
Raspberry Pi demos $25 PC running 1080p video, promises CD-quality audio - ukdm
http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/raspberry-pi-demos-25-pc-running-1080p-video-promises-cd-quality-audio-2011098/
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steverb
I teach middle school programming/computer classes. I cannot wait to get my
hands on one of these. Right now it's cheap enough that I can tell the parents
to buy one for their kids without a problem, and out of pocket it for those
few of my students whose parents won't be able to afford it.

Then I can finally not have to deal with the full lockdown the school has on
their PC lab.

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xyzzyz
What about input and display devices? Although school can afford buying some
cheap keyboards, the displays are much more expensive and it's pretty hard to
work without them.

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ConstantineXVI
I think the idea is that they're cheap enough to give to students to use at
home, who can hook them up to TVs they already have

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xyzzyz
Kids don't have PCs to learn, but their parents have HD TV? Is USA really like
this?

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ctdonath
This lets the kids have their own PC to work on without any risk of screwing
up the family PC, and at a trivial cost.

Installing programming tools on whatever PC the parents may have is not a
reliable, trivial, or consistent process. Parents will be upset if it somehow
the installation screws up the home computer.

And yes, for some households with limited income, they may have enough money
for an HDTV _or_ a PC, but not both - and most households will have opted for
the HDTV before the need for an adequate PC for classwork became an issue.

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rcfox
> Parents will be upset if it somehow the installation screws up the home
> computer.

You've understated this point. Kids should be _encouraged_ to (educationally)
do things that will screw up their computers, like attempting to build their
own kernel. They shouldn't have to worry about getting beaten because mom
can't play Farmville after they've been experimenting.

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ctdonath
Sure, just like they should be encouraged to take the family car apart and put
it back together to learn about mechanical engineering.

Yeah, that'll go over well.

Spend the $25 on a do-what-you-want-to-it R-pi already.

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Jabbles
This is fantastic, but "1080p" can have a dramatic range of qualities. If
Inglorious Bastards just fits on the 2GB card and is over 2 hours long then
the bitrate will be around 2Mbit/s, which is probably not very good. (cf.
~25Mbit/s for BluRay).

I should also point out that depending on the quality of the encoder, the
bitrate is also a bad way of measuring quality. But I believe it is more
useful than just saying "1080p".

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2+gigabytes+%2F+Inglour...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2+gigabytes+%2F+Inglourious+Bastards+runtime)

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liz_upton
Hi - I'm Liz from Raspberry Pi. What you can see in that vid isn't the whole
of Inglorious Basterds, but just the trailer (which is why it fits on a small
SD card) - we were playing it on a loop. The Raspberry Pi can play back full
25 megabit HDMI; it's part of our mobile phone SoC dividend.

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liz_upton
It's a cine clip, so I think it was 24fps. We can decode 30fps, but it's
actually quite hard to find content!

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Jabbles
Do you have a reference for the technical details of this? Do you know how
much power it draws? Are details like MTTF known? Where did you get the H264
decoder from?

Exciting stuff.

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tobiasu
So, Mr. Upton, what are your plans regarding making the SoC datasheet
available for real hackers?

(Not that I have any hope that Broadcom would change its ways...)

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teach
I suspect Liz Upton is female.

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jodrellblank
I suspect the comment was addressed openly to this guy:
<http://www.raspberrypi.org/?author=1>

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gravitronic
Looks like there will be another user of this SoC coming to market relatively
soon, from the original Microsoft Xbox hacker "bunnie":

 _The NeTV has a particularly high hack-value due to its integration of an
FPGA; from the hacker’s perspective, it’s a cousin to the Rasberry Pi but with
integrated wifi, HDMI pass-through and an FPGA. And a shiny plastic case for
those who care about that!_ <http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=1847>

Maybe by "cousin" he means similar market and actually a different SoC. Either
way depending on price point it may be what the "hardcore" hacker crowd is
hoping to get from the raspberry pi (whose target is more an introduction to
computing / computer science)

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nl
This looks _really_ interesting. It appears to be designed specifically to do
HDMI passthough, with the idea you run apps on top of video that is passing
through the device (or that's how I read it anyway).

Combine that with the FPGA... I can imagine some really nice apps.

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0x12
This thing will sell like hotcakes if they can keep the pricepoint the way it
is now.

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wccrawford
IF they can, it's going to make a lot of waves. IF.

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liz_upton
We definitely can. Our BOM comes in well under the planned selling price, and
we're totally confident of hitting the $25/$35 price points.

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liz_upton
We're selling too close to cost to make any discounts workable, but we can
discount on shipping if people buy lots in one go.

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0x12
That's actually quite scary. If you sell 'close to cost' then your margins are
going to be razor thin even with just a little overhead it might not be
viable.

Beware of selling too cheap.

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baxter
AFAICT they are a registered charity with the goal of promoting computer
science education, so I suspect large profit margins matter less than if they
were a business.

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sciurus
They don't need large profit margins, but they should try to have enough for
an office and staff.

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wccrawford
Profit is what you have after paying for costs, including staff.

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oacgnol
The Raspberry Pi sounds cool in concept. I should hope that the demo is
unoptimized for now, perhaps the ceiling for the hardware is higher than we
anticipate.

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liz_upton
We're definitely not done with optimisation, which is why we're not launching
right-now-this-minute. You'll be seeing improvements, which we'll be blogging
about (we think development's fascinating, and that it's good for people to
have a glimpse about what's involved with putting this sort of thing together)
all the way up until we launch.

~~~
oacgnol
Count me excited. I'd love to see what the open source community can do to max
out the hardware.

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ajays
Man, I'd love to get my hands on one. I have an Airport Express right now for
streaming music from my Linux box to my home theater system, but it's just not
working out.

All I need is a Linux-supporting little toy like this with audio out and WiFi
(and which can decompress an MP3 in realtime).

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RexRollman
If I had one, it would probably just end up putting Linux on it with MPD,
which I could then be remotely control via mpc or ncmpc.

But the biggest problem for me would be figuring out what to do with the board
itself. I've built PCs before but I wouldn't know what to put this board into
or the best way to power it. And, of course, I would also have to overcome my
lack of familiarity with ARM.

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adrianinaustin
shut up and take my money!

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patrickod
I will most definitely buy one of these boards when they come out if even just
to support the charity. That said I'm sure such a small functioning computer
would no doubt come in handy down the road as well.

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RexRollman
Does anyone know if either OpenBSD or NetBSD has been tried with this hardware
yet? I didn't see any mention of it on the website, unless I simply overlooked
it.

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ErrantX
Brilliant.. I'm smiling. And will definitely be buying a few as soon as I can
get my hands on them - plenty of educational and home uses spring to mind!

The especially nice thing is that last week when Raspberry Pi were mentioned
here (a couple of times) there were some quite legitimate comments along the
lines of "we've heard of the low cost PC before.. but they are all
vapourware". So it is great to see a product that is all but on the market :)

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bane
I'm extremely excited about this project. Quick question: does anybody know if
the foundation is planning on coordinating lesson plans, source code that
people build for this, etc. I think starting an entire community around this
could be great.

I'm reminded of the fantastic community that surrounds TI calculators/MSX
Computers/Amiga Computers/Atari STs etc..

See <http://www.ticalc.org/> as an example

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Kilimanjaro
Love the project, just one question: why $25 and not $95? Seems to me you're
leaving $70 on the table for no apparent reason.

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Sapient
At $25 they will be helping a lot more people than just well-off geeks - this
whole project a charitable after all.

I will be buying them for kids who would never have even touched a computer in
their lives if not for these (and doing a bit of teaching). Since I am hardly
Bill Gates, this would be completely impossible for me at $95 each (only
giving them to 2-3 of these kids and leaving out the rest is just a bad idea
in a slum).

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puredemo
Spending $95 on a PC does not make you "well off." I too would prefer that
price point.

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Sapient
Granted, it may not make you a "well off" geek, but my point was - at $95,
this would be a dream to most of the people who could benefit from it the
most.

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ljf
I am really looking forward to this - if only as a tool to use with the old
CRT TVs I have lying around!

Also I wonder if there will be a $30-$50 dollar one that includes fully
donating one (buy one give one) or any percentage along that route.

That said I'm sure there will be no end of charitable groups who will be
raising money to by these for groups and schools.

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Pahalial
1080p video with sound only recently improved from "FM radio" quality - what a
strange combination.

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th0ma5
You made me think about how audio has been generally far ahead of its
technical development, so in theory maybe this just means that 44.1k 16-bit
PCM is so ubiquitous and good enough that it is considered a pinnacle even
though options that are better exists. I love my 192 kHz sample rate on my
device, but admittedly this is for audio recording and ham radio, so, almost a
scientific instrument really.

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stcredzero
A $25 platform for scientific instruments would have tremendous benefits!

