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Raspberry Pi Media Centre

· 2 min read
Luke Murray
Luke Murray
Author

First off, you need a Raspberry Pi and an SD Card/Reader

  1. Once obtained download Xbian
  2. Once downloaded, make sure that the SD Card is blank or is safe to format and plugged in.
  3. Extract Xbian to a folder on your computer
  4. Run the Win32 Extractor and make sure you select the SD-Card as the correct destination.
  5. Once selected press Run
  6. The tool will then format (erase) everything on the SD-Card and overlay the Xbian software onto the card and make it bootable, it generally takes 1-2 minutes to complete.
  7. Once completed make sure that nothing is writing to the SD-Card or has it open and take the card out.
  8. Put the SD-Card into the Raspberry Pi (the slot is underneath the Pi)
  9. Plug the Pi into power and attach it up to a TV/Monitor using HDMI and let it boot up Xbian.
  10. As easy as that, you have now a fully functionally media centre.

 

Note: Xbian automatically boots NTFS/FAT32 External HDDs, however make sure that the external HDD has its own power source the Pi doesn’t have enough juice to pump through to drives that only have one USB cable for both power and data.

_Note: To add Videos, click Add Videos, Add Files, Add Source, select the folder that contains the video files it is entirely normal for no videos to appear in this dialog.  _