[supsup]

I am thinking about getting a Raspberry Pi to hook it to my AVR so I would not have to plug a HDMI cable from my laptop to to AVR all the time. Will this work? I have been googling for a an hour and could not get an answer.

The way I imagine it is that I would install Kodi on the Raspberry Pi. Then, from the laptop running Ubuntu, I would initiate a playback of a file located on the laptop that would be rendered on the Pi (preferably using MPV, my favourite player) but that would be controlled from the laptop. All over wifi. I.e. if you would press spacebar on the laptop (in practice on an external wireless keyboard) to pause the stream, it would get paused. A nice to have feature would be having a function(ideally bound toa keyboard shortcut) that would switch display on the projector connected to the AVR so that I could either watch the video (being rendered locally on the pie) or my laptop's screen. Is something like this possible using Kodi (both as a client and as a server?)

[supsup]

I am thinking about getting a Raspberry Pi to hook it to my AVR so I would not have to plug a HDMI cable from my laptop to to AVR all the time. Will this work? I have been googling for a an hour and could not get an answer.

The way I imagine it is that I would install Kodi on the Raspberry Pi. Then, from the laptop running Ubuntu, I would initiate a playback of a file located on the laptop that would be rendered on the Pi (preferably using MPV, my favourite player) but that would be controlled from the laptop. All over wifi. I.e. if you would press spacebar on the laptop (in practice on an external wireless keyboard) to pause the stream, it would get paused. A nice to have feature would be having a function(ideally bound toa keyboard shortcut) that would switch display on the projector connected to the AVR so that I could either watch the video (being rendered locally on the pie) or my laptop's screen. Is something like this possible using Kodi (both as a client and as a server?)

Hm, this sounds like what I am looking for: https://kodi.wiki/view/UPnP#Stream_to_Clients

[Klojum]

There is no Chromecast-like functionality in Kodi. You can install Kodi on a RPi, and have the laptop (or your mobile phone) act as a remote control to your RPi.
UPnP will require you to 'scrape' your media files into the Kodi database first, Kodi does not 'cast' media files directly via UPnP.

[supsup]

Actually, I think I figured what I want. I will run Kodi on the Pi with a VNC server running on it as well. I will set up the laptop to share its files over UPnP. From the laptop, I will open a open a remote sessino into Kodi on the Pi (with "show remote cursor" enabled), close the lid and my mouse and keyboard should be able to control Kodi even if they are going to be connected to the laptop. I hope it will run seamlessly.

[Klojum]

Watching FullHD videos via VNC? Good luck with that.

[supsup]

Watching FullHD videos via VNC? Good luck with that.

No, that is not what I would do. A projector would be connected directly to Kodi/Raspberry Pi. I would only use VNC in order to send keypresses and mouse events through my laptop. But I would look on the screen directly, I would only control it via VNC. Why would this not work?

But I found out by accident, thre is also another solution. There is now a line of Logitech MX peripherals that can switch very easily between devices. There might be other brands that offer this, I did not check. Apparently, all you need to do is to press a button on the device and it will immediately switch to another device (it can cycle up between three) - either via bluetooth or via USB Unifiyng reciever - and the Pi sports a USB port. So this would pretty much work for what I want. They are pricey though, around a hundred bucks each. They call it Easy-Switch.