Raspberry Pi Codec Licences

Start by SSHing into the Raspberry Pi, the below can be performed from a Linux or Mac command prompt, Windows users will need to use an application such as Putty.

ssh root@openelec

The default password for root is openelec (The password is case sensitive so make sure you type it in all lower case).

To obtain the serial number run the below command:

cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep Serial

You will see an output similar to the below, the long string of numbers and letters is your serial number, copy it or write it down:

OpenELEC:~ # cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep Serial Serial : 00000000xxxxxxxx

Purchase your licences

If you have not purchased the codecs already, head over to the Raspberry Pi store and purchase the desired licence keys.

Raspberry Pi Store

The Raspberry Pi foundation will email your licence codes to you. Enabling the licences without removing the SD card from the Raspberry Pi

SSH into the Raspberry Pi again.

We need to edit a file called config.txt, when OpenELEC is running it can be found in the /flash folder, however this folder is read only after boot.

Before we can edit the file we need to remount the /flash folder as read write:

mount /flash -o remount,rw

Now we can edit the file with nano, a light weight console based text editor:

nano /flash/config.txt

Scroll to the bottom of the file and look for this section, use the keyboard arrows to position the cursor:

################################################################################
# License keys to enable GPU hardware decoding for various codecs
# to obtain keys visit the shop at http://www.raspberrypi.com
################################################################################

# decode_MPG2=0x00000000
# decode_WVC1=0x00000000
# decode_DTS=0x00000000
# decode_DDP=0x00000000

To enable the MPG2 licence you need to do two things:

Replace 0x00000000 with the licence key you received via email. Remove the # and space from the relevant line, ie for MPG2 remove the # and space from the line # decode_MPG2=

Once you have made your changes press CTRL and X on your keyboard, nano will ask if you want to save the changes, press Y on your keyboard then Enter, if you recieve an error that the file is read only try the remount command again.

To make sure the changes are written to the SD card type:

sync

Then remount the file system as read only:

mount /flash -o remount,ro

Finally reboot the Raspberry Pi either from the menu in XBMC or typing:

reboot