How-to: Installing LibreELEC/Kodi on an Intel NUC

How to install LibreELEC on an Intel NUC and what are the optimal settings? I’ll walk you through!

Kodi is a popular open-source media center software that can run on Windows or Linux. However, if you have a PC in your livingroom it’s often a bit of a hassle running a full-blown Windows or Linux system. Especially if there are other less technically-inclined people using the device. I’ve gotten an angry phone call or two from my wife before when she couldn’t watch her favorite TV series due to automatic upgrade that broke something. With LibreELEC you don’t need to worry about that. It’s as easy to use a LibreELEC HTPC as it is to use a cable box. Best of all, you can get it up and running in just 15 minutes!

OpenELEC project was set up to address many of the issues that arise when bringing a PC into the living room. It’s a minimal Linux distribution that does one thing well: it runs Kodi. You don’t need to know almost anything about Linux to use it. It will keep itself automatically up-to-date (if you like it to) and everything can be controlled with a standard remote controller. Earlier this year some of the developers of OpenELEC felt that the project was not heading to a direction they felt it should be heading so they forked the project as LibreELEC. Now it seems that majority of the former OpenELEC developers have jumped onboard the LibreELEC train. Personally I made the switch and have been happy. Wife did not even notice. ;-)

By the way, the procedure and settings below work equally well on a Compute Stick too!

What do I need?

In order to install LibreELEC you’ll need:

  • NUC with the components installed (see here for my recommendations)
  • USB stick for the installation (min. 1 Gb)
  • PC running Windows, Linux or Mac OS X
  • Keyboard for the installation

Video

If you prefer to watch a video instead of reading, here you go!

 

Preparing the USB Stick

Allright, so in the first phase you’re going to download the LibreELEC USB-SD Creator app and prepare a USB stick that will contain the installer. You could use an SD card as instead of a USB stick if your NUC has an SD card reader.

The following steps you’ll need to do on another computer. Or if your NUC is already running an operating system and you intend to replace it with LibreELEC, of course you can do this on your NUC.

  1. Head to libreelec.tv downloads section and download the USB-SD Creator app for your computer. I was doing this using a Windows computer so I downloaded the Windows version. Note that all versions create exactly the same installation media on the USB stick so it does not matter if you do this phase on a Mac or a PC.
  2. Plug in the USB stick and start the USB-SD Creator app. You’re greeted with a screen like this.
    LibreELEC USB-SD Creator app
  3. The version you have to select is: Generic AMD/Intel/NVIDIA (x86_64)
  4. If you want to install a beta or alpha version of the software, tick the Show all box. I recommend 7.90 or newer version. Hopefully the version 8.0.0 has been released by the time you are reading this!
  5. Click Download and choose a folder where to store the image for the software version you just chose.
  6. After the download has finished, choose your USB stick and hit Write. This will wipe out everything from your USB stick and replace it with a LibreELEC installation media so be careful out there. Of course after the installation you can take the USB stick into other use again, it’s only needed for transfering the software to the NUC.
  7. Wait until the image has been written and eject the USB media safely.

Ok, now you’ve prepared the USB stick for the installation, let’s go ahead and move LibreELEC from the USB stick to your NUC.

Installing LibreELEC on the NUC

Allright, time to install LibreELEC on the SSD or hard drive of your NUC. Technically you could install it on another USB stick or SD card as well. This could be a good option if you just want to try out LibreELEC.

  1. Plug in the recently created USB stick to your NUC. Make sure you also have a keyboard connected.
  2. Power on the NUC and keep pressing F10 repeatedly in order to bring up the boot menu (a single well-timed press is enough of course!).
    NUC boot menu
  3. Choose the UEFI : USB option that corresponds to your USB stick.
  4. Wait a while for the LibreELEC installer to start. This should take 15-30 seconds.
  5. The main menu of the installer pops up. You use up, down, left and right arrow keys in the installer to move around and select an option by pressing enter. So press enter here to start the installation.
    LibreELEC installer main menu
  6. Next you need to choose a drive where LibreELEC will be installed. I had both a 250-gigabyte hard disk and a 128-gigabyte NVME SSD drive in my system so I got two options. Typically you only have one option here.
    LibreELEC installer device selection
  7. After confirming that you really want to install LibreELEC on the drive the operating system will be copied to your NUC. This takes probably less than one minute, but it depends on the speed of your USB stick and the target drive.
  8. When the installation is complete, remove the USB stick and restart the NUC.
    LibreELEC installer complete

Your NUC will now reboot into LibreELEC. You can reuse the USB stick for something else. Like cat videos or your spreadsheet archive.

Initial LibreELEC Setup

The first time you boot your NUC into LibreELEC you will need to go through some basic settings. Let’s see what are those.

  1. After the system has booted, you’re welcomed into LibreELEC with a screen like this. Press enter to proceed.
    LibreELEC welcome
  2. Select a host name for your system or accept the default one.
    LibreELEC welcome, screen 2
  3. A list of wired and wireless network connections pops up. Choose the one you want to use.
    LibreELEC network selection
  4. I like to have both SSH and Samba enabled, but if you don’t know what these are I suggest you keep only the Samba enabled.
    LibreELEC SSH and Samba
  5. You’re done! Kodi will probably tell you now that your library is empty. Now you can start to configure media sources as a HTPC without content is a bit boring. However, I’d suggest that you still bear with me and change some of the Kodi settings to ensure that your HTPC is rendering the videos and sound in an optimal way.
    LibreELEC installation done

Optimal Kodi Settings for an Intel NUC

The following steps will make sure that you have ideal settings for the video player in Kodi. This makes sure that the videos are played using the hardware acceleration whenever possible.

  • Enter the settings by choosing that cogwheel icon on the bottom of the main menu.
  • Select System Settings.
  • Now go to the bottom of the menu where it says “Standard” and make sure to change that to “Expert“. This will show you all configuration options instead of the basic ones only. If you feel overwhelmed later on, you can change this back to “Standard”, but for this initial phase let’s be experts. Or at least pretend to be.
    LibreELEC settings, expert
  • I’ll mention only the most important settings. The others you can customize to your liking. Make sure you have the following set:
    • Display
      • Resolution: optimal resolution of your screen
      • Refresh rate: preferably 50.00 or 60.00
      • Use limited colour range (16-235): typically enabled if you connect to a real TV, disabled for a computer monitor
      • Dithering: enabled
    • Audio
      • Audio output device: the device you want to use for playing sounds, typically the HDMI interface with the name of your TV or amp should be here
      • Number of channels: number of channels your output device supports. I’m connecting to a 7.1-channel amp, so I put 7.1 here even if I don’t really have 7+1 speakers. I prefer to pass everything to my amp and it can make the decision on what to do to the audio stream.
      • Allow passthrough: Enabled if you’re connecting to an AV amplifier.
      • Passthrough output device: If you enabled passthrough, select the ALSA/HDMI interface for your amp here.
      • Dolby Digital (AC3) capable receiver: Set according to the capabilities of your amp. Typically enabled.
      • DTS capable receiver: Set according to the capabilities of your amp. Typically enabled.
  • Leave the System settings and select Player settings instead. Important settings here:
    • Videos
      • Adjust display refresh rate: Always
      • Sync playback to display: Disabled if you use passthrough audio, enabled otherwise
      • Render method: Auto detect
      • Enable HW scalers for scaling above: 20%
      • Allow hardware acceleration – VDPAU: Disabled (not applicable for Intel hardware)
      • Allow hardware acceleartion – VAAPI: Enabled
      • Use XYZ VAAPI: All enabled
      • Prefer VAAPI render method: Enabled
  • There’s a host of other settings that you can still change. However, I’d recommend that at minimum you will go to Interface settings still and change your region and timezone settings. You can also set your keyboard layout in the LibreELEC settings.

That’s it! You have now turned your Intel NUC into a HTPC. I suggest that you play around and see what you can do. Kodi is extremely versatile and there are literally hundreds of plugins that you can use to customize the experience. A good starting point is the First time user page in the Kodi wiki.

15 Responses

  1. Stoka says:

    Can the 6th generation i5 NUC be used with LibreELEC

    • nucblognet says:

      Hello Stoka,
      Yes, very well! An i3 would do everything equally well (you don’t need so much CPU power for LE), but if you already have the i5 there’s nothing stopping you from using that.

  2. I currently have kodi running in Windows on my Nuc but like you mention in your article it isn’t always wife friendly, so this is an appealing option.

    “everything can be controlled with a standard remote controller”

    Does the Nuc’s infrared sensor work under LE without any additional effort? If so what device would I use for my Harmony remote?

  3. Thanks for the quick response, I’ll try LE out.

  4. Nguygie says:

    Great, well-written article. With the LibreELEC OS, would I be able to access a web browser to stream a flash-player paid-subscription for sports? I basically want my NUC to do two things: Kodi and streaming sports via web-based flash-player. I have paid subscriptions for 2 sports channels – 1 has a Kodi Add-on (but it’s not always reliable) and the other one doesn’t so I would like to be able to stream from a browser. I was thinking of just installing Windows 10 on my NUC but if the LibreELEC can stream from a browser, I might opt for it instead. Thanks

  5. Alex says:

    I’ve never owned a NUC, but I have an Nvidia Shield for Kodi in my living room, and now I need something for the bedroom. It’s either a NUC or a 2nd Nvidia Shield ($199 USD). I’m a heavy Kodi user, and I have Ethernet in every room, just so you know what I’m working with. I have not been very happy with their custom Android TV platform, as it was FULL of bugs until an update 2 weeks ago. (I bought it 2 months ago, and somehow they just fixed the worst bugs, after 1 year and 9 months since release…)

    To avoid future Nvidia bugs, I was considering the NUC6CAYS, but I want a decent amount of RAM, and I don’t have a lot to spend. My idea is to purchase the NUC6CAYH and two 4GB 1866 MHz SODIMMs hopefully for close to the price of the NUC6CAYS.

    My question: I already own a 64GB MicroSDXC card. Would it be possible to boot LibreELEC on the NUC from a memory card only? (I have the SD size adapter.)

    Or Should I forget about the LibreELEC idea and go for Ubuntu if I want Netflix or Amazon Prime Video?

  6. alexsisk2017 says:

    FYI – LibreELEC 8.0.0 does not support passthrough on the new NUCs, and with passthrough disabled, it only passes 2 channel PCM, regardless of how many channels you tell Kodi your receiver has.

    • Olli says:

      Hi there,
      You probably refer to Dolby TrueHD and DTS-X passthrough right? I have passthrough audio working fine in last LE 8.0 beta for DD 5.1 and DTS 5.1 formats, but not for the more advanced ones. This actually might be an issue with the firmware of the NUC itself, see:

      https://communities.intel.com/message/455702#455702

      But I guess we’ll find out in a couple of weeks.

      • alexsisk2017 says:

        They just released 8.0 final yesterday just in case you weren’t aware.

        I’d agree with you, but that doesn’t address the fact that Kodi is more than capable of decoding TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio via ffmpeg (**but not Atmos or DTS:X, to be clear).

        One of my AVRs is compatible with all the new formats, and another is only compatible with AC3 and DTS core. (It’s from 2008, but it’s a beast, power-wise) For that AVR, I have my Nvidia Shield hooked up, and Kodi decodes + sends out multichannel PCM flawlessly. I’ve also tested it on my newer AVR – Shield works fine there too.

        But my NUC6CAYH with LibreELEC 8.0 will not do ANYTHING other than output 2-channel PCM.

  7. alexsisk2017 says:

    FYI, I’m referring to HDMI out. I’m fully aware of the limitations of optical audio.

  8. Brian says:

    Just got my new 7i7 today so my old 6i5 had to become my new htpc (replacing my core2duo mac mini lol). I had issues getting the boot to work on my usb drive, kept getting “error in mount_flash” and “can’t start /flash/system”. I ended up trying an sd card I had, which again presented a challenge since the new 7i7 don’t have an sd card reader…. oh well, external reader to the rescue. Got it to work based on the instructions so all good now. Will work on getting it to work with my logitech remote tomorrow based on the other page you mentioned in the comments above.

    Anyway, great job!

  9. Ben says:

    It dont work for me. The NUC dont shw the USB-Stick in the Boot Menu…

  10. Ties says:

    I have OpenELEC on my Intel Nuc now with Kodi 16.1 and I want to replace it with LibreELEC with Kodi Leia. If I follow your steps, will it then uninstall the OpenELEC first itself before installing LibreELEC? Or do I need to uninstall OpenELEC myself before I can install LibreELEC? If so, how do I uninstall OpenELEC on my Intel NUC?

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