Rasperry Pi now supports more codecs and decoders

In order to keep the Rasperry Pi device so cheap, a few corners had to be cut in terms of the abilities of the device. By having the Rasperry Pi devices “hardware” ready on the MPEG-2 and VC-1 decoding standards, the Rasperry Pi still supports these standards without any hardware modifications.

However, by not acquiring the license for these standards, the Rasperry Pi cannot run them. Although, now Rasperry Pi has introduced an update which allows users to add MPEG-2 support for £2.40/$3.16 and add VC-1 support for £1.20/$1.58. The support works by allowing you to purchase a license for your Rasperry Pi device from the Rasperry Pi store here.

H.264 encoding has been enabled too in the latest firmware update, at no extra cost to the consumers which is great news for everyone.

With CEC support thrown into the Raspbmc, XBian and OpenELEC operating systems, a single IR remote can control a Raspberry Pi, a TV and other connected gadgets.

Suddenly the Rasperry Pi looks a whole lot more attractive to the consumer as its no longer crippled by a lack of media support.

Source