BLUE_ICE: August 2020

Want to buy an Android TV Box like Mi Box 4k?

Think before you go to buy it! If you can make your own such a box then why give your money to china?

Maybe it would be a little costlier than Mi Box 4k, but it's your own made, and if it is made in bulk by someone then it can really compete with the Mi Box 4k in price too.

Here is my version of the TV Box powered by the Raspberry Pi.

I have a semi-smart TV(Sony Bravia LED TV) that does not have an android but it is able to play some formats of videos, pictures, and audio from a USB drive, supports screen mirroring from some android phones supports casting from Sony Xperia phones only😏 (now not available in the Indian market, but luckily I have an old one).

There are many cases in which I miss many features and I wish it would be great if I had a smart TV. Then I started looking for some android TV box but most of them are made in china.

So we can't buy it, really we can't, we must not buy it.

Now there are many smart TVs also available in the market at a very low price than your current semi-smart TV, that you bought some years ago, but they have no smart features of Android TV! But actually, they are very good in terms of display and sound quality, so obviously you don't want to replace it just for some smart TV features.

so why not make our own TV box?

Usually, we do some money calculation when you buy a new gadget, let's also do it for when you make your own.

	Rpi 4 with 2 GB RAM	Rpi 4 with 1 GB RAM	Rpi 3 with 1 GB RAM
Raspberry Pi	4000	3000	3000
Micro HDMI cable	300	300
Raspberry pi case with heat sink and fan	500	500	500
Total	4800	3800	3500

So in maximum 5000 Rs, you can make your own smart TV box

Now, what is the price of Mi Box 4k? It is around 4000 Rs and if you buy 1GB ram variant of Raspberry Pi then you also can make it in 4000 Rs around.

Software part?

There are many options available based on your use requirement:

If you want to use it as an Android TV box? you can download and install Android TV OS for Raspberry pi (not easily done for Raspberry Pi 4), links are given in the reference.

If you want to use it for a media center, gaming box, or just want to enjoy videos, images, and audio from your USB drives with almost all files supported? Then KODI is enough for you. There are options for installing KODI over OpenELEC, OSMC, LibreELEC. (OSMC is best but currently not available for Raspberry Pi 4).

There are lots of materials available on the internet for how to install them based on your requirements.

I have tested both Android OS and KODI both works fine in terms of performance, On my old Raspberry Pi 2, even KODI was not that useful as it was lagging while playing videos but Raspberry Pi 4 is awesome in performance.

If you are not a software engineer then I would prefer Raspberry Pi 3 Model B will be a good option as Android TV OS and KODI OSMC both are easily available for Raspberry Pi 3, In future Raspberry Pi 4 may also have support for both.

Below is my KODI version :