Raspberry Pi Shown Running XBMC

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has announced via their website that the much anticipated “Raspberry Pi Model B” $35 single board computer is successfully running the open source media player XBMC.

Not much else is known at this point, but we can see from the video that performance is pretty good for being such an early release. The interface and video playback runs at a smooth 1080p, transitions between screens are quick, and there is very little delay when starting a  video. A keen eye may notice that some of the hardware information isn’t filled out when the video shows the “System Info” pane, so it looks like there is still some work to be done on kernel drivers and implementation, but it’s a very promising start.

While some in the community have questioned why a device meant for the low income educational market needs a media player dashboard, it’s important to remember that all sales of the Model A/B bring in more money for the charitable goals of the Raspberry Pi Foundation. So if an official port of XBMC to the Model A/B increases overall sales, it’s still a boon for the Foundation.

What’s XBMC?

XBMC is a fully GPL media center and entertainment hub application that originally started as a replacement dashboard for the original Microsoft Xbox. Since the Xbox has long been put to pasture, XBMC has expanded to running on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS. With the new breed of low-cost embedded computers like Raspberry Pi shipping with Linux out of the box, the possibilities of using these devices as set top media players is very attractive.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation is looking to make the source code for their XBMC source tree available, but binary versions should be released in the near future for users who aren’t quite up to the task of compiling all of XBMC themselves. In the long term, the changes required to get the Model A/B working with XBMC will be included upstream so it will become just one of the supported platforms and no longer require a separate code base.