OUR EXPERT
Michael Reed has been spending so much time with Kodi of late that his mum thought he’d finally got a girlfriend.
Kodi is a cross-platform application that can turn a device such as a Raspberry Pi into a fully fledged media centre. It presents the user with a simple interface to move between different types of media that are automatically categorised. It can handle video and audio files that are located on multiple sources, and it can even access streaming media sources that are located on the internet. Add a remote control and you’ll be able to launch movies, TV shows and music, play DVDs and access shared drives. You may never need to leave the couch again!
We’re going to take the approach of installing Kodi next to a desktop Pi OS (Raspberry Pi OS) so that you’ve got the best of both worlds: a full desktop computer with up-to-date software and a media centre in one machine. These instructions should be easily adaptable to any Linux-based Raspberry Pi OS. What you get, compared to a prebuilt, smart TV-style device, is the chance to customise the services on offer and add any niche services that you may need.
EXPLORE THE KODI INTERFACE
1 Key icons
Power, settings and search icons. Navigate to the top to get to these.
2 Heart of Kodi
The main sections. Move up and down to navigate these. There’s also some room for customisation here.
3 Customise the program
The Add-ons icon takes you to a sub-area where you can browse to specific user interfaces for each add-on, such as streaming services.
4 Media library
In each section, a curated media library is presented. Click on the items or hover over and bring up the context menu.
