Any chance we could see a flashable image for Raspberry Pi in the future? It would be awesome to run Channels on a $5 Pi Zero with a fire stick BT remote.
Channels DVR can easily be installed on any Linux OS you wish to run on your Pi.
We don’t have the time or resources to maintain an operating system. You’re better off using something with a large community and existing maintainers who issue regular security updates.
Guess I put this in the wrong forum, I was referring to the frontend application not the DVR engine itself. A cheap Pi client build would be nice for less used TVs in the house that don’t really need a dedicated smart Tv platform.
Interesting idea, but not something we have the resources for. We are focused on building apps for existing media hardware platforms (Android TV, Fire TV, Roku, tvOS), rather than creating a new platforms.
Most users would be better off buying an inexpensive roku or FireTV stick for a secondary tv. That way you can access Netflix, hbo, Hulu, etc as well.
The pi zero W (with BT and wifi) is $10, plus you need hdmi cable, case power supply and SD card and remote, so that doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense vs $35 that has everything, in a streamlined form factor.
Personally I only run a smart tv box on two of the TVs in the house, for the others I would rather have an embedded build on a Pi than using cheap Fire Sticks. I’m probably in the minority and I understand them not having the resources and choosing not to offer this.
Fire sticks are generally slow compared to a lightweight embedded pi build, they struggle to run the full Android OS while a low powered Pi Zero actually performs very well with Kodi and Plex. If you have a Pi Zero laying around try flashing the embedded Kodi (OSMC is my preference) image to it and compare it to Kodi running on a Fire Stick, I think you’d be surprised.
A kodi addon for Channels is possible in the future