Raspberry Pis makes great media players, and we love seeing the creative ways the Pi community at large houses them. Whether you put one inside a tiny Simpson’s TV or build one just for Twitch streams, it’s hard to beat the fun versatility of this classic SBC. Today, we’re sharing another Pi-based TV project. This one was created by maker and developer Joe_vs_the_Jalapeno, who’s brought a broken Sony TV back to life using a Pi 4.
We contacted Joe_vs_the_Jalapeno, who told us his idea was to find an old TV with a specific aesthetic and retain as much of the original hardware as possible. Ultimately, he gutted most of the original internal components and ditched the knobs and dials but left the central volume knob connected to a rotary encoder. He also modified the holes left behind to support some new ports and 12mm buttons.
Joe_vs_the_Jalapeno is using Open Source Media Center (OSMC) to operate as the primary operating system, but you could run any OS you like with a setup like this. In this case, Joe_vs_the_Jalapeno has set up the TV to run a loop of his favorite movies on a repeating loop. It wouldn’t be hard to turn this into a gaming rig with something like Retro Pie.
