Media centres are everywhere nowadays, from smart TV’s with built in media apps, to standalone lounge room boxes to watch all your favourite shows on. With the new features found on the Raspberry Pi 3, it makes sense for it to become a serious option for a complete media centre. It’s easier than ever to setup with NOOBS providing supporting for the wildly popular Open Embedded Linux Entertainment Centre (OpenELEC) system.
Kodi (formally XBMC) is the media centre system which contains all the features you’d expect, plus a few extra, but without a way to run it on our Raspberry Pi, we’re sunk. So, we have the fantastic option of using OpenELEC. OpenELEC is an operating system built for the Raspberry Pi, which allows you to turn your Pi into a Kodi media centre.
If you haven’t checked out our NOOBS Setup tutorial, go have a read, and we’re going to build off that to install OpenELEC on our MicroSD card.
The Gear
To get follow this tutorial you’ll require the following:
This kit contains everything you need to get your media centre up and running, and the MicroSD card comes with OpenELEC preinstalled. If you already have a MicroSD card though, you can install OpenELEC by connecting your Raspberry Pi to the internet via Ethernet, holding shift on start-up to open the NOOBS installation manager, and selecting OpenELEC for installation. Follow the install, and when completed, restart your Pi to boot into OpenELEC.
Getting Started with Kodi
After following the setup process, you’ll come to the OpenELEC main screen which has tabs for various functions. Kodi supports add-ons such as Youtube, Netflix etc… which you can install by going to the System tab -> Settings -> Add-ons and searching for the required add-on.
Because the only storage on the Raspberry Pi is the MicroSD card which isn’t a high capacity device, you’ll most likely want to store your content on an external hard drive, which you can connect via USB to your Raspberry Pi.
Whilst speeds can vary from user to user, many people have found that the built in Wi-Fi on the Pi 3 can struggle with streaming HD video, however when using a USB Wi-Fi dongle, speeds improve. If you’re planning on streaming lots of Netflix and other HD video content, the best option is a wired connection to the Ethernet port.
For downloading apps and downloading content (as opposed to streaming), the built in Wi-Fi will be perfectly fine.
Streaming media from an external source such as a hard drive or USB is as easy as selecting the recognised device and selecting the content.
Controlling your Media Centre
The wireless keyboard and mouse included in the Media Centre kit work well for controlling your Raspberry Pi, however you can take advantage of the Pi 3’s built in Bluetooth and use a Bluetooth keyboard/mouse, however you will need to go into the OpenELEC settings and enabling Bluetooth.
And there you have it, setting up your Raspberry Pi as a fully capable media centre is super easy, and results in a great addition to your home network.