RaspBMC = Raspberry Pi + XBMC

 Pi with my media center remote, SD card, and WiFi dongle.

I finally broke down and ordered a Raspberry Pi.  Of course, they've been on back order since their release, so I had no idea when I would see it.  I was excited when I got the e-mail saying it shipped on October 16th, not only because I was getting one, but because I saw this on October 15th.  I was really hoping to get the revision 2.0 with 512 MB RAM.  I ended up getting the original version with 256 MB RAM.  When I called they said my Pi left the warehouse on October 15th, prior to my receiving the e-mail.  Only those shipped after the 15th were the 512 MB model. Bummer.

Although I have lots of ideas for the Raspberry Pi, my initial plan is to make a media center using XBMC.

The Media Center

Raspberry Pi - $35 + $5 shipping = $40
4GB SDHC Card - $5 (I ended up buying a couple of these to get free shipping.)
Media Center Remote - $7.60 - (I purchased from a domestic seller so this was the cost with shipping.)
Edimax EW-7811Un USB Wireless Adapter - $9.99
RCA cable 10 ft - $4.14 (I don't have HDMI so I need this and the adapter on the next line)
3.5mm to RCA audio adapter 6 in - $0.61
Power Supply - free (I'm using an old Samsung cell phone power supply. Listed as 5V 700mA)

Total: $67.35 (plus a little extra shipping for the cables and possibly the SD card)

Accessories

Regular USB to micro USB cable - $1.20 (Hoping to be able to power the Pi off the USB hub)
Belkin powered USB Hub - $11.49 (Because the Pi is limited in power output and only has 2 USB ports, I purchased a powered USB hub.  I was hoping to power the Pi from the hub, but his one is only rated at 600mA.)
USB extension cables - 2 x $1.36 = $2.72 (This made it possible to sit farther away and still control things with my wired keyboard and mouse.)
USB mouse - free
USB to PS/2 adapter - $1.95 (I don't have an extra USB keyboard, but I do have an extra PS/2 keyboard.)
PS/2 Keyboard - free (worked no problem plugged directly into the Pi with the adapter above)
Ethernet Cable - free (Installation of Raspbmc through the wired Ethernet, after which you can use wireless.)
2 extra SD cards - $10 (As above, I bought extras for free shipping and for installation of other Raspberry Pi operating systems.)
RCA switch - $4.13 (Shipping included. I didn't have any more connections on my TV so I needed a switch.)

Cost: $31.49 (plus a little shipping for the cables)

As luck would have it this project was covered by my birthday money.

Setting up the Media Center

Installing Raspbmc

1) Unpack all your fun new things and get organized.
2) Visit www.raspbmc.com/download/ to setup your SD card and download the latest version of raspbmc.
     The process is different depending on the OS you're using to setup the card
3) Plug in Ethernet, SD card, Keyboard, Mouse, Video and Sound (HDMI or RCA) to your Raspberry Pi.
4) Plug in power to Raspberry Pi. There is no on/off switch, so this is how you get things going.
5) Wait for installation to complete.

Helpful hints: Some SD cards don't work.  I used the elinux resource (see end of post) and raspbmc forum to guide me.  I tried a 2GB Trasncend and a 4GB Kingston microSD that didn't work.  The disadvantage of the cards listed above are they are class 4 and therefore slower, but they do work.

Installing Wireless & Remote

1) Inside XBMC go to Programs and install the Network Manager Add-on. Reboot.
2) The Edimax adapter above was detected for me without incident and works fine.
3) Remote setup was plug and play, though I did reboot before using it.

Media

Option 1: Network via SMB, NFS, UnPNP etc..  I'm connecting to media stored on my desktop using the Windows standard samba protocol, though I understand NFS is faster.
Option 2: USB Storage like a hard drive or USB flash memory.

Ripping and encoding that media from DVD or Blu-Ray is another discussion entirely.  I mostly used MakeMKV and Handbrake.

I then used the IMDB scraper and a TV scraper to get the movie artwork and information.

So far it works really well.  I've played 480 and 720 content successfully.  Unfortunately, the 1080 content was very choppy, which I believe is due to the bandwidth limitation of my 802.11g router.

My only complaint is that periodically, the Pi it will decide to not connect to my media via SMB.  It seems that turning of the Pi and letting it sit without power often resolves the issue.  Also, connecting to the Pi via SSH (I'm using Putty.) and typing the following commands works too.
- sudo initctl stop xbmc
- sudo initctl start xbmc

Pi on top of the VCR and connected.  USB Hub peeking out from behind the VCR.  It usually is hide entirely. Switch on the left since I don't have enough RCA inputs on the  TV.

At some point maybe I'll post a picture of the user interface.  It is a basic XBMC Confluence skin if you want to Google it.

Hindsight (It's 20/20 you know.)

Other Media Center Options

There are multiple Android based options, which may have the advantage of Netflix compatibility through the Android app.  Of course, the media center PC is the most versatile option but also most expensive. Unfortunately for me the Pi is the only inexpensive option supporting analog out for audio and video.  Since I currently don't have a TV with HDMI, it is my only media center option.
1) MK802 - $40
2) MK808 - $75
3) G-box Dyno - $50-80
4) G-box Midnight - $90-100
5) Xios - $115
6) Apple TV - $99
7) Roku - $90
8) Odroid - $69-135 (Quad-core ARM processor - multiple model options)
9) GK802 - $99 (Quad-core android based USB stick)
9) Media center PC (XBMC is available for Windows, OS X, Linux, iOS, Apple TV, and Ubuntu)

As you can see from the above list the world of mini PCs has expanding very rapidly in the last year and options continue to expand daily.  liliputing.com keeps up with the new options, both software and hardware, very well.  In addition to leaning about new mini PC hardware, I learned recently from this site that Netflix is now unofficially available in Ubuntu. (see here).

Alternative Mini PC uses

Also, it appears that there are several Ubuntu options for the MK802 (here, here and here).  Unfortunately, this is limited to the MK802 because the other android stick PCs use different ARM processors. Ports for some of those are still in development.  Naturally, there is no need to use Ubuntu if you are planning to build a media center.

The exciting part about the Raspberry Pi and the Android devices is that they are inexpensive.  The unfortunate part is that they are early in development and thus poorly supported and full of bugs.

Possible upgrades

Case - I think I want to make my own.
Faster SD Card - Though I don't remember where, I read this card works with raspbmc.  It's rated much faster than Class 4.
Raspbmc Dynamic Overclocking - From what I've seen on the web, this can cause corruption of the SD card, but can be done if you run Raspbmc from a USB flash drive.  You still need the SD card for boot.
Raspberry Pi Heatsinks - the Pi doesn't get that hot, but these are inexpensive and may provide a little benefit if overclocking.  I've seen them as cheap as $2-5 for the set on ebay.

Sources
The Official Raspberry Pi Website - www.raspberrypi.org
Raspbmc - www.raspbmc.com
e-linux for the Raspberry Pi - http://elinux.org/RPi_Hub
XBMC - xbmc.org
liliputing - liliputing.com