A Raspberry Pi as an Apple TV?
Question
Mum asks Son, what's a Raspberry Pi and why is it better than an Apple TV? You said Apple TV's are awesome??
Answer
Son tells Mum..
Apple TV's are still awesome, if they can be Jailbroken.. if not their a bit useless for us Australians. Since we have an Apple TV 3 which currently can't be Jailbroken it's pretty well just an AirPlay receiver in a fancy and expensive box.
Also, Raspberry Pi is one of the latest and greatest things to arrive in 2013 - I put it in the same category of awesome things like 3D Printers, Arduino and xbmc. Technically, a Raspberry Pi is just a computer but really it's so much more due to it's size, speed, expandability and power usage.
With the Raspberry Pi, I can create an AirPlay receiver which is basically all our Apple TV is - plus I can add a whole lot more functions at the same time and I can do this completely opensource. Due to the limitless modifications I could do to the Raspberry Pi I can also hide it very well and run it off another devices Power.
For example, I could take the speakers in my room which are standard RCA speakers and place the Raspberry Pi in the bass, connect it to the speakers power source and audio inputs (internally) and set it up as an AirPlay Receiver! This is totally awesome since it can all be done for about AUD$40 and in only half an hour. Plus! I can always add and remove functions or even reuse the Raspberry Pi for something completely different. It's as if I was the developer to all my own devices!
So Mum, that's why a Raspberry Pi is even more awesome than an Apple TV (especially Apple TV 3).