There is a configuration option in VLC to only open one instance. I have it set up on my own machines for movie playlists. Go to Tools > Preferences [CTRL + P]. Under the currently selected Interface preference, find the heading that says Playlist and Instances. Make sure that Allow only one instance checkbox is not checked. That will keep you from having to do the killalls. Unfortunately I'm not quite sure what's happening with it not working with the on the hour times.
@@90sNick_Pinesal After checking myself a little further, just adding a playlist will ... add it and move to the start of it in the queue, but it can make your queue get VERY large and cause memory problems on something like a pi. You would want something like this: xdotool search --name VLC key ctrl+w ; vlc list.xspf after setting the DISPLAY variable. This sends the control-w keystroke to VLC to clear the playlist before you add the new one. I do not think that this will work under Wayland, only Xorg
@@90sNick_Pinesal I did a little more testing this morning and... was not very happy with the results. I think my issues mostly have to do with how I do focus and other programs I have running. I would recommend testing anything and reading man pages. I really wish there was a direct command to clear the list from the command line instead of just a key press.
I want to thank you because you inspired me to set up my retro TV. I finally connected an SSD to my Raspberry Pi and created a NAS with Samba to manage series from a Windows PC. Then, I created channels with DizqueTV, not for use in PLEX, but to download the .m3u files for each channel. Now, my Raspberry Pi automatically starts in full screen, playing all the channels I have in .m3u files in a playlist. To switch between channels, I use VLC shortcuts (N = next, P = previous), which helps avoid closing VLC. As additional information, if you're interested, I wrote a Python script to analyze long commercial videos from UA-cam and split them at each change, making it very easy to manage commercials with DizqueTV. I also wrote another script that resizes my series first to 4:3 and then to 640x480 to avoid black bars. One last detail: VLC needs to have a sleep function to allow DizqueTV to start first. Once again, thank you!
I have heard many people bring up DizqueTV when talking about this project. Maybe I'll mess with that another day. My goal with this project was to make the system portable so I could take the pi to another location and have it still work. I don't think DizqueTV can be installed on a Raspberry Pi, can it?
Mac Gyver, The A-Team, Home Improvement, and an assortment of '90s movies love the setup, i'm considering doing something similar for a '90s nostalgia weather channel setup with current weather data on my home setup
Yeah this is doable. I was able to find a way to permanently display a PNG over the screen on a different system for a different purpose but that would work for this too.
brother this is fantastic, killer idea and explained the process simple, i work at a thrift store and have been wanting to take one of my pi4 with an ups and 3.5 display with a usb storage and dvd burner and rip all the cds and dvds i come across but honestly cant get around with coming up with an auto rip when a disc is inserted
That was cool! I did something almost similar a few years ago. I used 4 RF modulators, I combined the 4 RF TV channels, and the video source came from 4 computers with each its own playlist. So it was possible to change the channel from several TV sets.
@@90sNick_Pinesal Yep. That is correct. It needs a Plex Server but ErsatzTV does work with locally stored media and if you set up the chapter markers correctly with the videos, You can have ad breaks in-between shows at the act breaks.
Question for you: The videos you have did you change the resolution of the video files from any up scaling to 480p? and can you show the pi or tell us which pi your using?
I have been doing this for nearly a decade now on a simple (win10) laptop with a number of 4tb hds attached via USB hub. I got so sick and tired of endless lawyer/drug/soap commercial on broadcast tv. While VLC is likely the best player, I have always had to set up manual playlists as a real TV station would. I have toyed with the idea of using my old programming skills to come up and assemble somewhat random yet consistent "programming" slots and playlists. What with all the latest talk about chatgpt4 I have toying with the idea of attempting to use that as the weekly programming manager.
Yes, a curated programing block would be the ultimate endgame. It seems like a lot of work and I am not sure how it would be accomplished. I'd be interested in anything you end up doing. Please keep me updated on your progress.
I'm running 5 different RPI stations at the moment. I have a python script for each show that will select a random episode, and follow it up with a loop of commercials until the next programming block -managed through crontab. It feels quasi-authentic tuning into some shows during their original timeslots, but Im wondering if further randomizing things within a block might be a little more enjoyable.
I really enjoy your channel. I apologize for the late reply to your question about the GENIE garage door opener. I've been on vacation. If you have questions about tech, especially 70's to 90's technology, just ask me anytime. I have spent too many years fixing these things for money and as a hobby. I don't necessarily miss the old days. But I do like simple and rugged. Simple and rugged means reliable and less things to go wrong. After working more than 30 years as a computer technician I see that when systems are too complex there is a greater chance of simple and unforeseen problems that can de-stabilize systems.
I've been thinking about doing something similar for a while, only I'd use two machines, as I have two scan converters and two RF modulators, so I can have two channels - an Australian channel (I'm Aussie), with Australian ads, and locally made 90's shows such as Round the Twist, Spellbinders, the Aussie Power Rangers, Blue Heelers, etc, and an American channel with American ads and American shows.
does the playlist pickup where it left off? Like if I have a Must See TV NBC primetime schedule and playlist, will it play successive unplayed episodes of Seinfeld or will it start with the first video in the playlist every time?
The way I have it set up, it will start from a random video and continue playing in random order. So if it stops and then get started again, it will be a random video.
Clever setup, but I probably would've done some kind of setup with mpv and its Lua scripting. Kinda keeps everything together in one place and you can get more control over playback, like changing playlists only at the end of a video file or waiting for NTP to finish before selecting a playlist (and maybe playing some other playlist while waiting, could even be used for some like technical difficulties or channel sign-on clips or something :p).
That's cool too. The reason I use raspberry pi is because once it's setup, it's automatic. Just plug into power and the TV and show start playing on their own.
This is the second of these that I've seen. Would be cool if someone could figure out a way to actually broadcast the signal that can be picked up with an antennae. Use 12 instances to broadcast to various frequencies which would allow you to channel surf in real time and you would also get the analogue artifacts for free!
Hey there. I know this is an old video, but I stumbled upon it just now when looking for something I could do with Raspberry Pi. And this video hooked me. Question: is there a possibility to make multiple channels to work at once while browsing the Retro TV with a remote? I mean, I'm planning to recreate the experience some Polish people had with channels like RTL7 or ZigZap or even Fox Kids/Jetix. I know it would require making more playlists judging by your tutorial and it would require a lot more than VLC and Crontab, but is there actually a way to make different channels?
Thanks for watching. I have not found an easy way to do it. You may look into a software package called dizquetv which could achieve this. I have a read a little about it and it seems like a lot of work. let me know what you end up doing.
@@90sNick_Pinesal Sure I would, except that'd take me some years to perfect this, because I will be doing a lot. Currently, I'm making some "fake nostalgia videos" for Polish people providing them experience with their past channels like RTL7 or Fox Kids/Jetix (before it's rebranding to Disney XD). I might announce this project later on, but it would be more for me rather than the others... If I would get requests for it, I might as well do it.
wow, this is very cool! I just stumbled on your vid when looking for this exact same thing for a little retro tv I got to play old video game commercials. I think this process would work awesome for that! So, when you add the folder to VLC to create the playlist, do the videos need to stay in the same 'folder list order'? or do you just click and drag them around inside VLC before saving as a playlist? I have some, but any suggestions for where to find the 80's/90's/00's video game commercials in bulk or the like would be appreciated :) thanks again! also just subscribed 👍
This setup doesn't really have different channels. You could make separate playlists that can act like different channels and bind them to shortcuts keys like at the end of the video. They would not respect the time schedule though.
@@90sNick_Pinesal Can’t get keybind shortcuts to work; tried F1 and combinations like C-Space but nothing…Any ideas on how to fix it? The script works when I run it in the terminal.
@@Santyy10 I am not sure if key combos work but f1 should work. My guess is you didn't close a comman with Can you copy and paste the keybind code you wrote?
Hi Awesome vid! I have a quick question tho, say i add about 50 videos to my Morning Shows Playlist which is around 8 hrs and set it to play from 7am and then set my Afternoon playlist to play from 12pm, thats less that 8 hrs so it wasn't able to play everything in the playlist, does that mean its will play from where it left off the next day?? Again a very good vid and you have a new subscriber :)
The way I have it configured, the playlist will start over. I suggest you toggle on shuffle in VLC so that the playlist is different each time it starts so you will eventually see everything.
Gonna give this a try... at least just the VLC playlist part. As for the scheduling. What if you don't want the pi on all day? Lets say you turn it on at 6 pm. Does it know to play the 6pm playlist?
If you started the Pi at 6PM, it would not start the 6PM playlist if it's one second past 6pm when the crontab file is read by the operating system. In this case, it would play the startup playlist until the next scheduled time occurs. I have not found a solution for this yet but I bet there is one. If you started the pi at 5:59, then the 6pm playlist would start.
Okay, good to know. You are the the man! Subscribed! I was beginning to worry about myself. I even ask chatgpt, "Is nostalgia a sickness?" Glad there are others going above and beyond with making vintage tv. LOL!
@@90sNick_Pinesal Someone else has done this at: ua-cam.com/video/luxFdsAkG80/v-deo.html&pp=gAQB , I'm looking for the answer as well but he disabled commenting and no one can ask. he can start the pi and it'll immediately start playing a playlist at the proper timestamp, and he can 'change channels' and everything is playing at the proper time. I've scoured VLC's documentation and I can't figure out how it's done. You can jump to a specific part of a video, but not a playlist.
Dang That guy is doing it right. He says in his video that we wrote his own software to run the program guide. That is beyond my skill. Though with tools like ChatGPT, you can get custom code pretty easily without knowing the code.
Yes in fact. I forgot to mention in my video that I do have it on shuffle. There is a shuffle button and repeat on the main window next to the play button. toggling those on will keep them set that way.
Hey love your video. I want to do a similar setup, but re-creating old MTV. I have like 6 folders on a USB stick with different styles of music. I want to be able to turn on the Pi and it starts to play the default first folder on random shuffle mode. After let's say 10 videos I want it to go to my commercials folder and play like 5 minutes of random commercials on shuffle mode. Then it goes back to the default video folder for another random 10 videos...and it repeats forever like this. But let's say I'm tired of watching that default folder, I can hit a key on the keyboard to go to the next playlist (style of video folder) kind of like channel flipping. Is this possible to do. Also would be cool to have an MTV ID Bumper folder so it will play one of those ID bumpers every 20 videos or so. This is similar to what you have done here on your video, just need to tweak out the crontab. Can you help me on how to set that up.
I am not sure how this would be accomplished, I would he happy to brainstorm ideas with you. Here is a link to my discord if you want to talk about it more discord.gg/k5fczrSC
As the videos change to the next, are you seeing a flash of the VLC player as it's toggling to the next video on the playlist? Is there a way to get rid of that?
Yeah, not every time though. Sometimes it's seamless and sometimes you quickly see the desktop. I don't know if there is a fix. I will reply again if I find one.
You'll find a surprising amount of shows on the Internet Archive. They all have VHS rips with hours of random 90s programming. Other than that, you can use a UA-cam downloader to rip stuff from UA-cam.
great tutorial... just wondering if there is away to setup raspberry pi that it can stream netflix without installing desktop or run through web browser on a pi?
I am using the composite video out on the Pi. Some tips to get that to work Start with this guide mlagerberg.gitbooks.io/raspberry-pi/content/3.5-analog-video-output.html Also, Sometimes those 3.5 to composite are not wired up the same way so you'll actually find the video signal on the red or white cable so try all of them in the yellow video port on the TV.
man, all the vids I'm finding are still have the black around the actual vid (from YT save) in fullscreen 480 on this screen - where do you find the "full screen 4:3" vids so it fills the screen?? :)
That's the struggle man. the best you can do is try to find videos that are already 4:3. You can crop videos in VLC so playing around with those options might let you hide the black borders.
@@90sNick_Pinesal thanks for the tip! However I wonder if I could broadcast it over RF to all the 4 TVs in my house. I've heard that this works with RPi4 and I just got one
for antenna based crt tv's there is a product called a "active modulator" basically it converts a regular signal like from a game system to the radio-television waves and thus boom analog tvs will get signal i did this to turn a regular analog tv into a monitor for a computer with this you can have multiple tv's with the same signal a good use for this is a multiroom use computer basically you can hook up 30 keyboards and the computer will just go ahh i have 30 keyboards so you connect the modulator up and you can have a tv in another room that is getting signal from the modulator and have either a wireless or wired keyboard and you can literally control 1 computer from anywhere in your home why... well i guess a gaming setup in every room i don't know if this will work with lcds... oh wait yes i do it does but it looks like poop because the modulator is expecting a crt set not a lcd it's been a while since i messed with it
a active modulator takes composite and outputs the antenna signal via co-axial you just need to hook it to a tv antenna i think i just connected directly to my tv via a co-axial adapter and i got picture i'm not a television engineer or anything like that i just wanted to see if i could turn a normal crt tv into a crt monitor i actually heard a funny story involving active modulators apparently children in the 80's and early 90's discovered that if you connect a snes backwards to the tv antenna you can get mario tv and they didn't know it at the time but the kids accidentally started a pirate tv station because for some weird reason snes consoles have a active modulator built in and the kids were broadcasting mario tv across the neighborhood
if i didn't make it clear if you want hdmi you are going to need a composite upscaler then connect that to the active modulator via composite cables then you get analog (antenna) that you connect to a tv antenna for and it will broadcast tv waves for your analog tv's to pick up
Hi , this is cool, i am at work and just click through while having a coffee, i will watch in full at home You may have explained it ( but i have not watched it all ), but for the error in reboot ,since vlc is in start up procedure, why not have a default start up play list where is just plays say the tv station closed - test signal So lets say it reboots 10:30 at night, if will play the station closed video until it hits the next cron table at 6am 9 i think you had basically 6 / 12 / 16 / 20 ( 4pm 8pm ) Hehe , you need to add saturday morning cartoons and for sunday's church and wrestling and football Ps i used cron back at work back in early 90's on a sun station, 4am every morning it checked for a file on the server it was a completed batch job for accounting lets call it debtors.doc ( this file was deleted each night at 9pm after ours so it did not exist until the server finished processing and re-created it ) If found it emailed debtors.doc to all managers and sales reps, it then emailed salesytd.doc to accounts and manager etc 6am if checked dispatch.doc, if it existed it emailed that to the 4 depots for todays deliveries 8am if checked a folder that held every overnight fax and emailed that to reception Oh once they were emailed the files were renames to oldfilename.doc to *.sent The cron job ran every 15 mins from first start ie the debtors one started 4am and was repeated 4.15 4.30 4.45 every 15 mins to 8am same with all the others they all repeated every 15 mince from first start 8am was last try by that time a few people were in the office and if the reports failed overnight they would investigate, the process never ran twice because the file name was changed after emailed was a wonderful tiny tool that performed a lot of work
Thanks for your interest in this project. At some point I may get more specific about the TV show schedule. I thought about having Saturday mornings and weekend blocks but I don't have enough TV show episodes to make that work yet. I wish there was a good source for content. I want to do a late night block too with sleazy 900 number commercials and infomercials and late night talk. But I don't have any of that yet.
@@90sNick_Pinesal HAHA most youtube searches should provide some 80's / 90's period commercials, the 900 dating or the As seen On Tv ads are fun / corny I may have a play around with my PI 3, but i just finished the 2 arcade joy sticks box set up and dread taking it out now I do have a PI400 but that is wrapped in its case and box PIZero2W are unobtainium at the moment - bu ti amsure there are some windows based cron items as i did use them in Win 2000 or XP era Cheers George
There is a configuration option in VLC to only open one instance. I have it set up on my own machines for movie playlists.
Go to Tools > Preferences [CTRL + P].
Under the currently selected Interface preference, find the heading that says Playlist and Instances.
Make sure that Allow only one instance checkbox is not checked.
That will keep you from having to do the killalls.
Unfortunately I'm not quite sure what's happening with it not working with the on the hour times.
Oh, good tip! I will check for that setting. Thanks!
@@90sNick_Pinesal
After checking myself a little further, just adding a playlist will ... add it and move to the start of it in the queue, but it can make your queue get VERY large and cause memory problems on something like a pi. You would want something like this:
xdotool search --name VLC key ctrl+w ; vlc list.xspf after setting the DISPLAY variable.
This sends the control-w keystroke to VLC to clear the playlist before you add the new one.
I do not think that this will work under Wayland, only Xorg
@@GamingWithUncleJon it's good to know you can sent keyboard shortcuts that way.
@@90sNick_Pinesal I did a little more testing this morning and... was not very happy with the results. I think my issues mostly have to do with how I do focus and other programs I have running. I would recommend testing anything and reading man pages. I really wish there was a direct command to clear the list from the command line instead of just a key press.
@@GamingWithUncleJon Seems like kill vlc is still the best way?
I want to thank you because you inspired me to set up my retro TV. I finally connected an SSD to my Raspberry Pi and created a NAS with Samba to manage series from a Windows PC. Then, I created channels with DizqueTV, not for use in PLEX, but to download the .m3u files for each channel. Now, my Raspberry Pi automatically starts in full screen, playing all the channels I have in .m3u files in a playlist. To switch between channels, I use VLC shortcuts (N = next, P = previous), which helps avoid closing VLC.
As additional information, if you're interested, I wrote a Python script to analyze long commercial videos from UA-cam and split them at each change, making it very easy to manage commercials with DizqueTV. I also wrote another script that resizes my series first to 4:3 and then to 640x480 to avoid black bars. One last detail: VLC needs to have a sleep function to allow DizqueTV to start first.
Once again, thank you!
I have heard many people bring up DizqueTV when talking about this project. Maybe I'll mess with that another day. My goal with this project was to make the system portable so I could take the pi to another location and have it still work. I don't think DizqueTV can be installed on a Raspberry Pi, can it?
Mac Gyver, The A-Team, Home Improvement, and an assortment of '90s movies
love the setup, i'm considering doing something similar for a '90s nostalgia weather channel setup with current weather data on my home setup
A cool idea is to add your own TV channel watermark to the bottom right corner by adding a logo to it. Just an idea.
Cool video dude
Yeah this is doable. I was able to find a way to permanently display a PNG over the screen on a different system for a different purpose but that would work for this too.
You should hook it up to an RF modulator and run it through your home coax cables
That's a really cool idea. I am going to see if I even have those wired up still. Thanks!
brother this is fantastic, killer idea and explained the process simple, i work at a thrift store and have been wanting to take one of my pi4 with an ups and 3.5 display with a usb storage and dvd burner and rip all the cds and dvds i come across but honestly cant get around with coming up with an auto rip when a disc is inserted
I love 90's TV shows so much!
Thanks for doing all the legwork and video. Doing this has been on my mind for a long time. Thank you good sir!
My pleasure!
That was cool! I did something almost similar a few years ago. I used 4 RF modulators, I combined the 4 RF TV channels, and the video source came from 4 computers with each its own playlist. So it was possible to change the channel from several TV sets.
That's awesome. Now we just need to put our two ideas together lol
DizqueTV is way to go for this.
My understanding is that DizqueTV doesn't work with locally stored media. Is that correct?
@@90sNick_Pinesal Yep. That is correct. It needs a Plex Server but ErsatzTV does work with locally stored media and if you set up the chapter markers correctly with the videos, You can have ad breaks in-between shows at the act breaks.
Yea, also doesn’t run locally on a pi?
ErsatzTV could work if you have a home media server
ErsatzTV would be ideal it works either Plex and local media
Question for you: The videos you have did you change the resolution of the video files from any up scaling to 480p? and can you show the pi or tell us which pi your using?
Most of the videos I have are 320p or 480p. And I am using a Raspberry Pi 3b
I have been doing this for nearly a decade now on a simple (win10) laptop with a number of 4tb hds attached via USB hub. I got so sick and tired of endless lawyer/drug/soap commercial on broadcast tv. While VLC is likely the best player, I have always had to set up manual playlists as a real TV station would. I have toyed with the idea of using my old programming skills to come up and assemble somewhat random yet consistent "programming" slots and playlists.
What with all the latest talk about chatgpt4 I have toying with the idea of attempting to use that as the weekly programming manager.
Yes, a curated programing block would be the ultimate endgame. It seems like a lot of work and I am not sure how it would be accomplished. I'd be interested in anything you end up doing. Please keep me updated on your progress.
I'm running 5 different RPI stations at the moment. I have a python script for each show that will select a random episode, and follow it up with a loop of commercials until the next programming block -managed through crontab. It feels quasi-authentic tuning into some shows during their original timeslots, but Im wondering if further randomizing things within a block might be a little more enjoyable.
I really enjoy your channel. I apologize for the late reply to your question about the GENIE garage door opener. I've been on vacation. If you have questions about tech, especially 70's to 90's technology, just ask me anytime. I have spent too many years fixing these things for money and as a hobby. I don't necessarily miss the old days. But I do like simple and rugged. Simple and rugged means reliable and less things to go wrong. After working more than 30 years as a computer technician I see that when systems are too complex there is a greater chance of simple and unforeseen problems that can de-stabilize systems.
Thanks! I may come to you in the future if I get stuck on another project.
I've been thinking about doing something similar for a while, only I'd use two machines, as I have two scan converters and two RF modulators, so I can have two channels - an Australian channel (I'm Aussie), with Australian ads, and locally made 90's shows such as Round the Twist, Spellbinders, the Aussie Power Rangers, Blue Heelers, etc, and an American channel with American ads and American shows.
That sounds awesome. Two channels would be really cool
does the playlist pickup where it left off? Like if I have a Must See TV NBC primetime schedule and playlist, will it play successive unplayed episodes of Seinfeld or will it start with the first video in the playlist every time?
The way I have it set up, it will start from a random video and continue playing in random order. So if it stops and then get started again, it will be a random video.
Clever setup, but I probably would've done some kind of setup with mpv and its Lua scripting. Kinda keeps everything together in one place and you can get more control over playback, like changing playlists only at the end of a video file or waiting for NTP to finish before selecting a playlist (and maybe playing some other playlist while waiting, could even be used for some like technical difficulties or channel sign-on clips or something :p).
I haven't heard of MPV before. I am always looking for ways to improve. I'll look into this for sure. Thanks.
Great video.. saved me lots of work. thanks
You are welcome! What shows are you going put on yours?
What I did was I have my CRT hooked up to my modded wii and using wiimc I either play a dvd or put shows on a usb stick
That's cool too. The reason I use raspberry pi is because once it's setup, it's automatic. Just plug into power and the TV and show start playing on their own.
This is the second of these that I've seen. Would be cool if someone could figure out a way to actually broadcast the signal that can be picked up with an antennae. Use 12 instances to broadcast to various frequencies which would allow you to channel surf in real time and you would also get the analogue artifacts for free!
Nice video, well done, keep it up, thanks for sharing it :)
Very cool idea. I must try this myself!
Do you know if it’s possible to make multiple channels?
Excellent work!
Hey there. I know this is an old video, but I stumbled upon it just now when looking for something I could do with Raspberry Pi. And this video hooked me.
Question: is there a possibility to make multiple channels to work at once while browsing the Retro TV with a remote?
I mean, I'm planning to recreate the experience some Polish people had with channels like RTL7 or ZigZap or even Fox Kids/Jetix.
I know it would require making more playlists judging by your tutorial and it would require a lot more than VLC and Crontab, but is there actually a way to make different channels?
Thanks for watching. I have not found an easy way to do it. You may look into a software package called dizquetv which could achieve this. I have a read a little about it and it seems like a lot of work. let me know what you end up doing.
@@90sNick_Pinesal Sure I would, except that'd take me some years to perfect this, because I will be doing a lot. Currently, I'm making some "fake nostalgia videos" for Polish people providing them experience with their past channels like RTL7 or Fox Kids/Jetix (before it's rebranding to Disney XD).
I might announce this project later on, but it would be more for me rather than the others... If I would get requests for it, I might as well do it.
wow, this is very cool! I just stumbled on your vid when looking for this exact same thing for a little retro tv I got to play old video game commercials. I think this process would work awesome for that! So, when you add the folder to VLC to create the playlist, do the videos need to stay in the same 'folder list order'? or do you just click and drag them around inside VLC before saving as a playlist? I have some, but any suggestions for where to find the 80's/90's/00's video game commercials in bulk or the like would be appreciated :) thanks again! also just subscribed 👍
The videos will play in the order they appear in the playlist. You can click and drag the files to change their order.
do you need multiple raspberry pi for different channels or can you do it all from one ?
This setup doesn't really have different channels. You could make separate playlists that can act like different channels and bind them to shortcuts keys like at the end of the video. They would not respect the time schedule though.
@@90sNick_Pinesal Can’t get keybind shortcuts to work; tried F1 and combinations like C-Space but nothing…Any ideas on how to fix it? The script works when I run it in the terminal.
@@Santyy10 I am not sure if key combos work but f1 should work. My guess is you didn't close a comman with
Can you copy and paste the keybind code you wrote?
Hi Awesome vid! I have a quick question tho, say i add about 50 videos to my Morning Shows Playlist which is around 8 hrs and set it to play from 7am and then set my Afternoon playlist to play from 12pm, thats less that 8 hrs so it wasn't able to play everything in the playlist, does that mean its will play from where it left off the next day?? Again a very good vid and you have a new subscriber :)
The way I have it configured, the playlist will start over. I suggest you toggle on shuffle in VLC so that the playlist is different each time it starts so you will eventually see everything.
@@90sNick_Pinesal Thanks!
nice room!
Gonna give this a try... at least just the VLC playlist part. As for the scheduling. What if you don't want the pi on all day? Lets say you turn it on at 6 pm. Does it know to play the 6pm playlist?
If you started the Pi at 6PM, it would not start the 6PM playlist if it's one second past 6pm when the crontab file is read by the operating system. In this case, it would play the startup playlist until the next scheduled time occurs. I have not found a solution for this yet but I bet there is one.
If you started the pi at 5:59, then the 6pm playlist would start.
Okay, good to know. You are the the man! Subscribed! I was beginning to worry about myself. I even ask chatgpt, "Is nostalgia a sickness?" Glad there are others going above and beyond with making vintage tv. LOL!
@@KungFuMojo Thank you!
@@90sNick_Pinesal Someone else has done this at: ua-cam.com/video/luxFdsAkG80/v-deo.html&pp=gAQB , I'm looking for the answer as well but he disabled commenting and no one can ask. he can start the pi and it'll immediately start playing a playlist at the proper timestamp, and he can 'change channels' and everything is playing at the proper time. I've scoured VLC's documentation and I can't figure out how it's done. You can jump to a specific part of a video, but not a playlist.
Dang That guy is doing it right. He says in his video that we wrote his own software to run the program guide. That is beyond my skill. Though with tools like ChatGPT, you can get custom code pretty easily without knowing the code.
Hi, can you tell it to shuffle the playlist, instead of playing sequentially?
Yes in fact. I forgot to mention in my video that I do have it on shuffle. There is a shuffle button and repeat on the main window next to the play button. toggling those on will keep them set that way.
Hey love your video. I want to do a similar setup, but re-creating old MTV. I have like 6 folders on a USB stick with different styles of music. I want to be able to turn on the Pi and it starts to play the default first folder on random shuffle mode. After let's say 10 videos I want it to go to my commercials folder and play like 5 minutes of random commercials on shuffle mode. Then it goes back to the default video folder for another random 10 videos...and it repeats forever like this. But let's say I'm tired of watching that default folder, I can hit a key on the keyboard to go to the next playlist (style of video folder) kind of like channel flipping. Is this possible to do. Also would be cool to have an MTV ID Bumper folder so it will play one of those ID bumpers every 20 videos or so. This is similar to what you have done here on your video, just need to tweak out the crontab. Can you help me on how to set that up.
I am not sure how this would be accomplished, I would he happy to brainstorm ideas with you. Here is a link to my discord if you want to talk about it more discord.gg/k5fczrSC
@@90sNick_Pinesal Thanks for the invite...just joined your Discord server...see you there!
New Sub! Dryden, MI
I'm trying to Figure this Out!!
Thanks for the Vid!
As the videos change to the next, are you seeing a flash of the VLC player as it's toggling to the next video on the playlist? Is there a way to get rid of that?
Yeah, not every time though. Sometimes it's seamless and sometimes you quickly see the desktop. I don't know if there is a fix. I will reply again if I find one.
Rad Video! I am working on this exactly to run on a CRT in vintage booth. The hardest part I'm finding out is getting the shows. Any suggestions?
You'll find a surprising amount of shows on the Internet Archive. They all have VHS rips with hours of random 90s programming. Other than that, you can use a UA-cam downloader to rip stuff from UA-cam.
great tutorial... just wondering if there is away to setup raspberry pi that it can stream netflix without installing desktop or run through web browser on a pi?
This is great! Thanks!
I can not get the keybinds to work on pi4. Any suggestions? Checked a million times that I’m typing everything correctly. Should this still work?
@@mikerocco7072 can you paste what you have?
How did you connect the Raspberry Pi? Via HDMI or composite? I can’t get the jack connector to work and via HDMI, I have those black bars on the sides
I am using the composite video out on the Pi. Some tips to get that to work
Start with this guide mlagerberg.gitbooks.io/raspberry-pi/content/3.5-analog-video-output.html
Also, Sometimes those 3.5 to composite are not wired up the same way so you'll actually find the video signal on the red or white cable so try all of them in the yellow video port on the TV.
man, all the vids I'm finding are still have the black around the actual vid (from YT save) in fullscreen 480 on this screen - where do you find the "full screen 4:3" vids so it fills the screen?? :)
That's the struggle man. the best you can do is try to find videos that are already 4:3. You can crop videos in VLC so playing around with those options might let you hide the black borders.
@@90sNick_Pinesal ah! Thx, will look into the crop options 😎👍
Can i run retropie and the vlc player on the same build or do i need 2?
Nice! But how can I stream it to a CRT?
Raspberry pi can connect to a CRT by composite video cable.
@@90sNick_Pinesal thanks for the tip! However I wonder if I could broadcast it over RF to all the 4 TVs in my house. I've heard that this works with RPi4 and I just got one
What pi did you use cause I have a pi 4 8gb
The one used in this video is a Pi 3b+ I may upgrade to a pi4.
for antenna based crt tv's
there is a product called a "active modulator"
basically it converts a regular signal like from a game system
to the radio-television waves and thus boom analog tvs will get signal
i did this to turn a regular
analog tv into a monitor for a computer
with this you can have multiple tv's with the same signal
a good use for this is a multiroom use computer
basically you can hook up 30 keyboards and the computer will just go ahh i have 30 keyboards
so you connect the modulator up and you can have a tv in another room that is getting signal from the modulator and have either a wireless or wired keyboard and you can literally control 1 computer from anywhere in your home
why...
well i guess a gaming setup in every room
i don't know if this will work with lcds...
oh wait yes i do
it does but it looks like poop because the modulator is expecting a crt set not a lcd
it's been a while since i messed with it
by the way television studios used to use that exact product i described above to air the very programs you are streaming to your crt right now.
Active modulator. Sounds awesome! Does it send analog or digital signal or both?
a active modulator takes composite and outputs the antenna signal via co-axial
you just need to hook it to a tv antenna i think
i just connected directly to my tv via a co-axial adapter and i got picture
i'm not a television engineer or anything like that i just wanted to see if i could turn a normal crt tv into a crt monitor
i actually heard a funny story involving active modulators
apparently children in the 80's and early 90's discovered that if you connect a snes backwards to the tv antenna you can get mario tv
and they didn't know it at the time but the kids accidentally started a pirate tv station
because for some weird reason snes consoles have a active modulator built in and the kids were broadcasting mario tv across the neighborhood
if i didn't make it clear
if you want hdmi you are going to need a composite upscaler
then connect that to the active modulator via composite cables
then you get analog (antenna) that you connect to a tv antenna for and it will broadcast tv waves for your analog tv's to pick up
sorry for the word spam
it's hard for me to properly explain it all
Where can i get videos to download??? And can this be offline??
I got most of the video from UA-cam and the Internet Archive. Also, once it's setup it does not need to be online to work.
Anyone else get an error msg in vlc when starting? It plays the playlist i made but always starts with an error
What is the error, exactly?
so cool!
I've not done this but I'd add things like toonami adult swim and Saturday morning cartoons to a cartoon channel
Good suggestion on the Cartoon Network. I definitely need to get some Space Ghost Coast to Coast. Remember that show?
How much will it cost for an SD Card with all the same videos you have for someone who doesn't know how to do what you show in your video.
I have never seen one for sale preloaded with videos. If you can get a Raspberry Pi running with a desktop environment, I can help with the rest
I'm going to guess that you are a Sagittarius.
Libra. Why would you guess Sagittarius?
@@90sNick_Pinesal because you look like a Sagittarius or any sign to me.
Hi , this is cool, i am at work and just click through while having a coffee, i will watch in full at home
You may have explained it ( but i have not watched it all ), but for the error in reboot ,since vlc is in start up procedure, why not have a default start up play list where is just plays say the tv station closed - test signal
So lets say it reboots 10:30 at night, if will play the station closed video until it hits the next cron table at 6am 9 i think you had basically 6 / 12 / 16 / 20 ( 4pm 8pm )
Hehe , you need to add saturday morning cartoons and for sunday's church and wrestling and football
Ps i used cron back at work back in early 90's on a sun station, 4am every morning it checked for a file on the server it was a completed batch job for accounting lets call it debtors.doc ( this file was deleted each night at 9pm after ours so it did not exist until the server finished processing and re-created it )
If found it emailed debtors.doc to all managers and sales reps, it then emailed salesytd.doc to accounts and manager etc
6am if checked dispatch.doc, if it existed it emailed that to the 4 depots for todays deliveries
8am if checked a folder that held every overnight fax and emailed that to reception
Oh once they were emailed the files were renames to oldfilename.doc to *.sent
The cron job ran every 15 mins from first start ie the debtors one started 4am and was repeated 4.15 4.30 4.45 every 15 mins to 8am
same with all the others they all repeated every 15 mince from first start
8am was last try by that time a few people were in the office and if the reports failed overnight they would investigate, the process never ran twice because the file name was changed after emailed
was a wonderful tiny tool that performed a lot of work
Thanks for your interest in this project. At some point I may get more specific about the TV show schedule. I thought about having Saturday mornings and weekend blocks but I don't have enough TV show episodes to make that work yet. I wish there was a good source for content. I want to do a late night block too with sleazy 900 number commercials and infomercials and late night talk. But I don't have any of that yet.
@@90sNick_Pinesal HAHA most youtube searches should provide some 80's / 90's period commercials, the 900 dating or the As seen On Tv ads are fun / corny
I may have a play around with my PI 3, but i just finished the 2 arcade joy sticks box set up and dread taking it out now
I do have a PI400 but that is wrapped in its case and box
PIZero2W are unobtainium at the moment - bu ti amsure there are some windows based cron items as i did use them in Win 2000 or XP era
Cheers George
Yo i added you on AOL Pinesal
Cool. I'll keep an eye out
wait what was your AOL name again i dont know if pinesal is the name im not sure
@@Metal7546 it is pinesal
@@90sNick_Pinesal Then when will you be online your allways offline
@@Metal7546 usually Friday morning. I'll try to get online a little more this weekend.