jtu-tech-blog: moved my htpc to raspberry pi... and back to "normal" pc

After using Raspberry Pi based HTPC with Raspbian for a while (see my previous posts) it was obvious that it hasn't made it for me. A few reasons:

Trying to watch browser-based internet TV or just videos in the browser is too much hustle. It was much easier to connect my Mac and watch it.
AirPlay is lagging on videos.
Small one - for some reason it kept changing IP address on every reboot / power loss. There were more than a few. Btw, if you have your Raspberry Pi unstable, the first move definitely is to take a look at your PSU. It got much better for me when I changed PSU from a noname to iPhone charger. Google it before you buy.
For me personally the combination with my receiver was not good: Pi supports HDMI starting version 2, but my receiver's "old" one from year 2008 and supports just 1.1 :D Sorry, no 5.1 sound with those beautiful Dolby Digitals, DTS's etc for me. I was thinking of buying external sound card, but, you know, why should I when I have some PC boards laying around the house having sound built-in with more "usual" connectors, like optical S/PDIF maybe?
And, the most annoying one which was the final killer: user interface is too slow / lagging. I can't imagine why the distro can decode 1080p normally and can't do smooth user interface :| Especially, if you have a list of multimedia longer than one screen you wait for each next one, and next, and next...

I definitely could try to tune the thing or try other distros. Maybe I hoped that it will be more out-of-the-box initially. Maybe I'm not that much enthusiast or just too lazy :)

It definitely has the future, it just isn't here for me yet.

So, I'm back on my old good ASUS AT5IONT-I motherboard with pico-psu, 4GB of RAM, SSD for system disk. Good Ubuntu plus XBMC.

Some pics for the dessert.