[HH] more Raspberry Pi bits

[Tom Metro]

Meet the Raspberry Pi - download the e-book!
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1680

  The cut-down version of Meet the Raspberry Pi, written by Eben Upton,
  our Executive Director, and Gareth Halfacree, is now available on
  Amazon as a Kindle e-book. It's only£3.29.


Build a $35 Media Center with Raspbmc and Raspberry Pi
http://www.howtogeek.com/119924/build-a-35-media-center-with-raspbmc-and-raspberry-pi/
  ...the Raspberry Pi is awesome at decoding h.264/MPEG-4 content but
  because of hardware and/or licensing limitations
  (http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/592)  it cannot play MPEG-2
  format video (a rather common format). If your entire library of
  content is in MPEG-2 and you don't want to go through the hassle of
  transcoding it, that could be a deal breaker.

  ...the menus can feel sluggish if you're used to running XBMC on a
  dual-core media center computer.

That fits with another review which said the Pi was underpowered for
running XBMC. Being dependent on hardware decoding using proprietary
drivers is a good way to end up with a product that won't keep up with
changes in video formats.

There are several much faster (quad-core, faster clock rate) devices in
the pipeline with $100 price tags that are better options for this
purpose. I wish the community would stop trying to push the Pi as a
media player.


US Distributors for Raspberry Pi:

Newark (ETA < 3 weeks, shipping unknown (you have to login/register))
http://downloads.element14.com/raspberryPi2.html?isRedirect=true&ICID=raspberrypigroup_us

Allied (ETA unknown (you have to submit a form to ask), shipping ~$10)
http://www.alliedelec.com/Search/ProductDetail.aspx?SKU=70229569


 -Tom