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.
YOU NEED
» Raspberry Pi 3, 4 or Zero 2W
» 8GB or larger microSD card
QUICK TIP
Infrared remote controls can be used with the Raspberry Pi – just search for FLIRC. Wireless keyboards with trackpads make excellent controllers.
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.