Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Shortcut for Cord Cutters
One of the downsides to cutting the cord and ridding yourself of a cable or satellite
service is that things don't
just come on
. You have to turn on your TV and wait for your
Playstation 3 or Roku or whatever device you're using (now a Raspberry Pi!) to start
as well. You can plug the Pi into a separate power outlet and leave it running all the
time so that when you turn on your TV, you don't have to wait for it to boot. Or, if you'd
rather not consume power and keep the Pi running when you're not watching TV,
there's another option.
If your TV has a USB port, try connecting it to your Raspberry Pi for power. It might
not work, but sometimes it does. And if it does, your Pi will boot when you turn on the
TV, and you're one step closer to your favorite shows. We still can't make whatever
you were hoping to watch magically appear when you turn on your TV, but maybe this
will cut out one extra step. The downside to this approach is that most TVs cut the
power to the USB port when the TV is turned off. This leads to a regular pattern of
abrupt OS shutdown, which may shorten the life of your SD card in your Raspberry
Pi, or at the very least, require the filesystems on it to be repaired with fsck more often.
Add Some Content
Now that you have a media center, what are you going to watch? If you're like us, you'd
like to be able to get your Hulu and Netflix subscriptions in there. The easiest way to
PlayOn combines content from a wide source of online providers and makes it easy
for you to find and consume. We've been using it for some time now and can gen-
uinely recommend that it's worth the cost. The price varies with changing sales,
but even a lifetime subscription is probably half or less of one of your monthly cable
bills.
PlayOn is a really handy server for a Windows machine (that's the one downside: you
need an extra machine, and only Windows will do) that streams your video content to
just about any device. To get content to your TV, however, it needs a helper friend, like
your new Raspberry Pi with XBMC. You can use it to play your subscription services,
including Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Instant Video. There are also plenty of free chan-
nels. If you want to be sure that the stuff you watch is available before you sign on, you
can use the
PlayOn Show Finder
.
Once you purchase your PlayOn subscription and install it on your Windows computer,
you'll need to enter your registration license in the PlayOn Settings (Start
→
All Pro-
grams
→
PlayOn
→
PlayOn Settings) on the Registration tab, as shown in
Figure 5-13
.
