START HERE - Pick the Right Kodi Box (updated Dec 2020)
(2016-04-25, 14:37)Sharpey Wrote: Fantastic post Noggin, that's cleared up a lot of things for me.

I am going to read up on it further now as I''ve never put one together, we'll see how I get on.
There's no real putting together. You flash a uSD card with OpenElec or LibreElec on a PC and then insert the uSD card in the slot in the Pi. It's worth getting a decent PSU (most issues with the Pi are power related). The Pi Foundation supplies are excellent. You can chose the case you like - I have the Pi Foundation and Pimoroni Pibow cases for mine (NB the Power/Activity LEDs moved between the B+/2B and the 3B so it's worth checking you are buying a case that works for the model Pi you buy). Note that, like the Pi Zero, the Pi3 doesn't have a sprung uSD card slot (like the A+/B+ and 2B), so removing and inserting a uSD card in some cases can be a little more fiddly ( tape tab on the uSD card or a pair of tweezers or fine pliers helps, and you don't normally have to pop the card out very often, as you can upgrade Libre/OpenElec in-situ)

Quote:Regarding the paying for codecs, how does that work with Kodi? I thought Kodi has everything bundled in?

Every Pi has a serial number in it's SoC which is available via a number of routes. You enter that serial number on the Pi Foundation website when you buy the codecs. You are then emailed an enabling licence code for each codec which is tied to that serial number and which you enter in the config.txt file on the Boot partition of the uSD card (You can do this either by remotely logging in to your Pi or buy taking the uSD card to a PC and manually editing config.txt in NotePad or similar. There is also a Kodi add-on which helps with this - though I don't think I've used it). These licences are read by the Pi's boot loader(s) I think and enable the hardware decoders for MPEG2 and VC-1. (H264 is enabled by default)

Kodi includes software decoders (which require CPU power) and has code that will use hardware decoding (on the Pi you have a choice of OMX or MMAL routes - but both use the licensed codecs). The hardware itself is enabled by the licence keys in config.txt.


Messages In This Thread
The right box for me - by tyem - 2016-01-13, 15:29
Jesus Box - by kellyvb - 2016-03-04, 20:18
RE: Pick the Right Kodi Box (updated March 2016) - by noggin - 2016-04-25, 17:29
Thanks for the Help! - by jmc15john - 2016-11-09, 16:44
Jarvis crashes and wipes - by gotthis2000 - 2017-01-10, 22:14
RE: Jarvis crashes and wipes - by nickr - 2017-01-10, 22:58
T95Z Plus Android TV Box - by gooner1971 - 2017-03-17, 13:04
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