Keep Up with Kodi

KODI IS A BIG NAME in the streaming world, and not necessarily for the right reasons. Forget piracy, though: Kodi (once called XBMC, and spawned from a project that turned the original Xbox into a media center) really ought to be known for how easy it makes getting a media box up and running. It’s supported by just about every Raspberry Pi distro. On Raspbian, you can install it using the following pair of commands in a terminal window:

sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install kodi

If that sounds too much like hard work, there is, like most of the projects we’ve talked about, a singleserving option to get a working Kodi installation running from scratch. In fact, there are several for you to choose from. OpenELEC ( http:// openelec.tv), the slightly more open source LibreELEC ( http://libreelec. tv), OSMC ( http://osmc.tv), and Xbian ( http://xbian.org) all include Kodi pre-installed and configured, and are perfect if you’re dedicating a Pi to the TV task; Kodi runs as both media server and player, so make sure you have some storage available for your content. You can also install Kodi to run through RetroPie, which is an immensely useful option.