Cool project! I'm sure this was more fun than just getting a Chromecast dongle or messing with nightmarishly expensive wireless HDMI equipment.
Though, to respond to the last point on the page:
Media PC software already exists. However, both Plex and Kodi, to my knowledge, sort of expects you to have a media collection stored on hard drives somewhere.
I cannot speak for Plex, but regarding Kodi, that isn't entirely true. Yes, you can have an existing media collection and use it with Kodi. However, you're not required to, and you can just as easily stream content from the web. I've got a copy of OSMC running on a Pi and I can stream movies and videos that I've never seen before; pretty much anything that I'd be watching at my computer.
For complete disclosure: while I maintain the Pi at home, I don't use it on a daily basis - the only people watching TV in my household are my parents and my brother. But from what I've seen while setting it up and giving it a test drive, it's pretty nifty. It's been in use at home for months without problems.
Mort this is really cool, thank you. I was trying to find a free way of making a "Netflix box" and you've just done all the hard work for me. Old laptop? Check. Linux distro? easy. Mort's new cool? Already done for me.
Seriously thank you, I'll be sure to let you know about all the problems I have with it when I have time to set it up post Christmas.
10 comments
2 u/captbrogers 18 Dec 2015 22:47
That looks really intriguing. The color scheme reminds me a bit of the older Ubuntu Gnome 2 default theme, but still a really cool idea.
1 u/kwithh 18 Dec 2015 23:19
Definitely Jaunty Jackelope status.
0 u/idarin 19 Dec 2015 02:49
Cool project! I'm sure this was more fun than just getting a Chromecast dongle or messing with nightmarishly expensive wireless HDMI equipment.
Though, to respond to the last point on the page:
I cannot speak for Plex, but regarding Kodi, that isn't entirely true. Yes, you can have an existing media collection and use it with Kodi. However, you're not required to, and you can just as easily stream content from the web. I've got a copy of OSMC running on a Pi and I can stream movies and videos that I've never seen before; pretty much anything that I'd be watching at my computer.
For complete disclosure: while I maintain the Pi at home, I don't use it on a daily basis - the only people watching TV in my household are my parents and my brother. But from what I've seen while setting it up and giving it a test drive, it's pretty nifty. It's been in use at home for months without problems.
0 u/mort [OP] 19 Dec 2015 02:59
That's interesting, I didn't know that. However, can it stream arbitrary torrents?
0 u/idarin 19 Dec 2015 07:49
Yes, there's a plugin that lets you do that. I haven't used it myself, but I think it's called Pulser or something like that.
0 u/LlamaMan 19 Dec 2015 04:43
Mort this is really cool, thank you. I was trying to find a free way of making a "Netflix box" and you've just done all the hard work for me. Old laptop? Check. Linux distro? easy. Mort's new cool? Already done for me.
Seriously thank you, I'll be sure to let you know about all the problems I have with it when I have time to set it up post Christmas.
0 u/supercoolvoatuser 19 Dec 2015 14:58
Could just buy a Roku3 and you can play movies from an external hard drive.
0 u/mort [OP] 19 Dec 2015 16:25
You didn't really read the post did you.