How best to set up home media with Raspberry Pi?

[kepler]

We've just moved into a new flat and it has no TV or cable lines. Ordinarily I'd just HDMI my laptop into the TV but that gets old after a while, so I was wondering if I could just use a raspberry pi or something similar but I don't really know where to start.

I had a quick google and saw a few places say you just need xbmc, other people setting up automated torrent scrapers, etc.

Any pointers?

 

[kingofslackerz]

We've just moved into a new flat and it has no TV or cable lines. Ordinarily I'd just HDMI my laptop into the TV but that gets old after a while, so I was wondering if I could just use a raspberry pi or something similar but I don't really know where to start.

I had a quick google and saw a few places say you just need xbmc, other people setting up automated torrent scrapers, etc.

Any pointers?

There are a couple media center options, but the two main ones are Kodi (XBMC) and Plex. I'm more of a fan of Kodi since it is more customize-able, but it's a benefit to have plex running on your server as well for ease of access to your media.

Kodi has it's own Pi install you can download from their site, I believe it is OS independent, but you may want to check some guides to make sure. Also there is OpenElec that is an OS that strictly runs Kodi, they have a Pi build as well. KodiBuntu is also an option if you want a desktop environment.

If your actually looking for fully automate your media, PM me..