I want to try to set up a Raspberry Pi I have as a smart TV box and I was hoping I could find some advice.
My main requirements are:
- can run Moonlight
- can be controlled from a Bluetooth game controller (that should also work in Moonlight)
What would be nice:
- can run VLC or Plex or something
- can support AirPlay
- can be used for some actual streaming services like Netflix
Any suggestions?
You would most lilely be looking at a Kodi setup.
Look up LibreElec, super simple all in one image, kodi has a ton of plugins for everything you’d need. You’ll probably need to add some extra repos to get everything you want, but it’s all pretty easy to figure out with searches
I’m about to start my adventure with Raspberry Pi powered TV box. I will try Plasma big screen - https://plasma-bigscreen.org/ It seems like a good place to start.
Which version of raspberry pi?
Assuming it’s a 4, you could probably use LibreELEC. There is a plugin for moonlight game streaming.
Kodi, a very popular and highly extensible Media Center which acts as the GUI of LibreELEC, can play just about any media. Airplay seems to be supported as well.
There is a plugin for Netflix, however note that you will be limited to 720p since you can’t use widevine levels above l3.
Honestly, you might be looking at a ShieldTV.
I considered this, but ended up going HTPC instead. The Shield is just too old and now they’re loading it up with more ads you can’t get rid of. Screw that.
I bought one last year, and even though I was hesitant because of its age, it can handle all the content I throw at it (4k 10 bit hdr h265, etc). As for the the ads, I solved that by installing a third party launcher.
The only issue I have with this setup is that I haven’t found a good replacement for YouTube yet. A revanced for android TV would be amazing.
One of my requirements was Steam (either locally or Steam Link) and EmulationStation. The Shield cost nearly the same money as the AMD Ryzen mini-pc I’m using, so I just decided to go with the more powerful device so I could run light to moderate Steam games at 1080p in addition to In-Home streaming. I use my gaming PC for WFH, so on days I work my kids wouldn’t be able to play games from Steam unless it was local.
I think out the door I spent about $230 for a Ryzen 5000 series APU machine with 512GB of SSD and 16GB of RAM. With the shield at ~$199, I went for the more DIY solution, which isn’t for everybody, but I’m an tinkerer.
I recently set up LineageOS on my rpi4 for this. With that setup, I think you’d be able to use the Android version of Moonlight. I haven’t used Moonlight before though, so not sure how good of an experience that is on Android. Since the official images didn’t support Android TV, I ended up using this version. Performance is a little slow in the menus (and very slow in the Twitch app, but that’s also true on the fire stick). I’ll probably give rpi5 a shot at some point in the near future to see if that offers better performance.
Bluetooth game controller works quite well (a little too well, the box notifies me when controllers are trying to sync), and works with apps like RetroArch and Jellyfin. I think it’s supposed to support AirPlay or whatever the Android equivalent is too, but I haven’t tried that. I also had to install gapps to sign into YouTube, but most other streaming apps I tried worked without it. Some of them require specific Android TV devices though, so a 3rd party app store or side loading may be needed for some of them.
I originally wanted to use Plasma Bigscreen with Waydroid, but I ran into the same problem of not being able to find an Android TV image. I did try building it myself, but that was taking too long so I eventually gave up.
