Raspberry Pi media centre / photo viewer

[fuaran]

I want some sort of media player connected to my TV/projector. One of the main things is for viewing my photos, stored on a NAS.
Would be good if it can also play music or video etc, stored on the NAS, or from the internet etc.

I'm thinking a Raspberry Pi would work. Is Kodi the best software? Looks like LibreElec is the easiest option for installing and setting it up.

Is it any good for viewing photos? ie browsing folders on the NAS, then some sort of slideshow.
How fast is it to load? I have been using an Xbox 360, which can be a bit slow to load photos, even though it is connected to a decent ethernet connection.

Any suggestions for remote controls? The Pi 3 has Bluetooth built in, so something using that?

[Chris S]

I've found two constants to be true in the Tech World.

1. Solar charging is very disappointing.
2. PnP media viewers are also disappointing, unless really really specific.

So the specificity of PnP works OK (generally) for things like wifi picture frames. Everything else promises much, but delivers disappointment. For example - I have two PnP Media servers on our network; one a Raspberry PI running minidlna, the other a full-on NAS device.

Connecting Windows media player, is initially full of optimism - "Oh - you have a Media Player, would you like to see your media?"; so of course one answers "Yes", and that's followed by (examples):

• Video: "Media player does not support the file type" (Oh, MP4 - yeah, right)
• Pictures: "Please wait while your library is collated" (Takes an age - every time you try)
• etc

All PnP-enabled Photo clients I've seen are shite. They don't collate the photos properly, they take an absolute AGE to load every time, and the interface to navigate to particular photos is terrible.

I really want this type of tech to work. Maybe if you sell your soul to Satan, remortgage your house, and switch to a unified platform such as Apple - then maybe you can get uPnP to work seamlessly. Otherwise, be prepared to invest huge amounts of time for minimal and frustrating returns.

I've had KODI running in various client and server configurations. It's right up there with Windows Media Player in terms of return on fettling time.

[fuaran]

I'd agree about uPnP.
Apparently Kodi supports SMB shares, so just to use that to connect to the NAS? So long as it allows browsing folders, it shouldn't need a library.

[Kim]

It's been a pretty good year for solar charging, but you're not wrong about uPnP.

[tonycollinet]

I'm running Kodi on a Raspi. I haven't' used the photo functions, but could try setting it up.

[Wombat]

I'm using Kodi on my TV, to playback stuff on my NAS, but I don't need the Rasp etc., as its a smart TV, so I just installed the Kodi app.  Apart from the period when, after one update, and before another, it utterly refused to stop doing its stupid auto reframing/zooming in bit on every one of my photos, its OK.  Every time I use it it insists my media library is empty, so I have to remind it to point at my NAS, but apart from that it seems to be the least un-OK of a fairly mediocre bunch.  The telly has its own Google album app thingy (its an Android TV) but of course that is utterly useless, as it plays all slideshows backwards, with no option to do it the proper way round.  This renders showing someone your coverage of an event, pretty bloody unrewarding.

Just don't ask me what I think of Plex.  I said don't... this is not the rant thread.

[Mr Larrington]

Just don't ask me what I think of Plex.  I said don't... this is not the rant thread.

This ^^^^.  With knobs on.

[Afasoas]

+1 for LibreElec.
You you have an Android phone, you can use the Kore app as a remote control for Kodi.
Having said that, the old Windows XP Media Centre remote controls work very well.

[tonycollinet]

The photo viewer part of kodi is pretty crap though.