Who needs an insanely expensive Sky subscription for hundreds of channels filled with rubbish? Not me, that's not who! (Storage Wars on the History channel, seriously? Just one of my many gripes...)
So I got rid of my Sky+ and replaced it, in part*, with Raspberry Pi. That's a £28** computer, for those not in the know. Then bung something called XBMC on it. This is something I could show you how to do, but if you search the interwebs, you'll find plenty of people who'll lead you through the installation far better than I ever could.
What's XBMC?
It's a cross-platform media player with a tonne of plugins, that can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be. Google's your friend.
So what exactly can this do? I hear you ask...
Well, I have mine set up to give me easy access to the likes of BBC iPlayer and 4OD from the UK, Canada on Demand (from Canada!) and Hulu (from the States). I also use 'USTV Now' if I can't sleep. That's live US TV, in high definition, receiveable over here in England. I caught the lastest episode of The Simpsons Sunday night as it was 1am UK time and I couldn't sleep.
To use either Canada on Demand or Hulu, I use a service called Unblock-Us which makes it appear I'm over there.
Why would you want to watch Canadian TV?
Good question! I actually use Canada on Demand to watch US shows such as Comedy Central's The Colbert Report (which no longer airs in the UK).
How do you control the thing?
If your TV supports HDMI-CEC, like my Samsung does (they call it Anynet+,) you can use your TV remote to control XBMC on Pi.
Or, failing that, if you have an Android phone or tablet you can use a free app called Yatse, which is pretty amazeballs!
Now how about some pictures?
Okay, but they're blurry! Plus my Samsung has a very glossy screen...
The clear case costs extra. I paid £3 for mine. The little blue and white box you see is my WiFi repeater that doubles as a wired ethernet access point.
*I also use a great little Humax set-top-box the good folks at Freesat gave me a couple of years back.
**Although you can't exactly get it working for that amount. A charger, an HDMI cable and an SD card are 100% essential extras. However, they only add a few quid if you shop around.
Recent Comments