OpenELEC is a media-center-specific distribution that runs well on the raspberry pi. We’ll learn about how to get it up and running.
setup sd card
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download the latest rpi image
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plug in your SD card
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open /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility
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click on your SD card
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open ‘info’, look for the ‘disk identifier’
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unmount the SD card
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sudo dd if=OpenELEC-RPi.arm-3.2.4.img of=/dev/disk1(if your disk identifier is ‘disk1’) (this will take forever and won’t give any updates. It’s working.)
Once that’s done, plug it into your pi, plug your pi into a display//projector, and you should be good to go.
Usage
The first time I booted my raspberrypi with openELEC it showed an on-screen configuration utility in which I set the hostname, internet connection, and language. For the most part it worked out of the box.
Airplay
Perhaps the coolest thing openELEC/xbmc can do out of the box is Airplay. Once turned on in settings, your network-connected raspberrypi becomes an Airplay server—which means you can stream media to it directly / easily from iOS or itunes, by clicking the TV-like icon to the right of the play button.
On my network, it streams well with about a 6-second buffer.