Could "Retropie" Replace my Media Player Box

escc1986

My Family & I Use A Media Player Box To Watch Movies On

With This Media Player Box We Simply Plug A Hard Drive , Flash Drive , or Sd Card with Media To Play On It

Unfortunately Our Media Player Box Went Out A Few Days Ago

Should I Buy A New Media Player Box or Could Retropie Replace it ?

Can you plug a hard drive into retropie and use it as a Media Player ?

Any Detailed Suggestions or Help Would be Appreciated ?

muldjord

@escc1986 RetroPie is just Raspberry Pi OS Lite (previously known as Raspberry) with a github repository on top. So yes, you can certainly use it as a media player. You can even start Kodi from EmulationStation as far as I know. I haven't tried that myself though.

The performance of movie playing on the RPi4B at the moment I am a bit unsure of. I still don't quite know where they are with the Mesa drivers. But I think it's fine for 1080p content at least.

Plugging a usb disk to the system automounts I believe, so that's also pretty easy.

As a different approach you can just install Raspberry Pi OS from their image and then install RetroPie on top of that. Then you can have a complete desktop system, but also have RetroPie on there.

escc1986

@muldjord

Thank You Muldjord

i would love to go about installing a fresh Raspberry Pi OS and then retropie on top , so i may have 2 options ... sounds kind of hard and confusing ... as im very ignorant and never have installed nothing else besides a stock retropie image on a pi

plus

i have a

pi2

&

a Pi zero just laying around ..

so i could use one of those for this new project

which one should i use .. pi2 or pizero (wifi) ?

do you have a step by step guide or a youtube video explains how i can do what you suggested about Raspberry Pi OS installation

muldjord

@escc1986 Definitely the RPi2. The single-core Zero is probably not viable as a media-box. Not sure if the 2 is either though. But at least you can try.

This might help you: https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Manual-Installation/

escc1986

Thank you for the advice & link

so once i get the raspin image and burn it into an sd card .... it gets confusing for me

mind if i ask for help , when i put the image on the pi ?

or can you explain to me in simple terms what to exactly do , so i can plug in my hard drive and watch movies ?

lostless

@escc1986 If you install KODI into retropie, you can plug in a drive and watch movies from it. If you dont need the game playing ability, you can install a KODI only os like libreELEC. (https://libreelec.tv) That makes the Pi a media center only and works great for a small portable media center. just get yourself a small bluetooth remote (or USB) and have fun.

The main thing is that you choose what you want your raspberry pi to do based off the OS you choose. All you do is download an OS image and image it to an SD card with an app. (I believe the PI foundation has an app now) You can also try a program called NOOBS. which allows you to choose a small number of OSs by just dragging a folder to the SD card. No need to image.

escc1986

@lostless

Thank you for your advice

May i Ask , Is Kodi Confusing ... i mean is there a step by step guide ... or just install it and plug drive in and play .... or do you have to download codex and players formalization and such ?

is Kodi easy to use

well i do use the games ... but i could have one pi for games and the other for media which sounds convenient ... you gave me some nice choices .

escc1986

also forgot to include

apparntly i dont seem to have any sd cards on hand

What are some good sd cards that are capable with the pi 2 just want to make sure to get on that works if i burn an image for the pi on it ?

lostless

@escc1986 KODI is not very confusing if you use for just playing movies off a usb drive. There’s a menu option called videos. From there you go to the files folder and your usb drive should show up there. If your using a usb hard drive, make sure you have a decent power supply. The official raspberry pi one would be best.
But You can add all sorts of plugins and the sort. Have it organize files on a network drive where it downloads art work and movie information. It sometimes can get Quite confusing.

escc1986

So im trying an Option not listed to test

i do have a question

i just installed Ubuntu on a PC

i just installed Retropie on top

so from Ubuntu i can run Retropie

how to i get to the retropie terminal .. i dont know how ?

lostless

@escc1986 If you are running Unbuntu, there is no retropie terminal. There is just the terminal app built into Unbuntu. In Linux, a terminal is a terminal.

escc1986

@lostless

thank you

and its ctrl Alt T

thats confusing(new to me ) im not good at termanls

escc1986

@lostless

may i ask how do i install KODI from here?

escc1986

@lostless

on Unbuntu terminal how do i get to the retropie main directory

like for example if i wanted to install openbor , i would need to

Enter SSH terminal and type follwing text to choose following versions:
1.1 To restore original OpenBOR script:

wget http://raw.githubusercontent.com/crcerror/OpenBOR-63xx-RetroPie-openbeta/master/scriptmodules/openbor-6xxx.sh -O- | tr -d '\r' > /home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/ports/openbor-6xxx.sh

how would i do that ?

lostless

@escc1986 I’ve barely used retropie on a pc, but if it’s anything close to the raspberry pi branch, (it should be) you go to retropie setup in the retropie menu and install Emulators and apps, like kodi and open BOR, from there. The scripts there automatically configure use for emulation station and what not. No need to manually install them from the terminal.

escc1986

thank you for the help

im kind of confused ... i need to edit a file ... could you help me

To use this you need to edit:
/home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/libretrocores/lr-pcsx-rearmed.sh

Change the section to be like this:
function sources_lr-pcsx-rearmed() {
gitPullOrClone "$md_build" https://github.com/SindenLightgun/pcsx_rearmed.git
}

escc1986

@lostless

ok after the hassel of figuring out stuff this way/method

kodi couldnt installl , i dont know why it was unable to install

im not very happ with this method , may want to try something else

say is running raspian with a x86 retropie all that worth it , i heard you can play ps2 & wii games ... is that true ?

lostless

@escc1986 said in Could "Retropie" Replace my Media Player Box:

i heard you can play ps2 & wii games ... is that true

If your pc is powerful enough. Most Modern PCs will run wii/GameCube (same emulator) pretty well

escc1986

Thank you for confirming

i dont have a fast enough computer running ubunto , bummer , i tested it and it freezes

Thank you for the info

Clyde

@escc1986 It's Ubuntu with a "u" at the end.

You could try Lubuntu, it's a lightweight variant of Ubuntu.