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Now that Christmas is over, the retailers are keeping the bargains close to their chests, so the pickings today are fairly slim, but there’s a couple of nice media-playing offers.
First up is the Western Digital TV Live, a media player that will handle almost anything you care to chuck at it. Attach a hard drive filled with all of your ‘legitimately acquired’ movies and TV shows and it’ll play them through your TV. There’s also built-in catch-up TV, YouTube, Spotify, Netflix and a bunch of other stuff. A veritable snip at only £62.90. Better still, if you’re not scared of something slightly more complicated, you can pick up a Raspberry Pi Type B (512MB) for just £25.92 and run XBMC on it to make it into a nifty media player. Go on — start the new year with a challenge…
- Syma S107G 3-channel infrared controlled helicopter with gyroscopic stability control – £13.75 delivered.
- Samsung Galaxy S III cases — only £1.00.
- Max Payne franchise (PC) — from £9.98.
- Astronomical telescope — was £179.99, now only £79.99.
- KitSound KSUNO mini speaker with on-board amplifier – £7.88 delivered.
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I’d love to be able to get a nice telescope, but unfortunately I live in the middle of Belfast which has appalling light pollution
The night sky is actually a dull orange colour…
I love the idea of the Pi but my caveman skull is too thick to understand how to make it work.
It’s pretty easy but as well as the Pi you need:
- a decent phone charger and micro-USB cable
- an HDMI cable for your telly
- a keyboard – preferably a cool little wireless USB one
- an SD card – not very big, but the faster the better.
- a USB hard drive with all your movies on (or a NAS / network share)
- an ethernet connection to your router
Then go to Raspbmc and download their installer. It’s a special build of XBMC just for the Raspberry Pi. Stick the SD card in your PC, run the Raspbmc program and it’ll flash the SD card. Then put the SD card in the Pi, plug it all in, and sit back and relax…
OOOOH, I got all that…might jump on the pi-bandwagon.
What are the limitations of the Pi regarding media streaming?
that’s a lot easier than i thought!
but it’s too late for me now, i bought one of those dodgy android USB Sticks as i was only going to use it as a media player, and i am a Netflix subscriber
Well if you haven’t done so already there’s apparently an easy xbmc installer just released. http://torrentfreak.com/cord-cutters-rejoice-xbmc-now-sets-itself-up-with-a-couple-of-clicks-130101/ not sure if you can get Netflix as a third party add-on
Not necessarily.
You don’t need charger because many modern TV sets have USB 1A output, and rPi should run even on older/cheap TVs with USB 0.5A output.
You don’t need keyboard because You can control Your rPi with your TV remote thru HDMI (if TV is modern), or buy separate remote control (awesome Logitech harmony can be bought for just few pounds).
You will need Ethernet connection to Your router (or wifi dongle), HDMI cable, and USB hard drive – but You will need those with any media center, including WDTV.
So the only thing You mention with You will need to run rPi, but not WDTV is SD card.
Charger needs to be able to supply 700mA according to their website.