How to turn a Raspberry Pi into an open source media center

boing
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Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/04/22/how-to-turn-a-raspberry-pi-int.html

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another option if you have squeezebox hardware around: https://www.picoreplayer.org

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I’ve got an older Raspberry Pi with OSMC as part of my television set-up and I use it all the time. (Lately I find it useful for traveling, too, particularly when I’m going to be somewhere with no internet access - I can take along some USB sticks with tv shows/movies, and everything takes up little space.) There’s seemingly a fair amount of support for different remotes - I just grabbed a super-cheap Windows USB remote, which works fine, but that Air Mouse looks like it would be better.

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I built a media PC out of a Rasp Pi model B a few years ago using XMBC (now Kodi) and a samba connected network file repository. Works well but the Rasp is still a bit underpowered for this type of use.

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I’ve never heard of OSMC before; I’ll have to give it a look. I like the interface better than Kodi. My main HTPC runs MediaPortal, if for no other reason than it includes DVR functionality.

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There are a bunch of Android and iOS apps that allow you to use your cell phone as a wifi remote… no need for extra hardware!

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OSMC is great, I’ve been using it for years. With LIRC, you can program any infrared remote to work with it, so my one-4-all control also covers it.

For those wondering, this is plain-old Kodi under the hood, just with a nice skin and a few optimizations to run on the low end hardware of an RPi.

Can’t recommend it enough!

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I’ve had one of these set up for years as the system evolved from XMBC to OSMC/Kodi. Works great. I recently set up another Pi with LibreElec which also works well for this.

I didn’t need to get a separate remote. If your TV supports CEC, you can just use your TV remote to control Kodi/OSMC/Libre.

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While you can run Kodi and its derivatives on an Rpi, I wouldn’t recommend it. They’re pretty low in performance and they don’t support modern video codecs–H.265. You will be better served by some other device if you need 4K support as well. The ODROID C2 comes to mind–supports up to 4K H.265.

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Kodi runs decent on a Amazon Fire stick, too. It’s cheap, comes with a remote, and also runs Netflix, Prime video, etc.

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To enhance performance I’ve recently switched from Kodi to vlc + rygel and I’m happy with it.
See http://davidecavestro.github.io/tech/2019/03/24/rygel-raspi3-dlna-movie-player

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