I tried both Raspbmc and OpenElec. I didn't see a significant difference in performance. Using Raspbmc now. Unless they made some significant changes to OpenElec the past 3-4 months they are more or less the same.
I pretty much did the same, I started with OpenElec because my pi shipped with it, changed to raspbmc because I liked the fact it was debian-based. There really doesn't seem to be much performance difference.
I tried the three main XBMC distro: raspbmc, openelec and raspbian.
I early dismissed raspbian because of the lack of updates.
I liked raspbmc because it's a debian and it's easy to add more features to the PI but I dislike and used to fear the monthly update. It would often break my installation (the dreaded endless reboot loop).
I like openelec. It feels lighter but it's hard to add anything to it because it's a custom-tailored linux distribution at its core.
Can't see any differences between the three of them xbmc-feature wise. Most kinks (audio gap when playing songs, etc.) have been ironed out now.
I'll just throw my vote in for OpenElec. But by the replies you've already gotten, there really doesn't seem to be a clear winner.
I actually have two RPIs, Raspbmc seems to corrupt more on one of them. I stuck with OpenElec because it works great on both. In fact, to prevent corruption of the SD card, I followed a tutorial and have the data on a USB stick, so the SD card just holds the system, only gets written to on a system update.
"It works" in the sense that you can use it as a cli tool to download/share a torrent, much like aria2 would do. It implements many standard features ((multi) tracker, extensions, dht, magnet, ...), with the following notable exceptions:
- no peer choking
- no throttling
- no LPD/LSD
- no PEX
also, its output is quite verbose. All things considered, a very pleasing experience with Go that works. Not used a lot though I'm afraid.
It would have been nice with RaspBMC, but I've recently switch to using Put.io + Chromecast. The fact that Put.io has almost instantaneous access to entire torrents is kind of a dealbreaker.
I think they're getting around it by being a strict torrenting service - i.e. when you add a torrent that is already there, you get one single seed for the entire file, and the person who originally brought it in is liable for sharing it, not put.io
I rigged up Azureus to do this kind of sequential downloading a long time ago once, and it was quite neat, but I didn't share the patch because I reckoned it would be bad for torrent health if everyone started doing this. Isn't that still true, and with Popcorn and this popping up now, isn't it just a question of time before seeders start recognising and penalising sequential downloaders?
You are right, but there's a lot more to it (time randomization, hot spots which are also the most shared etc..).
That's also why the addon is using libtorrent-rasterbar (as opposed to peerflix), and tries very hard to do the right thing as to minimaly hurt the swarm (it does, but it tries to make up for it).
Would like to mention SS Plex[1]. It doesn't use torrents, nor XBMC really, but it allows you to stream and download content to a wider variety of devices.
I say "wider variety" because Plex runs on everything XBMC runs on (via PleXBMC), and transcodes files into a format the client supports.
I've recently switched from XBMC on a hacked ATV1 to Plex on a MacMini and been really happy with it so far. Having the Plex app on my Samsung TV and then on iPhone and iPad is a great bonus meaning it's trivial to pick up where I left off.
I always thought the "keep watching from a different device" thing was such a gimmick, but I'll go from watching a movie on the TV, then to watching a few minutes more in bed before sleeping then another few minutes over breakfast.
If my 18mo old is lazing in bed with us, I can pull up a TV show he likes, give him some headphones and snooze for a bit longer.
Would it be very hard to make this work with MediaPortal? I know that the two packages started out quite similar but have forked rather drastically over time.
I only ask because despite trying to change over to XBMC a number of times (almost every major revision) I've never been able to make it do what I need it to do and MePo has a much higher WAF when setup well.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 82.3 ms ] threadSupported platforms are:
- Windows x86 x64
- OS X x64
- Linux x86 x64 (XBMCbuntu)
- Raspberry Pi (Raspbian, OpenELEC, Raspbmc, Xbian)
- Android 4.0+ ARM
I early dismissed raspbian because of the lack of updates.
I liked raspbmc because it's a debian and it's easy to add more features to the PI but I dislike and used to fear the monthly update. It would often break my installation (the dreaded endless reboot loop).
I like openelec. It feels lighter but it's hard to add anything to it because it's a custom-tailored linux distribution at its core.
Can't see any differences between the three of them xbmc-feature wise. Most kinks (audio gap when playing songs, etc.) have been ironed out now.
I now use raspbmc with auto-update turned off.
I actually have two RPIs, Raspbmc seems to corrupt more on one of them. I stuck with OpenElec because it works great on both. In fact, to prevent corruption of the SD card, I followed a tutorial and have the data on a USB stick, so the SD card just holds the system, only gets written to on a system update.
Also. what port does it use so that I can set the appropriate firewall rules?
https://github.com/steeve/torrent2http - turns magnet links into sequential HTTP downloads
https://github.com/steeve/libtorrent-go - Go bindings for libtorrent-rasterbar
http://www.rasterbar.com/products/libtorrent/ - 'efficient, easy' torrent library
https://github.com/jackpal/Taipei-Torrent - Taipei-Torrent, a working pure go bittorrent application
Disclaimer: I participated in it.
- no peer choking - no throttling - no LPD/LSD - no PEX
also, its output is quite verbose. All things considered, a very pleasing experience with Go that works. Not used a lot though I'm afraid.
My other comment is a hint to the developer ;)
It would have been nice with RaspBMC, but I've recently switch to using Put.io + Chromecast. The fact that Put.io has almost instantaneous access to entire torrents is kind of a dealbreaker.
We'll pay for a year+ subscription, and then the feds will raid them.
That's also why the addon is using libtorrent-rasterbar (as opposed to peerflix), and tries very hard to do the right thing as to minimaly hurt the swarm (it does, but it tries to make up for it).
Would like to mention SS Plex[1]. It doesn't use torrents, nor XBMC really, but it allows you to stream and download content to a wider variety of devices.
I say "wider variety" because Plex runs on everything XBMC runs on (via PleXBMC), and transcodes files into a format the client supports.
[1]: http://mikew.github.io/ss-plex.bundle/
I always thought the "keep watching from a different device" thing was such a gimmick, but I'll go from watching a movie on the TV, then to watching a few minutes more in bed before sleeping then another few minutes over breakfast.
If my 18mo old is lazing in bed with us, I can pull up a TV show he likes, give him some headphones and snooze for a bit longer.
Well, apart from the fact that it existed way before, it also serves a different purpose:
- Last version has 8 providers (as opposed to 1)
- Appart from Win/Mac/Linux, it works on Android and Raspberry Pi
- Tailored for TV (because XBMC)
- You can send "magnets" to it via Chrome (see FAQ in post)
- Leverages a better bittorrent library (enhancing the swarm healthiness)
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