Info / help with a Raspberry Pi build

[dar124]

I've been slowly working towards completely cutting the cord. It's been a multi-step process and taken a lot longer than I planned, but I'm trying to make sure that I work thru things and do everything correctly. So little by little I'm getting there!! Thru this process I've set up a HTPC in my living room, signed up for Amazon Prime (mostly for free 2 day shpping, but also to try streaming Prime Videos), upgraded the coax & all the Cat 5 in my house, ran Cat 5 into the rooms that need it, upgraded my router, modem and switch and also upgraded some of our computers along the way. The next PC that gets upgraded will be the HTPC so that it can adequately stream online media. I've had some stuttering issues with the HTPC when streaming online media and determined that it needs to be upgraded. I've got a few more things to work out before I feel 100% comfortable completely cutting the cord.

But right now I'm at the point that I'm wanting / needing to upgrade how we stream / watch media on our bedroom TV. Currently I have a WD TV Live that we stream media from a WHS 2011 server. It has worked good for streaming my local media, but I'd like to expand from streaming local content only to being able to watch some things online on that TV (Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, etc.) I've never thought much about a Raspberry Pi, but figured that this would be a good place for one, because I pretty much need a "little PC" to access the online content. I figured that I'd run Kodi on the Pi which would cover my local media, but I want to make sure that I'd also be able to access online content with the Pi. I've done some Googling, and a bit of searching online for info on the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B's, but I'm not 100% sure that there is a web browser or at least an adequate web browser for watching online content?? So I figured it'd be a good time to get some [H] opinions!!!


Here's a few of my questions:

Is there a web browser on the Pi OS or a web browser that is good enough to watch online content?? Or is there another / better way to watch online content on the Pi??

Would a kit like one of these below be the way to go to get everything needed at once??

Raspberry Pi 3 Model B - Starter, Media Center, BT, Premium & Ultimate Kit (B/C)

Raspberry Pi 3 Model B Starter, Complete and Ultimate Kits!

Raspberry Pi 3 Model B 1GB RAM Quad Core 1.2GHz CPU WiFi & Bluetooth Starter Kit

I also saw this Flirc USB that allows you to use a regular remote to control the device. Any opinions on this or a better way to control the Pi??

Or would a keyboard / mouse pad combo like https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005DKZTMG/ref=psdc_12879431_t1_B014EUQOGK be best to use. I use this on my living room HTPC and like it.


Hopefully this info will give me a good start. Thanks in advance.

 

[yummygizzards]

I also saw this Flirc USB that allows you to use a regular remote to control the device. Any opinions on this or a better way to control the Pi??

If your TV supports HDMI-CEC, you can use your TV remote to control the raspberry pi. I use my Panasonic Plasma TV remote to move left, right, up, down, etc on Kodi.

As far as the streaming services, I am not sure if any of them will allow you to use a raspberry pi and Kodi due to DRM. Some people have been able to extract the secure media extensions from Google Chrome on ARM and somehow insert them into Chromium to use a web browser on a raspbery pi, but this seems... illegal. One option is to use Play On which will stream these services from another computer on your LAN to anything running Kodi. An easier approach might be to get a Roku / Fire TV and sideload Kodi onto it.

 

[rhansen5_99]

One alternative, although somewhat limited for media streams is Plex, which is basically a long ago fork of Kodi (XBMC). There are a couple of ways this might be useful to you, if you wanted to go rasplex then you could have a plex server setup somewhere on another pc, and install their channels, although this is fairly limited. If you went with something like a roku, then you can get to your media with plex serving up to the device, then use Roku's apps to get to your other streaming stuff (basically using it as an alternative to kodi). Although this by passes the cool kodi channels .

I suppose it really depends on what streaming stuff you are wanting to access. It is kind of a shame some devices streams are filtered vs viewing them in a desktop browser too.

An off the wall solution, might be to get a el cheapo Chinese knockoff windows 10 cherry trail tablet with hdmi out that you could hook up to the tv's. (like a Chuwi Hi8) that way you get a full windows desktop like experience you could then do kodi or a browser with drm and these have been as low as $80 so close to the higherend media boxes. (dont forget mini hdmi adapter and wireless/bluetooth keyboard and mouse maybe a sd card or usb hub / nic)

 

[rhansen5_99]

Oh I also forgot that you can setup Android 6 on your raspberry pi 3, so maybe just go that route and use the playstore