My new home away from home has a nice little TV but it does not have any way to play DVDs or media. It does however have a HDMI port. I started looking around and found out the there is a media server load for the Raspberry PI. Since I had one lying around I have been playing with for various items, I decided why not.
My PI is a V1 with a dual core processor and a couple of years old. My plan is to use a 250 GB SSD in an external USB enclosure along with a wireless keyboard and mouse that I already have. Unfortunately the PI could not provide enough power to run the External SSD without using a powered USB hub. Thankfully they are now up to the V3 PI that has a much higher wattage capability (as well as an 8 core processor). That upgrade cost $49.
Set it all up last night and tested it with the new PI. The server works great and playback is flawless. Overall a nice cheap upgrade to an older TV that will run off of battery power. I only need to power the TV and the PI. I could get rid of the SSD and get a much larger SD card for the PI but then that makes it more difficult to add and remove items from the server. The SSD is much more convenient. I am using Kodi/OpenElec but there is PLEX software for the PI as well.
The attached picture shows the whole set up excluding the TV. The clear box is the PI. The black box is the external 2.5” SSD enclosure. The mouse will give you an idea of the actual size of the server.
My PI is a V1 with a dual core processor and a couple of years old. My plan is to use a 250 GB SSD in an external USB enclosure along with a wireless keyboard and mouse that I already have. Unfortunately the PI could not provide enough power to run the External SSD without using a powered USB hub. Thankfully they are now up to the V3 PI that has a much higher wattage capability (as well as an 8 core processor). That upgrade cost $49.
Set it all up last night and tested it with the new PI. The server works great and playback is flawless. Overall a nice cheap upgrade to an older TV that will run off of battery power. I only need to power the TV and the PI. I could get rid of the SSD and get a much larger SD card for the PI but then that makes it more difficult to add and remove items from the server. The SSD is much more convenient. I am using Kodi/OpenElec but there is PLEX software for the PI as well.
The attached picture shows the whole set up excluding the TV. The clear box is the PI. The black box is the external 2.5” SSD enclosure. The mouse will give you an idea of the actual size of the server.
