Setting up Kodi
LibreELEC is probably the easiest Linux distro you ever installed, and Kodi will be ready for action in no time.
WATCH HIGH-QUALITY CONTENT “HDMI 1.4 can manage 4K at low framerates, but 4Kp60 requires newer hardware and cables.”
Making and booting a LibreELEC SD card follows much the same procedure as any other Pi operating system. You just need to ensure you use the correct image. LibreELEC 10 only supports the Pi 4 at present, but this will change in future (see box, previous page).
Download the image from the releases page at https://libreelec.tv/downloads/raspberry. For Pis Zero to 3, use the latest image from the previous 9.2 series which you’ll find by scrolling down. Or consider investing in one of the ‘other’ boards supported by the new edition, such as the Pine64. There’s also a generic image for running on a regular 64-bit PC, or a ready-togo virtual machine image. Oh, and there’s an official LibreELEC USB-SD Creator tool for macOS, Linux and Windows. But it didn’t work at all well for us so we’ll continue to recommend Balena Etcher for this purpose. See the install page on the wiki (https://wiki.libreelec. tv/installation/create-media) if you have any problems.
Once you’ve made and booted your SD card, you’ll be greeted with the LibreElec splash screen followed by the Kodi setup wizard. You’ll probably need a keyboard, mouse or gamepad plugged in to navigate this. But if you have plugged everything into an HDMI receiver with a remote control, then you can use that because Kodi supports CEC (Consumer Electronic Control) protocol too. Magical. Keen eyed readers might notice a CEC adaptor being detected during the setup stages.
On the subject of HDMI, if you want to watch 4K content at 60FPS, or make use of any HDR features on your display, make sure all your hardware is HDMI 2.0 compliant. HDMI 1.4 can manage 4K at low framerates, but 4Kp60 requires newer hardware and cables. If you’re planning on watching content protected by HDCP 2.2 (the newest iteration of High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection), which is a lot of the 4K content out there, then you’ll need to ensure all the devices in the processing chain (from the machine running Kodi, via a digital receiver, to your display). Since the Pi doesn’t support HDCP, we won’t get into that in this feature. Most modern graphics cards and CPUs now support HDCP 2.2, so if you want to view such content then try running Kodi on your desktop or laptop.
Select your language and hit Next to begin the setup. The first step is to choose a hostname. The default LibreELEC is fine if you can’t think of anything better. Next, if you’re not already connected over Ethernet, you’ll be presented with a list of wireless networks. Choose one so that Kodi can update itself, set the time correctly and, in the future, download media.
Next you’ll activate Samba for sharing, and optionally configure SSH if you want proper remote access. Like
Raspberry Pi OS, LibreELEC has a default SSH password that you should change if you turn on SSH here. Absent any pressing reason to activate this, it’s wise to leave SSH off. Stray Pi’s running SSH (especially with well-known passwords) could turn into beach heads from whence attackers might infiltrate your network. We’ll turn this on later when we start messing with Kodi under the hood.
Get to know Kodi
Now you can begin exploring the Kodi interface. Navigation is quite intuitive: click menus to open them, use Escape (or the right mouse button) to go back. The hardest part is remembering which options live where. Oh, and if you open the menu while media is playing things can be a little confusing until you remember that clicking anywhere outside of that menu will get you back to your media. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves because we haven’t added any media yet. For testing purposes the easiest way is to use the already set-up Samba share to copy some media to the SD card. That share will show up under the ubiquitous WORKGROUP on your Windows Network, and you should be able to connect to it from any platform. Use the TV Shows or Videos folder depending on what kind of content you’re adding, and your media should be available from the corresponding section of Kodi’s Video menu.
We won’t get far if we’re relying on an SD card for media storage. So it should come as no surprise that Kodi can handle all kinds of other media sources. Besides local USB storage you can connect shares from your Windows (or Samba), or use NFS if you have media on a Linux file server. LibreELEC can talk to many PVR/ DVR (Personal/Digital Video Recorder) devices too, as well as budget DVB sticks. We didn’t have any of that kind of hardware to hand, so for this feature we’ll look at setting up popular (and legal!) streaming sites.
Being British (and proud to pay the BBC’s television licence fee), we can’t get enough of iPlayer. Go to Addons>Video add-ons and select Download. You’ll see a big list of official sources, including HBO Go, Plex and Netflix (which we’ll set up in a moment). For now, scroll down to iPlayer WWW and click it and select Install. Kodi
will spring into life, grab a couple of dependencies and before you know it there will be an iPlayer WWW link in your Add-ons>Video add-ons section. There’s no web page-like view for browsing content – everything in Kodi
is done through cascading menus. You’ll get used to this, and indeed might start to prefer it, especially as opposed to YouTube’s cramped web interface, which we’ll obviate over the page. Go to the popular shows option and join in with what the masses are watching.
Also as a result of being British we’re powerless to avoid discussions about the weather. So let’s add a weather add-on to Kodi. From the main menu select Weather>Service for weather information>Get more and select the Gismeteo provider. Now open the weather’s settings page and configure your location. If you want temperatures in centigrade go to Settings> Interface> Regional and change the Region default format setting to your locale.
One of the advantages of using LibreELEC is that it comes with a battery of Kodi add-ons already installed. These are mainly utilitarian additions, taking the form of codecs, libraries and userspace tools, rather than anything that connects you directly to content. But there’s no shortage of things Kodi can stream media from. You might have followed our OpenMediaVault tutorial, or have another NAS device in your house. Media from such things is easy to add – just add the relevant Samba share from Videos>Files>Add videos. See https://kodi.wiki/view/HOW-TO:Create_Video_Library for best practices on how to organise media before adding them to Kodi. See the box (below) for getting the Netflix add-on installed, and consider adding the LBRY, Soundcloud or Bandcamp add-ons too.