I finally got my shipment of Raspberry Pis today and I am stoked! I didn’t pay the crazy prices on eBay and so I now have a $36 computer. I’ve allocated both of my PIs as XBMC boxes to power my basement and living room TVs. I had been running a BoxeeBox and while I initially loved it, I’ve grown to HATE it. They should rename it “FlakeyBox”; a $200 box of crap.

Anyhow, I spent about 30 minutes working on it and I have my first Pi up and running and streaming 1080 video to my TV without issue. If you are in the market for a Pi allow me to suggest Adafruit. If you want information on how you too can use a Raspberry Pi as a media center, check this site out. There are several different firmwares available for XBMC but I’ve settled on Raspbmc for now, it’s fast enough for daily use and seems very stable.

 

Update (2/11/2013):

Make sure you use a powered USB hub and pick up one of these power supplies for your PI, otherwise it’ll be very unstable. I learned this the hard way. These power supplies from AdaFruit supply 5.25V to the PI which helps with it’s rather shoddy power design which will allow the board to become under powered and reset.