Well, that was ridiculously easy. I’ve had DVD players that were more complicated to get working than that.

I followed the straightforward instructions at the Raspbmc website to put the installer on an SD card, plugged it all together, and… magic!

The Raspberry Pi powered up and warned me to grab a coffee while it downloaded things. Raspbmc started downloading the latest versions of everything it needed, rebooted a few times to install stuff, then sat at the main configuration screen waiting for me to choose a language. It’s a good job I didn’t need a coffee, I wouldn’t have had time to get one.

Now, I’ve just got to work out how to control the thing. Took me longer to find a USB keyboard and mouse than everything else. I’ve already got it connecting to the NAS so I can play music and watch videos; photos don’t want to display for some reason, that needs further investigation.

Next steps are to play about with the network settings to get it running fast enough to watch HD content direct from the NAS, and figure out how to use an infra-red remote control (although I’ve already got it working with the Official XMBC Remote app on my Android phone, which will do for now).