Nazarko - Raspberry Pi Media Center

Sam Nazarko is an 18-year-old student, currently studying Computer Science at King's College London, UK. He has been using computers since the age of four and has developed a huge passion for them. He has a wide range of experience and knowledge about both Windows and Linux platforms at desktop and server level. He enjoys developing tailor-made solutions for clients, which range from C# application development on Windows to C development on Linux, and has expertise in system deployment and administration on a large scale. He has recently been involved in open source development, harnessing his skills in embedded systems development by delivering Linux distributions for Apple TV and Raspberry Pi that deliver XBMC.

Sam is planning to launch a technology startup in 2013, which will focus on embedded system development and custom-made solutions.

I'd like to thank the friendly and helpful chaps at Packt Publishing, in particular: Erol Staveley, Maria D'souza, and Amigya Khurana.

Eric PTAK is a software R&D engineer, specialized in network protocols all over the OSI stack. His career began with telecom services in NGN architectures. He is also working on mobility and the Internet of Things and he is interested in many technological fields. He started using XBMC with the first-generation XBox and he knows media center constrains and requirements well. For his first Raspberry Pi project, Eric used shairport open source software to build an AirPlay music player, that he named AirPi. The whole Raspberry Pi community now uses this name for their AirPlayer project.

I would like to thank Coline, my wife, for her support and happiness that she gives me.

I also would like to thank all the developers around the world, and the open source community for their great work done on the software that is used in this book.

Low-cost and high-performing, with a massively diverse range of uses and applications, the Raspberry Pi is set to revolutionize the way we think about computing and programming. Using it as a media center allows everyone to have a low-cost device that is always on and attached to their TV.

Imagine controlling your TV with your smartphone, dynamically streaming content that you have on various devices in your home, as and when you want. Raspberry Pi Media Center will show you how to configure the complete experience using readily available and accessible tools, so that you too will soon be enjoying your media from the comfort of your own sofa.

With this practical guide, you'll discover how you can transform your Raspberry Pi into a powerful media center. Using Raspbmc (based on the XBMC distribution), you'll be shown how you can deploy and configure your own media center, including the coverage of all the essentials, from controlling your device with a TV remote or smartphone to the creation and customization of your very own media library (including the conversion of any existing collection). You'll even be able to stream multimedia from your devices or directly from the Internet!