said:
^May be its older days of RPI. but not now, since i never faced video playback issues, but i agree very rarely you can feel minor jittery feel when you traverse between libraries that also when something is played in background. Most of the time, CPU usage is hovers around 15-20% in openlec/raspbmc.
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There are actually two bottlenecks. highly compressed for sized YIFY's movies and high data bandwidth moviles like NLUPPER's.
YIFY's are highly compressed for size, ~1.4GB so they need less IO bandwidth but very high cpu to decode. a typical dual core celeron will max out decoding these movies.
on the other hand NLUPPER's releases are ~10GB and use very less compression and filters. so they use less CPU but need faster storage. I once played rango movie full hd and high bandwidth on a allwinner 1GHz chinese tablet without any problem. so it all depends upon how good are the codes for the particular processor. rpi's codecs and BSP (board support package) are not open source.

bottomline is that choosing correct pirated source helps a lot ;)
 
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How about Logitech K400. It is light in hands and has a reliable touchpad to work with. Should get it for 2.4k max.

wireless-touch-keyboard-k400r-glamour-lg.png
[DOUBLEPOST=1409301334][/DOUBLEPOST]@booo , I do not wish to nitpick, but Raspberry Pi B+ is available for 2900/- at RSDelivers , which is comparable to USD 48.88 (2966 INR) for AllWinner board here at AliExpress. :)
 
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