Make a media centre
Settle down with your own open source media centre and watch the latest blockbusters with a side of Pi and popcorn.
When the Raspberry Pi first arrived in 2012, one of the first projects we saw was a media centre. Even the humble Raspberry Pi 1, with just a single 700MHz CPU and 512MB RAM, was capable of decent 1080p video playback. Fast-forward to today and the Raspberry Pi 4 is many times more powerful and able to perform much better with our growing library of media. In this tutorial, we explain how to install a media centre OS to your Raspberry Pi, and then show you how to play media from USB and live streams, all from the comfort of your sofa.
OSMC is a great introduction to turning your Raspberry Pi into a media player. This lightweight Linux OS is designed just for serving media, be it local or streaming video, or music. Installation is simple: just download and install Raspberry Pi Imager from https:// www.raspberrypi.com/software/ and open the app. In the Operating System menu, select Media Player OS and then select OSMC for your model of Pi. Insert an 8GB or larger microSD card, then select the card from the Storage menu. Click Write to download and write the image to the microSD card. Remove the card and boot your Raspberry Pi from it.
On the first boot, we need to set the language and our location. Once done, we are presented with a simple UI that is made for media consumption. Media is categorised into sections (Videos, Music, Pictures) and clicking on these headings opens additional menus. Before that, we need to go into Settings > My OSMC and from there select the top icon: Network. In the Network menu, use the arrow keys (or mouse) to select Wireless and then enable the adapter. Select your Wi-Fi SSID and connect. When done, press Esc or Backspace until you reach the main OSMC menu.
To play local media, such as video files on a USB stick, insert the USB drive in the Raspberry Pi and go to Videos, press Enter and you will see that the drive is automounted. Select the drive and navigate to the video file. Note that video files need to be in a format compatible with the Raspberry Pi – usually MP4 or MKV. If not in this format, use the free Handbrake tool to transcode them on a more powerful PC. Press Enter to play your video. The on-screen UI can be toggled on and off by pressing the right mouse button. To exit, press Esc, which returns you to the main menu. The Audio menu behaves in the exact same manner, except that it can play audio files in many different formats.
Streaming media such as YouTube can be easily accessed via OSMC. Go to Settings > Add-On Browser and select Install From Repository. As we have already connected the Pi to the internet, a list of add-on categories appears. Select Video Add-Ons and press Enter. A new list of compatible add-ons is presented. We chose NASA’s live streams. Scroll down to NASA and install. This triggers the add-on to request the installation of YouTube, as this is how NASA serves its videos. With installation complete, go back to the main OSMC menu. Select Videos, then Video Add-Ons. NASA is now a selectable menu with the latest streams. Using the same process, we can also install music and game add-ons, such as a MAME arcade machine emulator – but instead of doing that, you can check out the retro gaming tutorial (opposite page).
For more information about OSMC, head over to https://osmc.tv and discover how to get the very best from this great media operating system.