My mini head end -- a report

[Doug E.]

Originally Posted by kf4rca

The newer DVD players have a USB port on the front. You can play the test patterns as jpg files from the USB drive. They have a composite output so no scan conversion is necessary. Might have to use the remote to access the USB drive.

Wow, didn't know that. When planning this project, I purposely chose a cheap, basic Sony DVD player that's been in production for years. I think I'll pick up a few extras for replacement purposes.

As it is, I feel like a kid in a candy store, being able to store all kinds of video files on a laptop & play them in any order I want, plus streaming stuff like YouTube videos on my TVs. I know that's no great shakes nowadays but I'd never tried it before. It made my potential video library much bigger (& cheaper) than before. With a 500GB hard drive, you can store something like 1000 hours of entertainment. If I had it to do over again I'd also build in space for an external hard drive (8TB or more).

Doug E.