Raspberry Pi is shaping up to be a great thing for modders and the hobbyist community. The latest tease is the $25 unit running popular home-theater PC software, XMBC. Considering the Raspberry Pi is more-or-less the size of a credit card, this is an amazing feat.

It was recently demoed showing off XMBC, and for the cost of less than a thumb drive, it offers an ARM11-based Broadcom BCM2835 processor with a built-in multimedia engine. The chip is capable of decoding high-profile H.264 content at 1080p, and XMBC seems to take advantage of that very nicely.

It also sports a 3.5-mm audio jack, onboard SD slot, built-in HDMI and USB ports and the base of Raspberry Pi has the necessary ingredients for a basic home-theater PC. There is a second model available which includes an extra USB port, 10/100 Ethernet, and double the onboard memory for an additional $10.