Today I have made a smart TV powered by a Raspberry Pi to replace my normal (and terrible) smart TV system. My existing TV can't even run YouTube without it crashing in the first 10 minutes so I knew the main goals I wanted to achieve.
1. Make it view photos and videos
2. Make it run YouTube, BBC iPlayer and/or Netflix
3. Watch TV shows offline
I think I knew exactly what type of software I would use that can be capable of all of this! And that is Kodi. Plus, Kodi can also play games with an extension and can be your TV with a TV HAT (I think) so it's more than what I need! I used a Raspberry Pi 4 for this project because it is the only Raspberry Pi I have at the moment. I also have a third party case for it since when I got into tech and bought the Raspberry Pi, everything felt HUGE and difficult and I didn't know where to get everything from. Since this is my only Raspberry Pi, I use it for more than 10 things on the default Raspberry Pi OS so I did not want to install the Kodi OS. So instead, I used the Kodi app which I installed from Pi Apps because for me apart from the command line/terminal, Pi Apps is the most quickest way because I already had it installed. After that, I used my time to set up the system.
![:D]( "Very Happy")
![:D]( "Very Happy")
1. Make it view photos and videos
2. Make it run YouTube, BBC iPlayer and/or Netflix
3. Watch TV shows offline
I think I knew exactly what type of software I would use that can be capable of all of this! And that is Kodi. Plus, Kodi can also play games with an extension and can be your TV with a TV HAT (I think) so it's more than what I need! I used a Raspberry Pi 4 for this project because it is the only Raspberry Pi I have at the moment. I also have a third party case for it since when I got into tech and bought the Raspberry Pi, everything felt HUGE and difficult and I didn't know where to get everything from. Since this is my only Raspberry Pi, I use it for more than 10 things on the default Raspberry Pi OS so I did not want to install the Kodi OS. So instead, I used the Kodi app which I installed from Pi Apps because for me apart from the command line/terminal, Pi Apps is the most quickest way because I already had it installed. After that, I used my time to set up the system.
Statistics: Posted by Kitrssurfer — Tue Nov 25, 2025 7:06 pm — Replies 0 — Views 56