Raspberry Pi Serves Up 24 Hour Simpsons Channel
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Commercial-free video on demand was every couch potato’s dream for decades, and now we’ve got it. But nostalgia has a funny way of making some folks miss the old days, even if we know it’s technically be a step backwards. Wanting to recreate the TV watching experience circa 1998, [probnot] has come up with a way to run his very own television channel.
With the Raspberry Pi and a digital modulator, he’s got the only house on the block that’s wired to show The Simpsons all day. He has absolutely no control over which episode plays next, he can’t pause it, and its in presented in standard definition (a nightmare for anyone who grew up in the Netflix era) but a familiar viewing experience for the rest of us.
The key to this project is the Channel Plus Model 3025 modulator. It takes the feed from the antenna and mixes in two composite video sources on user-defined channels. All [probnot] had to do was find a channel that wouldn’t interfere with any of the over-the-air stations. The modulator has been spliced into the house’s coax wiring, so any TV connected to the wall can get in on the action. There’s no special setup required: when he wants to watch The Simpsons he just tunes the nearest TV to the appropriate channel.
Providing the video for the modulator is a Raspberry Pi, specifically, the original model that featured composite video output. While the first generation Pi is a bit long in the tooth these days, playing standard definition video is certainly within its capabilities. With a USB flash drive filled with a few hundred episodes and a bit of scripting it’s able to deliver a never-ending stream direct from Springfield. There’s still that second channel available on the modulator as well, which we’re thinking could be perfect for Seinfeld or maybe The X-Files.
Interestingly, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen a Raspberry Pi used to provide a never-ending stream of The Simpsons. But compared to previous attempts which had to be directly connected to the TV, we like the idea of using the modulator and creating a more authentic experience.
16 thoughts on “Raspberry Pi Serves Up 24 Hour Simpsons Channel”
The next step to wouldfurther the nostalgia would be to add back in commercial breaks from 1998.
Ads went from about 9 minutes per hour in the 1960s to 22 minutes per hour in 2016. Yet broadcasters are flabbergasted why people cut the cord or pirate shows.
That would work be well in my place. The original owner wired multiple coax runs to each room and via splinters and amplifiers you can feed an RF signal from any room and it gets distributed to all the other rooms along with the antenna feed.
Along with a whole house audio system it would have been quiet flash back in the early 90s when it was built
Our installer created a similar setup for a security system, every room in our home has two coax outs (one for security, one for cable) and one input that goes to a distribution board to connect it to all other rooms, as well as the security system if desired.
“the original model that featured composite video output” – every raspberry pi to date features composite video out.
Okay, let’s clarify, “the original model that featured composite video output on a dedicated connector”… since all subsequent models used the 4th contact on a TRRS connector.
You could get TeeFax running on it too, and have an almost ‘proper’ TV station 😉
RPi’s are cool. To bad their online community is toxic.
The Facebook and Reddit groups are just the usual “How I make a robot?!” plus “”I slightly changed the color of this case”, mixed in with a few cool projects.
Nothing worse than your average tech community from what I’ve seen. Are the official forums full of bad stuff?
I don’t do facebook or reddit for obvious reasons, but I hoped that the forum run by the foundation itself was a bit more useful. Instead it’s yet another tribal circlejerk with double standards. I found it to be less then useful and when trying to be useful, the only time the “experts” would join in was to correct some trivial mistake to dismiss a suggestion out of hand. Shame, I do consider the “community” part of the product and that part is.. underwhelming.
If this could be updated to do ATSC, then you can broadcast on an open channel in HD. This would be useful to push security feeds to any TV in the house for example. Now will have to look at setting up a ATSC broadcast system on the cheap.
once i wanted to implement a 24 hour jimi hendrix radio 🙂
I have so many Grateful Dead albums that it would take days to play them all.
And I don’t even have live recordings,just what the Dead have released.
Absolutely perfect for dementia care homes to implement on the cheap.
Better than shuffle mode on a streaming stick? How?
Missed opportunity- the USB drive label should have been BORT instead of BERT! 🙂
My home server consists of a snapraid + mergerfs setup. The resulting pool of data drives is labeled and mounted as milPool…
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