So I have a spare monitor (with HDMI) left over, And i was thinking is there anyway I could throw Raspberry Pi with a Wifi dongle and plug that to a monitor, pop linux into it and watch youtube on it? I was thinking I can put it in my kitchen and watch cooking videos or streams from it, while I cook. If this is possible do I buy the Pi with 256mb of ram or the one with 512mb. Thanks
ya look up XMBC for the raspberry pi and get a logitech k400 wireless keyboard track pad with and you will have a tv that is smarter then a smart tv
Second ragingh4vok's comment, I have just done exactly this for the kitchen & bedroom and the Raspberry Pi is good for this purpose. (especially with a bit of overclocking :) which is really easy on the Pi)
In my scenario I use a smartphone as the remote so no need for a keyboard, you can even power the Pi from the TV if it has a suitable USB port. With the official and free xbmc remote you can even control multiple instances of XBMC with the same remote.
I'd recommend you get the 512mb RAM version as for a little extra cash its a much better platform - 256mb version only has 1 USB port which could be an issue.
Checkout openelec - http://openelec.tv/
Most of the main plugins for XBMC work as well, Youtube, Navi-X, 1 Channel, Ice Movies, Veetle etc etc
One caveat that I would call out with the Raspberry Pi running XBMC is that its not great with heavy skins at 1080p such as Aeon Nox or Experience 1080. You're best to either run those skins at 720p or use a lighter weight skin at 1080p.
It netflix capable of playing through XBMC as well? I heard that in it's current state (using silverlight) it wasn't compatible with most pi OS'
There used to be XBMC Flix however this isn't working these days.
The issue is with getting netflix in Linux in general...
You can work around it using Playon - http://www.playon.tv/ (needs another PC running though)
Alternatively there is a version of Android being ported to the Pi and this will allow for Netflix as it currently does work in Android. http://androidpi.wikia.com/wiki/Android_Pi_Wiki
Again not out in the wild yet however I hear that Netflix will be moving to HTML 5 in the future as we all know silverlight is a total pain in the ass!
Apols for only being able to offer "please wait" advice or a workaround, this is something that I really want as well....
Yeah I've heard the rumors of them moving to HTML5 but we shall see when that moment arrives.
Maybe the android thing will work out. Otherwise I'm just going to visualize my NAS machine and make it a media PC as well.
I'd honestly suggest just getting one of those chinese dongles with RK3066/3188 and 1/2gb of ram for that price. they're at about 30 to 60 bucks and are basically android with embedded wifi/bluetooth/a USB port or two and are configured out of the box.
They're going to use HTML5 but they're also going to use DRM which pretty much means you still need a plugin kind-ish thing to play the videos and this plugin can be windows and mac only again. The purpose of DRM is not to prevent piracy but to control the platforms.
Any idea if it's possible to use a raspberry pi to actually overclock the monitor or screen itself?