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A New Player
Succumbing to temptation to buy one of the Raspberry Pi mini-circuit board computers boxed with useful accessories at the vintage computer expo I visited two weekends ago, I at least had an idea for a specific use for it. The person selling it (alongside much older computing hardware) mentioned a retrogaming multisystem I am aware of, but I was thinking of hooking it up to my TV to play downloaded videos. (That, I suppose, is at the very least as dodgy a thing to admit as a retrogaming system requiring ROM files...) While the latest Macintosh portable I’d been connecting to my TV worked pretty well, I’d wondered about making a more permanent linkup.
I didn’t set up the Pi right away. At first I’d just contemplated installing the video player mpv, but as I looked into the subject I did start wondering a little about accusations that even more recent Pi models were sort of marginal playing “1080p” videos. Then, I did notice a minimal distribution of Linux, LibreELEC, with the tagline “Just enough OS for Kodi” (Kodi being an open-source multimedia-access program). Prepared for a variety of hardware, it was available for the Pi. I went out and bought two memory microcards with the thought I could experiment with different operating systems.
After putting the Pi into the supplied case, plugging in the microcard boxed with it that held its standard operating system, and connecting the video cable also included, I switched it on from a power bar, noted that it worked, and set about writing LibreELEC to one of the new microcards using the very machine it would run on. After the initial startup and decompressing the downloaded LibreELEC image had taken a while, though, the speed of setting up the new card did have me wondering if the Pi had been supplied with an economy card for all that I’d already wondered if I’d bought the absolute best brand myself.
Extracting the old microcard without removing the Pi from the case was a bit of a struggle, which I’m afraid somewhat diminished my thoughts of experimenting further with it. I had, anyway, around the same time set up my previous iMac, which I’d contemplated configuring for “dual booting” only to find that didn’t seem all that easy with a “Fusion Drive” involving a small solid-state drive and a large hard disk sharing files under macOS, and wound up lobotomizing to the point of it only running Linux Mint. I’d got Steam installed on it; trying to build some emulators from source hadn’t worked for me, though.
As for the Pi, it started up all right with its more minimal system. Getting the time zone set right was the most demanding task right away; it did play back some sample videos and one in a series I’m watching right now, even if I’m still wondering a little about what’ll happen with something at higher resolution.
I didn’t set up the Pi right away. At first I’d just contemplated installing the video player mpv, but as I looked into the subject I did start wondering a little about accusations that even more recent Pi models were sort of marginal playing “1080p” videos. Then, I did notice a minimal distribution of Linux, LibreELEC, with the tagline “Just enough OS for Kodi” (Kodi being an open-source multimedia-access program). Prepared for a variety of hardware, it was available for the Pi. I went out and bought two memory microcards with the thought I could experiment with different operating systems.
After putting the Pi into the supplied case, plugging in the microcard boxed with it that held its standard operating system, and connecting the video cable also included, I switched it on from a power bar, noted that it worked, and set about writing LibreELEC to one of the new microcards using the very machine it would run on. After the initial startup and decompressing the downloaded LibreELEC image had taken a while, though, the speed of setting up the new card did have me wondering if the Pi had been supplied with an economy card for all that I’d already wondered if I’d bought the absolute best brand myself.
Extracting the old microcard without removing the Pi from the case was a bit of a struggle, which I’m afraid somewhat diminished my thoughts of experimenting further with it. I had, anyway, around the same time set up my previous iMac, which I’d contemplated configuring for “dual booting” only to find that didn’t seem all that easy with a “Fusion Drive” involving a small solid-state drive and a large hard disk sharing files under macOS, and wound up lobotomizing to the point of it only running Linux Mint. I’d got Steam installed on it; trying to build some emulators from source hadn’t worked for me, though.
As for the Pi, it started up all right with its more minimal system. Getting the time zone set right was the most demanding task right away; it did play back some sample videos and one in a series I’m watching right now, even if I’m still wondering a little about what’ll happen with something at higher resolution.