Remember the Raspberry Pi ARM board we talked about last week? Well, while running Quake III is all fine and dandy and illustrates the board is capable of something, it didn’t really tell me anything since I’d guess few people are going to use such a board for gaming. So, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the Raspberry Pi team posted another demo today – running 1080p video for eight hours straight. The chip was still cool to the touch. And just to reiterate: $25.
The Raspberry Pi board ran a 1080p video (H264) over HDMI for eight hours straight, and the board was still cool to the touch. Playback shows no hiccups, which is pretty impressive considering the price of this board. Furthermore, the HDMI port on the Raspberry Pi is a full implementation – so it carries audio signals as well (although audio was turned off for the demo since it took place on a trade show floor).
The Quake III demo was interesting and all, but this? Heck, this only further cements my desire to get a few of these. At this price, they could be excellent extremely small media centers, or even a tiny server. Sadly, little information is available at this point about which media player the team was using; they say it’s a custom one, but I would personally want to see it running, I don’t know, MPlayer or something. Of course, I’d love to see it run Boxee (my media centre of choice) even more, but alas, I will have to find that out for myself once the board becomes available.
I want one of these today rather than tomorrow!
cant Negroponte and his crew get in on this instead of chas’ng after intel et al for their hardware base and the sub 100 buck touchpaad for kids seems more than just a pipe dream.
They are not.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/161112/olpc_set_to_dump_x86_for_arm_…
http://armdevices.net/2011/01/09/olpc-xo-1-75-arm-marvell-armada-61…
Edited 2011-09-08 23:14 UTC
That video was good… it was like watching a 3rd grader ask questions to Albert Einstein, but he kept his cool and answered the questions nicely.
We’ll see how much the Raspberry actually is when its released and what it actually looks like when in production.
Its exciting that prices are dropping quickly for computers/tablets. I do agree with the general sentiment, that it makes a ton more sense to just re-purpose an existing hardware design, than to create one from scratch. ViewSonic is going to release a 7 inch tab for $200 retail. Heck the kindle is around 100. It also has a huge battery life. Those might be extremely beneficial, when preloaded with tons of books ( do they still have substantial on board storage? Not really sure about that).
This thing is a motherboard, not a PC. Once you add battery, power supply, monitor, input devices, and housing, the price of the motherboard/CPU doesn’t factor in to the equation all that strongly.
I think many of us have DC-adapters lying around that would handle the job just fine. We have TV sets with HDMI, we have spare keyboards with USB and maybe a SD-card big enough to fit a OS. Many of us would have really fun with that board without spendning extra money.
Edited 2011-09-09 11:35 UTC
And the people who might use the OLPC? They probably don’t have these things. My point was that the Raspberry Pi is not necessarily a magic bullet for creating a cheap PC or laptop, as the motherboard is a fraction of the total cost of such a machine.
Oh. I missed that the comment thread was about the OLPC. Then I agree. But as I understand it, the manufactors goal with the board is to get a cheap board to youths to learn basic computer science.
Challenge accepted:
Rasberry Pi w/ethernet: $35
keyboard, mouse, speakers: $13.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16823174014
20″ lcd monitor: $99.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824254055
HDMI -> DVI adapter: $4.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814999007
7-port usb hub w/external power: 16.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182146
4GB class 6 SDHC for installing Linux OS: $6.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820208090
That’s a full 1080P capable htpc for under $200, with an extremely small footprint and low power consumption. Most people, I’m sure, wouldn’t need more then the Rasberry Pi ($35), a remote control with ir receiver ($20), and possibly an sdhc ($7).
Yes, there is potential here.
I think we were talking about the mythical sub $100 One Laptop Per Child.
In a quite atypical market – one which not only “needs” RPi nearly the least, also with a little public secret: prices there are practically the lowest. Another public secret, a little more global and… dirty: the more impoverished a given place, the less available nice deals are; absolute prices of luxuries (such as electronic toys) are higher.
Here, let me try it (one decent, all around inexpensive retailer from my place; you can find others where individual stuff is slightly cheaper, but it doesn’t matter so much because we pay for shipping, so add 9 USD to the below prices – yes, I’m converting them)
Rasberry Pi w/ethernet: 55 USD
(that’s a guess how much it will end up, at minimum; because it’s 35€, not $35; and when you add shipping…)
keyboard, mouse: 21 USD
http://www.proline.pl/?p=LOG+920-002563
(though, really, it’s less expensive to buy them separately, then it’s 11 USD
http://www.proline.pl/?p=KLAWIATURA+WIN98+SB
http://www.proline.pl/?p=A4TECH+OP-720D+BLACU
)
20″ lcd monitor with DVI (they are still differentiated by the lack of it here, and I don’t think RPi can use D-sub): 151 USD
http://www.proline.pl/?p=IIY+LCD+PLE2008HDSB1
(luckily, it has speakers)
HDMI -> DVI adapter: 6 USD
http://www.proline.pl/sklep.php?prodq=hdmi+dvi&x=8&y=14 (mostly, not sure if the one a bit less expensive is appropriate)
7-port usb hub w/external power: 17 USD (I’m a bit shocked*)
http://www.proline.pl/?p=ASMAX+ASM-HUBUSB-7-A (*though it’s not available; but it’s the only comparable thing there, so…)
4GB class 4 SDHC for installing Linux OS: 9 USD
http://www.proline.pl/?p=SDSDH-004G-U46 (that’s the nearest available, and not much more expensive than class 2)
Under… 260 USD (in a place with at least 2 times lower real wages). A starting point for too many people, I’m sure.
And that’s in a reasonably prosperous late EU member state… when talking about ~OLPC-like scenarios, which was the case, it doesn’t get merely ~2-3x less approachable, we’re talking about something which to you would feel closer to $2k …or more.
Edited 2011-09-16 00:14 UTC
I’m getting a couple as soon as they are released! The world has been waiting about 12 years for something as cool as this
Edited 2011-09-08 22:44 UTC
I’ll try to get at least one when the time comes. I just doubt they’ll be able to produce enough units for the huge worldwide demand there will be.
The only dark side I see is the dropped support for Ubuntu. I know ARM is a Babel tower of an architecture, but it worries me just how proprietary this stuff will be. Do I stop getting updates once they stop committing to the kernel?
Are their sources even on the main kernel?
The thing is ultra-proprietary with a massive 32 MB binary blob being loaded at bootloader’s init with GPU firmware support. Ubuntu support was dropepd because the SoC is ARM11 (ARMv6) and Ubuntu binaries are compiled for ARMv7.
The model shown in the video will (hopefully) cost €35. The €25 model will not feature Ethernet and will have a bit less RAM.
I still want both of them. 🙂
Mplayer compiled with support for their specific GPU’s hardware acceleration and support for framebuffer output would work fine. As a matter of fact, I don’t know of any other Linux video player that can output to framebuffer at all.
I’m not sure, but hasn’t vlc the ability to output to the frame buffer?
You are indeed correct, sir. CVLC has been able to give me smooth and perfect video whenever i am in CLI for ages.
Any player can output to framebuffer. And I’m pretty sure that is WASN’T MPlayer at all, because there’s barely no GPU acceleration driver (or any easy implementation for one). It’s very more likely to be GStreamer in it.
MPlayer can use vdpau, so clearly they can use GPU acceleration. You may be right about the demo using gstreamer, though.
vlc
Edited 2011-09-11 04:20 UTC
When are they going to release these? I want one, or two, or three! *drools* I’ve always wanted a fanless ARM system in a netbook form factor, and since the so-called smartbooks are never going to happen, I guess I’m just going to have to build one myself.
These little things are looking amazing! When it comes out, i’m getting several of the $35 ones and at least 1 $25 one! Now I will finally have an excuse to setup a mythTV server…
1080P is all fine and dandy but as I mentioned in the previous thread about these, I’d love to see what it can do with 1080i, and the quality of the deinterlacing — assuming it’s capable of that in hardware.
We’ll see, but for $25-$35 they’re too cheap not to get one to monkey around with.
GPU (..including the h264 decoder) is 100% proprietary, and the boot architecture of this device is fucked up.
Do. Not. Want.
Too much emphasis is put on whether or not hardware/software uses proprietary components. The end-user couldn’t care less (minus a small handful of exceptions as usual). The only thing that really matters is whether it works or not. And this thing appears to.
“Long term” matters. A lot of software technologies have been proprietary and cheap at the beginning… to be used, at long term, to abuse of people, when the market has grown and there is a vendor lock-in.
In a vendor lock-in, without competition… conscientious people finally get tired of paying for services and products just to serve interests of monopolistic companies. Most of them finally realize about planned obsolescence, about plans that force them to pay, wait, pay, wait, pay…
Money from planned obsolescence is also paid in part by all people, as we are customers of companies that must pay software monopolies, as we are citizens of an affected country and so we have to pay more money in taxes, etc.
That extra money and time does not go to the benefit of people, but to profit some interested parts.
So most of the conscientious people… at short or long term… finally care about free/libre software.
Edited 2011-09-09 18:28 UTC
While the theory holds water, I completely reject it as being applicable here. No, I do not have a crystal ball that allows me to peer into the future. But, given other devices of similar design, purpose, and intent, there’s absolutely zero evidence to lead a person to your conclusion.
And I stand by my assumption that most people wanting to tinker with one of these couldn’t care less about proprietary firmware, etc. Does their web/media/whatever server work? Does their htpc work? If yes, then who cares? Most people I know, whether in the software or hardware field or not, don’t. Don’t forget who the audience is here.
Edited 2011-09-09 18:35 UTC
People who thinks at long term. Imagine that Bob is a greedy CEO in a market where he has achieved a vendor lock-in. Wouldn’t he increase prices? Wouldn’t he decrease the quantity of employees in the customer service department?
All in all, he has the monopolistic barriers to avoid new competitors. Its use is there.
No, I don’t forget it. I think that most of them are conscientious ones, with experience with some kind of monopolies.
Edited 2011-09-09 18:55 UTC
People who thinks at long term. Imagine that Bob is a greedy CEO in a market where he has achieved a vendor lock-in. Wouldn’t he increase prices? Wouldn’t he decrease the quantity of employees in the customer service department?
First, there’s no way for a monopoly to happen with this type of device. Secondly, your scenario requires one to “imagine” something within the realm of possibility. However, it completely disregards the reality of the market that already exists and what we’ve observed thus far.
I’d rather not spend my time ponder the world of what-if’s.
I, in all honesty, have no clue how you’ve arrived at this conclusion. It seems very out of touch, perhaps you’d like to elaborate some?
Well, it has happened to most of us. Have you been in a situation where you depended on a company and you had to pay what they said and wait what they said and suffer bad customer services because you had no other company to go to? Sometimes the monopolistic company makes sure that the cost of going to another company is too high to be an alternative (for example, data migration due to proprietary data formats + retraining + etc). About state monopolies, yes, they are also monopolies and most of us have suffered similar problems.
Edited 2011-09-10 09:03 UTC
Privative software allows vendor lock-ins, for example, that is why the prior user was talking about privative software.
We have seen a lot of software monopolies, for example. Microsoft was found guilty and convicted, at least three times 🙁 for paying people to create problems to others, as you can see in the following link and in the antitrust case, in trials in USA and also in Europe.
http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/2000/PX…
I’m wondering if I need to point out why that’s a bad example. I have a feeling you read how that antitrust case started but not how it ended.
Note: I keep saying that they have been found guilty and convicted, at least three times, by the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Union.
A particular trial can be “closed”… paying. But that doesn’t mean that people can’t see emails of the boss of a company, emails about the “problem” of “Office documents to be rendered very well by other peoples browsers” and employees being given the order “make sure that Office very well depends on PROPRIETARY IE capabilities”.
That is an example of a paid sabotage. An example of using proprietary software to damage competition and eventually the final user, since is us also who finish paying all the operation and the consequent company benefits… with our money (licenses, technical support, expenses of public entities, costs of our purveyors, etc) and our time.
Edited 2011-09-11 17:15 UTC
Are you aware that none of the initial charges (allegations would be a better word) stuck? In the end the case was no where close to where it started.
It seems like you’re just using this thread to rant and lash out at Microsoft rather then make any single sane and legitimate connection with relation to the Raspberry Pi. There simply isn’t a single shred of evidence, proof, comment, remark, or anything else that shows any sign there’s reason to worry about the device, it’s manufacturer, or their intent.
I guess some people are just wildly paranoid by nature. Thankfully I’m not one of them.
> > Note: I keep saying that they have been found guilty
> > and convicted, at least three times, by the U.S.
> > Department of Justice and the European Union.
> Are you aware that none of the initial charges
> (allegations would be a better word) stuck? In the end
> the case was no where close to where it started.
I suppose you realize that even if that was exactly that way, Microsoft was found guilty and convicted, at least in three trials, of using monopolistic powers, using software, in a proprietary way, to do it.
> It seems like you’re just using this thread to rant
> and lash out at Microsoft
That was an example of using proprietary software to damage competition and eventually the final user. Proprietary software is a thing to worry about, as the prior commenter did. You wrote “who cares?”, as if software being proprietary couldn’t be used to sabotage other products, as in the given order “make sure that Office very well depends on PROPRIETARY IE capabilities”.
Edited 2011-09-12 16:15 UTC
Techies, more likely to get such thing, are probably a bit more familiarised with the general history of computing industry or, specifically, what consequences an unsupported & static binary blob might bring few years down the line (and what is the value of open drivers)
Overall, MS was once small and harmless, too. Once, ~”there simply wasn’t a single shred of evidence, proof, comment, remark, or anything else that showed any sign there’s reason to worry about their product, its manufacturer, or their intent”
I wonder what other formats apart from H.264 are supported. In the comment section of the article linked, the crew is responding that e.g. WebM is not supported in HW, and hence it will not be able to get past basic VESA mode performance. That seems like a bad limitation, no? Or is that only about the firmware update?
Difficult to know given that the GPU is proprietary..
As long as they have stable dev toolchains I don’t care about them delivering it with a proprietary blob. I want to use it for userland projects. Been looking for a convenient to use platform for various projects.
If that GPU gets reverse engineered (and I’m sure avoiding this is what the GPU booting everything is all about), then the dark cloud of it’s closeness might be broken up. I know many people don’t understand the importance of it being open, but hopefully, after owning one of these, a few years down the line, they will understand. A lot more people understanding the importance of open drivers is itself a big contribution.
The drivers will be frozen in time, if they aren’t already. At best we can hope for bugfixs for a while. We can’t hope for them to be developed further. With all the flux in the graphics stack right now, it’s a bad time to be freezing graphical stuff. Pretty soon after release we will find we can only use kernels that can be used with the close drivers. As it’s a userland thing too, parts of the userland will be frozen too. Built in obsolescence. Build in limitations. I still want reassurance it can play any old HD content, not approved content only (i.e. DRM rubbish). I’ve got a feeling these will be only any use as headless pretty soon if you want to run anything modern on them. I’ll still buy one because they are so cheap, and even headless, they are very useful. But I hold hope someone really clever will find a way of opening that GPU.