Yesterday my Raspberry Pi arrived. It's basically a tiny little breadboard computer with about 700MHz of oomph and no bells nor whistles for $35. I slapped on Raspbmc - a tiny custom build of Debian that is specialized for the sole purpose of running XBMC - and spent the evening enjoying networked movies. It's by far the least I've ever spent on a media center PC, and so far plenty good. All I'm still missing is my Flirc so I can run it with my Logitech Harmony Remote. So far I'm having to control it through the web interface. Not that that's a problem; there are some good web interfaces out there for XBMC.
It does have a bit of a problem when I try to rewind or fast forward, tough. It can't seem to handle that worth a darn. I need to work on that.
Raspberry Pi
Still no rewind or fast forward, but with the web interface I can instantly jump to anywhere in any file being played, so that will work. Which is weird, you'd think that would be harder to do that just simply rewinding or fast forwarding. *shrug*
"ATTENTION: Customers browsing porn must hold magazines with both hands at all times!"
I could see insta-jump being easier from an operations standpoint. If I'm at A and want to fast forward, I'd rather go to Z instantly than zoom through the rest of the alphabet. Having to do that seems to be an artifact of magnetic tapes. Only problem is we typically remember scenes in a movie like, "The part where he walks into the bank and talks about chewing bubblegum and kicking ass," instead of the machine-preferred, "Act II, Scene 4, 2:51 in."
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."