Recently Bromix, the developer of the awesome YouTube addon for Kodi decided to quit the project & concentrate on other things. This quickly lead to the addon breaking, days after he announced he was leaving the project. As yet nobody has taken up the reigns on this plugin. Over the past few days the plugin has been broken, with the My Subscriptions tab breaking and thumbnails failing to load. If you use this addon like me you will rely heavily on the My Subscriptions tab. I subscribe to a lot of YouTube channels & tend to watch this in the evening with my wife over watching traditional TV. The My Subscriptions tab essentially brings together all of the latest videos (in order) from every youtuber you subscribe to.

It would appear that since Bromix has left, there are issues with api keys. The initial fix was to generate your own keys and hack together the plugin to get it working. More recently, the awesome Raspberry Rabbit has taken up where Bromix left off and started adding his hacks into a zip, which can be installed from kodi.

Raspberry Rabbit is putting his fixes up on YouTube and as of Feb 23rd, I’m using his mod & everything is working as it should. Today he has added a bunch more of generated API keys into his zip, so this should work in the interim until a more elegant fix is implemented. I’m going to look into this myself as I didn’t realise how much I rely on the YouTube kodi plugin until the past week.

If you want to grab the latest Raspberry Rabbit version, head over to his github page at https://github.com/rasberryrabbit or download the addon itself directly from https://github.com/rasberryrabbit/plugin.video.youtube/archive/master.zip

If you are interested in getting this working there is a lot of chatter over on the Kodi forums so go & check them out at http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=200735&page=218

Steps I used to get this working.

1. Go to your kodi profile folder, go into addon data and delete your youtube folder
2. Download the Youtube Master version linked to above
3. In kodi, go to video addons > Get More > use the … button to go back two folder levels and install from zip
4. Select the Youtube Master zip downloaded above & let install
5. Open your new YouTube addon via Video Addons and click sign in.
6. Authenticate twice with the codes shown over at https://youtube.com/activate
7. Enjoy your working version of YouTube for Kodi.

If you run into any issues let me know, I’ll update this post as things change. Like I said, I use this addon daily so I’ll always be up to date on the latest developments until it becomes stable again.

It’s hard to believe that the Raspberry Pi team have managed to squeeze so much power out of the same form factor & price point. The fact that it’s a quad-core means that everything feels much snappier. Less like a mega budget hobby machine & more like a mid range desktop PC. It will always be limited by processing power & RAM, not to mention raw graphic processing, but when you consider the price point & opportunity to try any project you like for very little financial outlay the Raspberry Pi will always be a great machine.

I really wanted this Pi to replace my ageing B+ which was used as a RASPbmc media centre. While great gains were made by Sam Nazarko with regards menu speed & performance, you can’t beat the extra grunt, ram & processing power of the latest Pi 2. I also wanted a viable replacement for my Apple TV 2 which is jailbroken & running Kodi. I also have an ATV1 which is great but uses much more power than a Pi & gets extremely hot, not to mention the pretty huge footprint in comparison to a pi.

I also opted for one of the 16GB Sandisk Extreme Micro SD cards. The SD cards have historically been a nightmare for me on the Pi, with corruption and poor compatibility with unbranded cards. Hopefully going for a well manufactured high spec card I’ll get the best I/O speed and a good long life. For the price I don’t mind them burning out, but just not too quickly.

Many of you will also know that I’m currently in between houses. My wife & I are in the process of relocating & downsizing so we are staying with Family why we look for a new place. This means my lovely hard-wired network is in storage & I’m relying on wifi. I hate wifi. It’s unstable, throughput is always compromised by interference and environmental factors & it’s generally a poor substitute for a hard-wired environment. This presented a major headache for me. The only USB wifi dongle I have is an Edimax EW-7811UTC which would not play nicely with OSMC (the new name for RASPbmc). As much as I tried to configure the wifi dongle the connection would fail. I even tried to SSH in and setup the connection manually but the connection kept dropping & was a PITA to get right. So I decided to give Openelec another go.

I generally stick to what i know when it works. I love crystalbuntu & RASPbmc so I was loathed to use a distro not produced by Sam. However in a few months I can go back to my wired network & return to OSMC. In the mean time we have Openelec.

Installation was painless. I prefer not to use n00bs so I used terminal on my iMac to download Openelec and copy the distro to my SD card. All simple enough, 10 minutes later all was ready and it was time to boot up the Raspberry Pi 2 with Openelec. I was stunned by the boot times and snappiness of the whole experience. Boot takes seconds from power on to the main Kodi window. The menus are super fast & fluid with the standard Kodi Confluence skin. Browsing through & adding to my library is vastly improved & as a whole this media centre setup is unbeatable. Power consumption is tiny, the footprint of the pi (which is now rear mounted on the TV) is ideal and it’s a fanless design so no worries with noise. I did fit an OmniVESA mount to my Pi & a heatsink to aid cooling, but I currently have it mounted without a case on the back of my Samsung TV and it’s a dream to use.

Something that has always put me off the Pi as a media centre & kept me using the Apple TV 2 was remote support. As the whole experience on the Pi 2 is fast & native (doesn’t require jailbreaking & hacks like the ATV2) I decided to address the remote issue. I went for a Wireless Keyboard which is a tiny little keyboard with remote control buttons & built-in mouse trackpad. I reviewed the keyboard here. This is the perfect solution. I can type searches in without using an on-screen keyboard & because it’s wireless and doesn’t require line of sight I can mount the raspberry pi out of sight keeping my living room looking neat.

I have tried throwing so many media files at Openelec on the Raspberry Pi 2 and I’m yet to find something that won’t play. The CPU is largely idle & I can even ramp up fancy de-interlacing and other post processing without stressing the Pi too much. It plays with no lag at all. What’s more the built-in Openelec settings mean I can set my wifi connection from the gui & the connection is rock solid. The distro is also auto updating & the software footprint is tiny. I’ve also had the media centre up for weeks without a single crash. It’s rock solid. The only issue I did run into was the appearance of a coloured box in the top right hand corner of the Pi. I’ve never experienced this before but the box is caused when the power supply isn’t supplying sufficient power. I upgraded the supply to one of the official Raspberry Pi 2A supplies which I picked up from Pimoroni along with the OmniVESA.

If you haven’t already tried the Raspberry Pi 2 you really should. I have a few projects in the works which will require a few more units & I hope to write these up soon.

Have you got a Raspberry pi 2? What kind of projects are you doing? Let me know in the comments below.

 Since then, in April 2014 I put all of my belongings into storage, with the exception of a few bits of clothing & my iMac. The point of this was to stay with family, clear off all of my student debt & plan for a big relocation. The debt has gone & the house hunt is underway, but in that time I’ve only had my iMac. I’ve been able to update XBMC right through the change to Kodi and up to the latest version without any issues. I’ve now got my stuff out of storage and realised that Crystalbuntu hasn’t been updated to kodi so the ATV1 is out (I use a lot of add ons which require later versions of Kodi) and the ATV2 is shocking using Kodi. it’s slow, laggy & drops frames. So out came the Pi for an experiment.

I first tried with OSMC Alpha 4, which was quick but did not play well with my Edimax 7711UN USB wifi adaptor. The built in wifi config tool doesn’t work. I setup my wifi with connman but after each reboot I had to go into terminal and reconnect. The connection kept dropping and it wasn’t ideal. I decided to give Openelec another go. I used this back in 2013 and whilst it worked it was much slower than Raspbmc. I installed Openelec on my Class 10 32GB Sandisk SD and I’m so surprised how quick it is now.

Whilst the installer is less friendly than that of OSMC (OSMC uses a handy gui based application while Openelec relies on terminal) the overall experience is excellent. It boots from power on to Kodi in seconds. After setting up my NFS shares and scanning & scraping all of my media to the library I started using Kodi via Openelec. The menus are pretty snappy. A little bit of lag navigating around the UI but considering it’s only a 700MHz single core ARM chipset I’m more than happy with it. The built in Openelec config tool is amazing. I was able to visually scan for my wifi network, select it and connect. And that’s it. I haven’t had to touch the config since. It maintains a connection and my install has been up for 2 weeks solid without a single crash. Initial loading times of media are excellent & I’ve not experienced any issues at all streaming my media from my local network. I have a lot of my Blu Rays on my NAS as 1080p MKV files and I’m able to stream them at full framerate without any dropped frames at all. Considering this is over Wifi I’m very impressed.

The first movie I watched from start to finish was Point Break. This is a 25GB MKV file with 5.1 audio and full 1080p resolution. I watched it start to finish without a single blip. I was stunned. The hardware decoding is a dream & after messing with the colour settings on my TV I’m really happy with the picture quality & colours. Also the sound appears to be much better than either of my Apple TV’s. The 802.11N Edimax 7711UN wifi adaptor worked really well streaming this from my NAS.

I also use the youtube addon a lot. We watch quite a lot of daily & travel vloggers in our household & the little Openelec Pi can handle everything. I’ve updated a few times since installing Openelec and each update has worked flawlessly. I love this setup. Unlike the ATV2 which relied on a jailbreak, this is 100% supported by Openelec. No hacking required. The playback performance is superb & I couldn’t be happier.

I was initially put off by the lack of decent remote support on the Pi, but I invested in a great wireless keyboard aimed at media centre users called the Rii i8 which I reviewed here. The keyboard is the ideal companion and the setup I have now is superb. Using a keyboard has the benefits of having a full keyboard in your hands as opposed to using the on screen keyboard. A wonderful bonus when searching using text. Another great advantage is the fact that it uses 2.4GHz RF instead of IR so no line of sight required. It means that I’ve rear mounted the Pi on the back of our Samsung TV and it makes the setup even more seamless.

I can’t wait to see where this project goes & I’m really excited to see how quick the UI runs on the quad core Raspberry Pi 2. the extra RAM will also help. I’ve got one on order so will update you in the future.

In the meantime, grab a Raspberry Pi And install Kodi.

This week I finally took the plunge and bought a small wireless keyboard for the Raspberry Pi. The Pi in question is a B+ raspberry pi running at 700MHz and sporting 512MB ram. I’ve got a 32GB Sandisk Class 10 SD card in it and one of the excellent Pibow cases from Pimoroni.

Up until a few weeks ago I’d been using an Apple TV 1 as my main media centre (upgraded with a CrystalHD hardware video decoder & running XBMC) and a Jailbroken ATV2 as my backup. The Apple TV one is great, it’s fast & snappy but it’s a bit of a power hog & can take a while to boot up. Also Crystalbuntu is yet to be upgraded to Kodi as CrystalHD support was removed a few versions back. The ATV2 was great up until XBMC frodo when the hardware limitations started to show. I needed an alternative so I switched to Openelec on the Rapsberry Pi.

I’ve used XBMC on the Pi in the past and it was awful. Random crashes and slow menus, but this was when it was in it’s infancy. Also the major barrier was remote support. I tried installing a gpio IR receiver and using my own remote but it was laggy and not very precise. I also tried using a Flirc receiver but again it wasn’t exactly precise.

This time around I opted for this amazing little keyboard. It has media controls built in at the top, as well as a full qwerty keyboard and a track pad for good measure. It uses a small 2.4GHz USB receiver and contains a rechargeable battery pack & charging cable. This is the ultimate for the raspberry pi. The range is pretty epic & I’ve experienced no lag in menus on the latest version of openelec & Kodi 14.1. What’s more, because it’s not IR I’ve been able to mount the pi out of sight behind the TV. Bonus.

It just works right out of the box, I love that. It’s really responsive & very ergonomic. Also it makes text searches in Kodi a doddle as you can type. No more on screen keyboard.

The keyboard itself is very light & has a rubber coating like old PC gamepads. Battery life seems to be excellent.

I’ve found openelec on the Pi to be very stable. I’ve had it on without a reboot for 2 weeks without any glitches or crashes. I’m also using it with my Edimax 7811un Wifi adaptor and it’s been perfect. Signal is good considering how far away it is from the router & I’ve been able to stream 1080P MKV files without a hitch. No buffering or lag.

The pi has been flawless & I intend to upgrade this Media Centre to a Raspberry Pi 2 just as soon as I can get my hands on one. I’m going to run some power consumption tests but you can be sure it’s minimal. I’ll do a full write up on the Openelec/Raspberry pi experience soon but if you are thinking of going down this route I would definitely recommend the Rii i8 Keyboard. It’s currently on offer over at Amazon for £11.99 with free delivery. It’s an absolute bargain

 Rii i8 Mini 2.4GHz Wireless Keyboard with Touchpad Mouse for PC, PAD, XBox 360, PS3, Google Android TV Box, HTPC, IPTV (UK Layout) (Black)

I’ve always used XBMC (now Kodi) since it’s birth, even before when it was Xbox Media Player & my family have become accustomed to how everything works. It works wonderfully for our needs & we now don’t have any subscription TV services (granted we download TV episodes but we have a TV license & could watch them for free on our set top box so hardly a crime). We also convert all our DVD’s into .mp4/.m4v/.mkv files so we can watch them without going to find the disk.

I really love the XBMC (kodi) on the jailbroken ATV2 and it’s served me well for almost 2 years, but I have a few gripes with it. Firstly it’s reliant on a jailbreak, which isn’t ideal. Secondly, whilst videos play perfectly due to hardware acceleration available in the ATV2, the menus are certainly not as snappy or responsive as they are on XBMC (kodi) on our macs. This is understandable as the ATV2 is essentially an ipod touch without the screen. Also it tends to lock up using addons such as streaming video addons & can’t handle 720p Xvid or Divx files. So I went on the hunt for an alternative. It came in the form of an original 1st Generation Apple TV.

This box is a low powered computer with a 1ghz mobile intel processor, 256mb ram and a 40GB hard drive (it is available with a 160GB drive but as my stuff is all stored on a NAS it’s not required). It includes a Nvidia graphics chip and a wide array of I/O ports.

As standard the Apple TV is really showing it’s age. It’s slow & can just about display some types of 720p files using XBMC (kodi). As such it is not an ideal candidate for a modern 1080p media centre. However, if you head over to eBay and purchase a Broadcom BCM970012 Hardware HD Video Decoder Card this low powered computer becomes a media powerhouse. I purchased the following card for £14 and it’s a worthy purchase .

To fit the card you open up the case (4 torx screws) and remove the pre-installed wifi card. This will leave your Apple TV with Ethernet only, unless you add a USB wifi dongle which is possible, but for 1080p content I would really recommend an ethernet setup. You then install the Broadcom card in the wifi cards place & you are good to go.

Now there are drivers available for the standard Apple TV software. You will need to use Firecore’s ATV Flash software to create a patchstick. You can then install XBMC (kodi) and the CrystalHD drivers from the new maintenance menu. As I said before the Apple TV is showing it’s age & the native menus are very clunky & slow. This is where 3rd party Linux distros come into place.

You have 2 options, Crystalbuntu by Sam Nazarko or Openelec. I used Crystalbuntu for a good few days & it is flawless, however the installation procedure is a little harder & Sam (the developer) seems to be concentrating support more on Crystalbuntu for Raspberry Pi. I have since switched to OpenELEC 2.0 (RC 1) – 1.99.1 ATV i386 and I’m really impressed.

To install openelec is a breeze. You will need a USB flash drive, I used a Sandisk Cruzer 16GB drive.

Installation instructions for Apple TV are available here.

Installation is a breeze. Just make sure you have the Apple TV connected via Ethernet. The Patchstick will partition the internal HDD and you will lose the native Apple TV OS – no big deal. It will then automatically download the latest available version and install openelec XBMC. This is essentially a highly customised version of Linux with only the required files to boot on Apple TV, and only the required drivers for the hardware. Footprint is a couple of hundred Meg.

Post installation you will have a fast booting & extremely responsive XBMC installation. The Broadcom CrystalHD drivers will be installed automatically & selected for Hardware Acceleration in XBMC.

Now simply add your media sources & build your library. This is a really fast media centre & will play anything I throw at it. I can watch my 1080p blu ray rips with ease & stutter free. Truly a wonderful addition to our media centre collection.

The Openelec install also has various options in settings so you can configure wifi (either built in if you opt not to install a broadcom card, or USB dongle wifi if you so wish).

The openelec install is self updating (set to auto update in openelec settings) & comes with Samba setup so you can access the Media Centre from any machine on your network, making it easy to copy files, access logs, change keymaps or mess with advancedsettings.xml

This truly is a great media centre setup & I cant beleive all in it cost less than an ATV3 for so much more than that box is capable of.

The next mod maybe is to install a larger HDD or even an SSD. I’m also tempted to get a few more Apple TV’s to mod as media centres to replace the ATV2’s I have. The connectivity & openness of the system is brilliant, as is the tiny footprint & speed of the media centre. It’s so far proved to be rock solid. Boot time from power on is around 15 seconds & power consumption under full load is around 23 Watts, measured with a Kill-a-watt. It’s not relaint on Jailbreaks & the Openelec project is constantly improving with each beta & release candidate.

My advice to any XBMC fans it to test this route out. It’s a handsome box, the optical audio out & connectivity is a real bonus & the UI responsiveness makes this one of the most frugal Media Centres I’ve ever built. I intend to build a Raspberry PI XBMC but I’m told the UI is still a little clunky so I’ll be sure to make a few more ATV XBMC’s.

The real benefits of the atv2 is hardware decoding of h264 so all my 1080p MKVs play perfectly without any lag. They play over hdmi to my Hd tv so everything looks great. I now have 2 apple tvs setup to use a central MySQL database for xbmc and all my movies & TV shows are stored on a central server. This means all my machines and media centres are in sync. I can stop watching something in the living room and resume in the bedroom, or in the office, and there is no duplication.

This setup is superb, but now I see the Raspberry PI and I’m wondering if it can overcome the only limitation of my setup, the hardware limitations of 720p output from the apple tv. This isn’t a major issue as I only have a 32 inch HDTV, but I’m always curious. I won’t update Tvs until they die, it’s a waste of money and resources. 720p is more than sufficient for this screen size but there is always that what if, what if I can build a machine using a Raspberry PI for £22 with 1080p hardware decoding of MKVs.

I tried to get a couple on the release date but they sold out so quick. I’m thinking about buying 4. 2 will become media centres and the other two will become a cheap NAS & web server to put all my retired HDDs in and run php, MySQL and a backup server.

I still need to come up with an inexpensive case for these machines, and I would really like to recycle something to create the cases. I’m tempted to put the media centre in old console cases, such as a snes case for a retro feel, but I may just fabricate something to VESA mount on the back of the TVs. I also need to figure out a good remote, I might go the USB dongle route, as you can buy the dongles in the pound shop, and the remotes are cheap as chips from china or hong kong on eBay. I also need to figure out how best to build the Linux image for the media centres. It will need to be stripped right back to use as few resources as possible and run xbmc only.

I’m still wanting to see what kind of power consumption eh can manage, with the ATV2 managing 2-5 watts draw between idle and max, I’m not sure if anything will come close. The power consumption is a big issue now as I plan to run all out computers & servers, not to mention the media centres on renewable energy. I’ve already got plans to build a wind turbine from recycle parts and some fabricated parts, and I’m going to buy some solar PV panels to roof mount at our new house. This means that we can work for free, after the initial outlay for the parts and building. That means every bit of kit I buy has to be a trade off between power and power consumption. The iMac never uses more than 120watts, the MacBook peaks at 60watts and the apple tvs at 5watts each. I have a few external HDDs which use just over 10 watts each and with the TV at 240watts I’m looking at requiring a pretty constant 500 watts which is excellent. If I can produce more I may use a feed in tariff or even power what I can of e rest of the house from it. But that’s a different blog post.

Well this blog was supposed to focus on the project in hand, but as I haven’t yet been able to get any raspberry PI boards that will need to wait for the next post. I’ll keep you up to date with this project.

well what have I been upto. On Friday we where in Manchester to see the Defenders of the Faith II tour and one of my favourite bands Lamb Of God. It was an amazing night, but a punch in the guts in many respects. For one, the train cost a fortune. As we couldnt get a return to manchester from St Helens (go figure) we essentially had to get 4 single tickets. This cost us £30 for a 30 mile journey. To put it in perspective to go 30 miles in the other direction to liverpool would have cost us £7 return. After going days and days without spending a single penny, this cost was excessive, and almost enough for me to write it off and come home without going to the gig, but hell, we work hard we deserve a night out.

So into Manchester, and what a shock. It was like venturing into a parallel universe as opposed to the city we lived in for 7 years. The people where all about the fashion, it was so overcrowded, and the money being spent was insane.

The cost of everything got to me that day, the cost of a 2 minute taxi ride and entry into a club to meet our friends £10, a light snack £4, a pint of beer £3. The cost of city living has skyrocketed and it’s only when you step back and away from it you realise how absurd the whole thing is. We both hated the city for that day we spent there, we have either outgrown it or it has outgrown us! The only saving graces where that the bands where great, and Lee & Rachel where awesome, and their appartment was superb. Lee also grabbed us meal deal vouchers for Pizza Express so we all had starters, main courses and beer, and the total bill came to £40 for 4 people. Awesome.

I’m still not spending, and now I’m 41 days in give or take, it feels no different. I was almost tempted at the prospect of building a media centre PC. I resisted, dug out my old xboxs, and a few old Hard Drives and set them all up with XBMC. So now I have 3 working Media Centres, all networked and ready to go. Result & recycling!

I’ll start posting again properly for the next few weeks, just been a crazy busy time of late.

Latest Picture of my Xbox setup.

And a Macro of the xbox & Chip controller.

I started Xbox hacking back in October 2004. I bought a Crystal Xbox for £100. I wanted to get an older model due to the more complex chipping procedure of the 1.6 motherboards in new machines but after aloof thought I decided to go with the new crystal machine. I then purchased a Xecuter 2.6 Mod chip from Kaneaction who offered a great service. The mod chip fitting itself was a nightmare. Took me almost 4 hours to make all the solder points and rebuild the LPC . Also, I lost one of the copper tracks (the heat from the soldering iron destroyed the track) so I had to rebuild the track using wire. After the chip was installed i ripped out the original 8GB Western Digital HD and fitted a 250gb Samsung drive . I then booted the Xbox from Slayers Evox Boot disk and installed Evox, avalaunch & XBMC.

Just recently I removed Evox and set the new CVS build of XBMC as my main dashboard. This was for many reasons but mainly the fact that I use the Xbox more as a media centre of late than a gaming machine. I am able to play Divx and DVD on the xbox from my armchair using the remote, I have the Xbox networked to my media server for watching films. I also have my entire MP3 collection on the Xbox hard disk(about 100GB of MP3). This allows the xbox to be used as a stand-alone Jukebox with a great UI. The new builds of XBMC also allow python scripting. I have a script which random plays a play list when the Xbox boots, so I just turn the machine on and music plays. I also have Game trailers & Move trailers streamed directly to the Xbox for my viewing. Perhaps the best script I use is the Yahoo! Launch script, which streams almost every single music video to the xbox on demand at high res. Like MTV, without the adverts and crap music vids. Similar to this is the shoutcast scripting which allows thousands of free streaming radio stations to be played back. The scripts I use are included below

Yahoo Launch Script here

Quicktime Move trailers here

Game trailers here

My own autoexec and randomplay scripts here (place autoexec in XBMC route and the randomplay scripts in the scripts folder) (Edit the autoexec and randomplay files in notepad to represent your file structure)

Below are some screenshots of XBMC

My XBMC Main Menu

My System Info pane

My games uploaded onto the xbox

XBMC playing a selection of mpeg music videos

Music Videos Current Playlist

Main Menu overlayed over video

Weather.com Weather info for me.

Configuration screen.