In my last post (I feel like I say that often), I reminisced about going into a surf shop years ago and the amazing scent that would greet me.
In that post, I also made reference to a TV playing whatever surf video had just come out. I have a very special, very meaningful surf movie I'll discuss in a future post, but a little more than a year ago I really got the urge to find an old CRT TV and find a way to show old surf movies on it.
Use a VCR, right? Well, yes, I could but I have movies on VHS, DVD, and digital. No one solution would let me play everything. I could, however, digitize everything I have and set up a little computer (and more than a few cables) to create my own surf shop TV!
The TV was a lucky curbside find! 13" is the perfect size for what I wanted and the only problem is that sometimes increasing the volume also changes the input. Not the end of the world!
The brains of the operation is a Raspberry Pi 5. This was my first time using Pi OS and the most complicated part was configuring the display so it all fit on an old TV screen! The HDMI output runs to a simple $15 HDMI to RCA converter and those cables run to the back of the TV. The Raspberry Pi doesn't have internal storage, so a 256GB flash drive holds a bunch of surf movies. I have over 300GB of surf movies, but need to go through and clear out any duplicates.
It's fun! I love having it on my desk for when I work from home and want to just have some entertainment on in the background.