Raspbmc is the first of the Home Theater PC (HTPC) specialized distros I am going to look at. It gets its name from XBMC which is the software used to display meida (videos, TV, music, pictures, etc.). These specialized distros of Linux run XBMC and only XBMC. When the Raspberry Pi boots it automatically starts XBMC, and XBMC runs until the Pi is shutdown.
To install Raspbmc you have several options. They have a small image which is the network installer. When you boot the Raspberry Pi for the first time it downloads and installs Raspbmc. This version requires network access via ethernet as wifi will not work. Another option is the full standalone image which is larger to download, but does not require network access via ethernet. I tried both methods and they both were straightforward and worked.
Once Raspbmc was installed, I was able to setup wifi access as Raspbmc did include drivers for the Rosewill RNX-N180UBE.
It does come with tvheadend server pre-installed, although it is not enabled by default. To enable it go into the System Config from inside XBMC and scroll down to find tvheadend in the list. I did notice the firmware file for my TV tuner was not present so I had to copy it manually.
As for remote access, ssh was enabled by default making it easy to connect remotely.
However, I did run into one major problem with Raspbmc. In XBMC's settings menu is an option to run a web browser called Aurora. I never actually wanted to use this web browser, but on several occasions I accidentally clicked on the link to start the browser. The browser started to load and then the Raspberry Pi crashed. But the major problem was, every time this happened, it corrupted my SD card image and I had to start from scratch. This is a major problem that a top-level program will result in a corrupted system. You could say "well just do not run it." But I was not trying to run it, all 3 times I accidentally clicked on it.
Given this corruption issue, and given that Raspbmc has fallen behind other distros like OpenElec and Xbian, I decided not to pursue this distro any further. Raspbmc is being superseded by a new project called OSMC. If and when this project materializes I would love to give it a try. But for now I am going to pass on Raspbmc.
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