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TELE-audiovision International — The World‘s Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine
— 1 -12/2013
—
FEATURE
Selfmade IPTV
1. The Raspberry Pi is a small computer
with the footprint of a credit card. Still, it
features all conceivable connections:
- HDMI
- Composite Video
- Analog Stereo Audio
- 2x USB
- 1x Micro-USB for power supply
- RJ-45 Network
- SD card reader
On the PCB there are furthermore
connectors for digital and analog inputs/
outputs
2. The Raspberry Pi will convert any TV or
monitor into a full blown media center when
using XBMC. Because the Raspberry Pi is
so small, it will snug away behind the TV.
If you then use a wireless keyboard with
integrated trackball or touch pad, you won’t
even see any loose cables.
Vitor Martins Augusto
In the first three parts we focused
more on the theory of IPTV. In Part
4 we now want to implement an
IPTV system. And you don’t need
all that much: a PC with a digital
TV receiver (DVB, ATSC or ISDB)
and TSReader Pro would be used as
the server. A Raspberry Pi would be
used as the IPTV receiver.
The biggest problem with implement-
ing IPTV at home is how do you receive
and display IPTV on your TV? Of course,
you could set up a PC next to each TV
but even so-called “cheap” comput-
ers still cost some money and let’s not
forget the cost of the electricity to run
these PCs. So, with all of that in mind,
we looked around for some kind of de-
vice to use as an IPTV receiver that
matched our criteria: cheap, small,
easy-to-use and fully featured. After
looking at a number of different candi-
dates (from game consoles all the way
to a modified AppleTV) we decided on
the Raspberry Pi.
The Raspberry Pi is a very small com-
puter; the circuit board is not much big-
ger than a credit card (85.6mm x 56mm
x 21mm). Despite its small size, it is a
fully complete computer with an ARM
processor. It features:
- SoC („System on Chip“): Broadcom
BCM2835 with an ARM1176JZFS Kernel
that runs at 700MHZ and includes a Vid-
eocore 4 GPU graphics section capable
of decoding H.264 at up to 40MBits/sec.
OpenGL ES2.0 and OpenVG libraries are
also supported.
- “B” models come with 512MB RAM;
currently 1GB RAM versions are also be-
ing shipped for the same price.
Connections:
o SD-Card: used to load the operating
system
o 2x USB: used to connect a key-
board, mouse, USB sticks, etc.
o LAN: RJ-45 with 100MBit/s
o Audio: analog stereo output
