A Linux-Based Video Player Appliance (Shallow Thoughts)

A Linux-Based Video Player Appliance

Our MP4 player box died. It was a little cheapo device that reads video files (mostly ripped from CD) off an SD card or flash drive, then plays them on the TV over HDMI.

We've had a couple of them, and they're not great: the user interface is terrible, the playback is sometimes laggy and doesn't always have good audio/video sync. But they're cheap, they do play videos, more or less, and they're easy to drive from an infrared remote. On the other hand, I've also read about how this sort of device is often riddled with malware. That's maybe not a huge risk because we don't give them access to our network, but still, it seems like a bad idea.

"Let's use a #RaspberryPi as our media center", I said. "It'll be so much better than those cheap MP4 players. And I'm sure there are options for training an IR remote, or maybe a way to use a phone as a remote." Little did I know what I was getting into.

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