I bought this starter kit last March and here is the specs for this Raspberry Pi Zero W:
- CPU: single-core 1GHz
- Memory: 512MB
- Hardware: micro SD card slot, mini HDMI port, 2 micro USB ports
- Network: 802.11 b/g/n wireless LAN and Bluetooth
The Zero version is more performant than the Pico version and I decided to do a tiny project with this device.
In my minimalism crusade, I backed up all of my DVDs a couple of years ago on my NAS.
For this project, I would like to use this PI as a half dvd player, half jukebox (but with my DVDs).
Setup
First thing I did was to install HandBrake.
An open source video transcoder that I used to convert my DVDs into MP4 files to save spaces.
One thing I also like about this app is we can select the audio track when we convert which is useful for Korean movies (e.g. Oldboy 2003).
I got a special case where the movie was on 2 DVDs. I used ffmpeg to combine two mp4 files together.
I created a file called "list.txt" and inside the file is like that:
file 'Godfather2 part A.mp4'
file 'Godfather2 part B.mp4'
Here is the command line to combine multiple mp4 files into one:
Afterward, I installed the Raspberry Pi OS on a micro-sd.
I copied the MP4 files into this sd card, inserted the sd-card into the PI sd-card slot, added the tiny CPU heat sink and closed the case.
I connected this device to my TV and turned on the device. The interface is like Windows but the menu bar is on the top instead of the bottom.
VLC was already installed so I tried a couple of movies and it was not great. It was very slow a.k.a unplayable.
I launched a terminal console and called "raspi-config" to update the setup. I switched the booting sequence to be in console mode with auto login.
I rebooted the device and now in the command line, I can use vlc.
The command I use is: cvlc --fullscreen movie.mp4
The result is better than the desktop version. It plays movies like a charm in fullscreen without any lag or slowdown.
Play
My initial plan was to create a tiny web server with an interface to select movies but I may have another project for this device later.
I got this idea for this project after I watched Alien Romulus last month in a movie theater.
It has been a long time since I haven't watched the first versions of Aliens and Predators movies so I did and re-watched almost all of them.
Why not use your NAS as a media center ?
Well, I have multiple layers of network configuration and some devices are not able to talk to others (e.g. fire stick) for specific reasons (e.g. security).
I like the raspberry pi pico version more than this one but I also use this device as a DVD movie backup.
