Raspberry Pi Zero w as a Tv Stick?

[BrownZeus]

Hey friends!

 

So I've got a Raspberry Pi Zero W fro free through a thing at school. It was one of those "Hey we'll provide you this free thing to learn xyz with us and then you get to take it home! :D" things.

 

Anyway so now I have this Raspberry Pi Zero W that I have nothing to with.

 

Recently support for a few apps on my Smart TV (A Vizio Smart TV) ended, and there are a few apps I wish worked better for it (Like Spotify, YouTube, Plex, etc)

 

So my first thought was "I'll turn it into a Smart TV Stick!" Like an Amazon Fire Stick or something.

 

Did some research, and I'm not really finding anything good, or well reviewed.

I'm not looking for anything hardcore out of it. Mainly just YouTube and Spotify, maybe netflix.

 

So has anyone else turned a Raspberry Pi into a tv stick/box? What OS/Application did you use?

[aaroncarson]

Kodi in the form of OSMC or Openelec etc is generally a good starting point for a RasPi HTPC as it works incredibly well!

 

Here's an excellent guide with a lot of information - it says Raspberry Pi 3 but it should be fine for the Zero W - just expect it to run a tad slower, obviously. https://mediaexperience.com/raspberry-pi-xbmc-with-raspbmc/

[Aelita Sophie]

This might be a great idea for you:

 

[Daniel644]

well first thing to understand, yes you can use it as a streaming device, but it's never going to be a Fire Stick, something I've learned different devices run different versions of apps, unless the apps you intend to run have developed apps specifically for the Pi you are going to be using some form of work arounds and homemade apps that just port the web pages into an interface, it will be a lot of effort for very little if any return over the outdated apps on your TV

[bob345]

sure you can, but performance will be abysmal compared to a dedicated option.

[Guest]

If this were me, I'd install the normal raspbian os, and get a Bluetooth keyboard and the web browser. 

[TheUncannyScrub]

OSMC or Kodi would be good if you want to use it as a Smart TV stick but with only 512mb of ram it might be a bit slow.

[BrownZeus]

I was looking for something like a Android TV Distro. I've done research and Kodi is basically just plex from what I can tell, and given the zero w's small amount of RAM, getting apps/add-ons for it may make out to be a shit experience. (excuse my language)

 

Also it occured to me even if I could find an android tv distro for the Zero W, Zero W can't do 4k (my tv is a 4k tv), so its not 100% ideal. 

 

I've decided to scrap the Tv Stick idea. However, I am open to other ideas if anyone has em. I would like to make something I'd use daily or pretty much often. The IP security camera or sensor stuff doesn't really catch my interest.