What's Big Bang Theory

Never saw it, but it's something that nerds watch

OK...I put some more effort into this project here at the office. I found a really cool site with links to tons of content apps to put on XBMC:
http://www.xbmchub.com/blog/2012/11/26/quick-start-guide-to-watch-free-tv-with-xbmc/I was up and streaming the latest Survivor, Breaking Bad, etc. in minutes. Our internet here at work is throttled to 2Mbps, so patience was needed. I haven't tried this at home yet, but I imagine the 18-20 Mbps I get will allow searching and streaming much faster.
This is the Operating System Home screen. You can see the iPad with remote app at lower left (app is free). The Pi is the little white box in the lower right. I went for a more expensive case (at $4) because I don't like cheap ****


Here is a page showing the addons I put on from the link above. Handy, I added "LubeTube" just for you


This is the Pi in its case. The connections left-to-right are ethernet, HDMI, Micro-USB power supply. You can't see the SD card in this shot. The Post-It note is there for size reference.

Here is the Pi with the case lid off. You can see the 2 USB ports under the ethernet port. The SD card containing the OpSys is visible on the right. The standard video and audio ports are at the bottom. The two line of pins at the lower right is the General Purpose Input/Output (GPIO - a generic pin on a chip whose behavior can be programmed by the user):

So far, the costs are:
| Raspberry Pi | $35 |
| Expensive Case | $4 |
| 32 GB SD Card* | $28 |
| HDMI Cable** | $10 |
| Micro USB Charger** | $10 |
| Total | $87 |
*I went overboard on the card, where this can be done with 8 GB. Make sure you get at least Class 4
**I priced these but didn't buy them - I had extras around the house.
Flashing the OpenELEC to the SD card was easy as pie (lol). Many people report issues getting this to power on, but any cell phone charger I tried worked fine. This was a breeze to set up, all for under $70.
Raspberry Pi Specs from Wikipedia...CPU: 700 MHz ARM1176JZF-S core (ARM11 family); GPU: Broadcom VideoCore IV; Memory: 512 MB shared with GPU