The story of our home theater began sometime in the early-to-mid 2000s — and since then, it has turned into one of those endless TV series we love to watch.
As the earlier chapters of this long “cinematic saga” are now quietly fading away in the depths of an old blog and hold little relevance at the moment, it makes sense to briefly summarize the “previous episodes” here to set the stage.
The TV, as a device, never played a significant role in our lives. The Internet entered our household almost as soon as it became available to the mass market — and quickly replaced most of the news and entertainment functions.
The AOL and Microcom floppy disks still hang as keychains on the cabinet above my desk — shocking the younger generation:
Back then, the TV turned into nothing more than a monitor for the VCR — and that was it.
I’m not going to share photos of my Betacam and VHS collection — I don’t want to fully cement my status as an “old-timer.” But yes, I still have them! Along with matching VCRs. And, just in case, I even have a 3.5-inch floppy drive 🙂
A few more years passed, during which the Internet advanced at a breakneck pace. Soon enough, the VCR became obsolete as well. The TV, in turn, became just another monitor for the computer — used to watch movies on DVD “on the big screen.” At that time, every computer came with a built-in DVD drive, making a standalone player unnecessary.
This role as a secondary monitor for the computer became the TV’s “swan song” in our home. Sometime in the early-to-mid 2000s, the dream of a “big screen” finally knocked the TV off its pedestal — replacing it with a projection system. No TV sets from that era could compete with projectors in terms of screen size.
Of course, back then, TVs still had the upper hand when it came to image quality. But considering the kind of content that was available at the time, it didn’t matter much. The best we had access to were DVDs from the local rental shop — and even those were mostly 480p, often stretched to DVD standards in a makeshift way. Early streaming services rarely offered anything better than 480p either. And with the ADSL connections common back then, you couldn’t push much data through.
Since then, our paths and the TV’s have completely diverged. I don’t have any photos of our very first home theater — a budget multimedia presentation projector that projected straight onto white wallpaper. That setup could be considered “Version Zero.”
A couple of years later, when we firmly decided this was how we wanted to watch movies, we set up our first proper home theater — with a real screen and a decent “cinema-grade” projector.
The room in the apartment we lived in back then was small, and a 90-inch screen looked absolutely massive! Friends would flock to our place to watch “big-screen movies,” and the house was always packed.
At the time, our player was a DIY home NAS in a sleek custom case — something I managed to build using the most basic tools and materials I had on hand:
Back then, it didn’t have any sort of “brand.” It was just an ordinary home NAS built around a standard PC motherboard with four large-capacity hard drives: two main drives in a mirrored RAID setup, and two others that were hot-swappable — like modern video cassettes. This NAS stored our entire media library and also served as its own media player, controllable from any computer in the house.
I can no longer remember where the name “Organillo Magia” came from. It doesn’t sound quite right in any language in the world!
I do recall that “Organillo” was chosen because it sounded similar to “Armadillo” — those little armored critters — and back then, there were countless of them wandering around our yard. As for how and why “Magia” (magic) got attached to it, I have no idea anymore. The image of an armadillo with a crank handle sticking out of its ass became our logo. It represented the first version of a device that was still partly a home NAS but was primarily built to function as a full-fledged player for our home theater.
This device no longer needed to be operated through another computer or connected to a keyboard and mouse. It was a self-contained unit with its own interface and a remote control — just like any respectable player should have.
From there, the NAS and the movie player parted ways for good. The NAS moved to a cabinet in my office (and later to a server rack in the kitchen), while “Organillo Magia” was reborn as a much more compact version based on the second-generation Raspberry Pi.
This version turned out to be exceptionally successful. “Organillo Magia v2” is still alive and fully functional to this day! We no longer use it, but we keep it as a “Plan B,” just in case something unexpected happens to our current player.
“Organillo Magia v3” came to life with the release of the third-generation Raspberry Pi. It earned the rather ominous name “STELLARATOR” due to its overly daring design and form factor.
Unfortunately, the return to a bulky size and complex features — including a vertical “open” DVD drive, built-in display, numerous control buttons, and more — turned out to be a mistake. We could never find a proper place for this monstrosity in our living room. It kept being shuffled from one corner to another, clashing with the decor and annoying everyone in the process.
“Organillo Magia v4,” built on the fourth-generation Raspberry Pi, turned out to be an even bigger failure. This player had a strict cubic shape and an absolute minimum of controls. It was born during the peak of the raging COVID and was named “CUVID-20” (cube + video + 2020). However, this player was never fully completed:
It included a DVD drive, its own hard disk, and a powerful power supply. All these features turned out to be almost entirely unnecessary. Strangely enough, though, this player remained a part of our home theater setup for three whole years. It stood there without side panels the entire time — I just never got around to finishing it.
And so, this is the brief history of our home theater and the players built for it.
It spans nearly 20 years of our lives… Many of you reading this blog were probably not even born when the first light bulb lit up in my very first projector. And be grateful I didn’t start this story by reminiscing about truly prehistoric times — when the first light bulb lit up in my 8mm film projector, with which I used to watch cartoons as a kid, projected onto a bedsheet pulled off my own bed. 🙂
After the latest upgrade to a more or less top-tier projector capable of delivering a full 4K image on a 140-inch 16:9 screen, the need arose for a player capable of delivering such resolution.
I even found a photo of this “changing of the guard.” The old projector is still hanging from the ceiling, while its replacement is already positioned on the box below, waiting to take over:
The new projector can throw an even larger image, but we’ve reached the limits of our living space — there’s simply no room in the house for an even bigger screen. For now, we’re not ready to move just to accommodate it.
When designing “Organillo Magia v5,” the decision was made to “return to its roots” — to the second, minimalist version, which was still considered the most successful.
Incidentally, in the photo above, you can still spot it on the top shelf of the stand, slightly left of center. However, it’s turned sideways, so the only thing visible to the viewer is its DVD add-on.
The plan was to abandon all bells and whistles entirely. Years of use and lessons learned from past mistakes made it clear that, as a player, we needed nothing more than a bare-bones Raspberry Pi with a single power button and a simple “TV-style” remote control.
This back-to-basics approach resulted in a very simple project, which was completed in just a couple of evenings:
Even the power supply wasn’t built into the unit. Instead, I opted for an external plug-in power adapter.
Designing the case turned out to be as simple as falling off a horse — ridiculously easy:
The Ethernet and USB ports are used directly from the Raspberry Pi board. But, as everyone knows, the Raspberry Pi holds the dubious honor of being the single-board computer with the most inconvenient form factor of all time! DIYers around the world still send waves of frustration toward its developers every single day, and that hasn’t changed.
Because of this, the power and HDMI ports had to be routed to the back panel using extension “tails,” so that everything would end up on one side of the case:
Naturally, this is where the sole adventure in the entire project awaited me. I couldn’t get the elusive 4K resolution to display on the screen no matter what I tried.
I dug through every possible Raspberry Pi setting, Kodi setting, and projector setting. I climbed up to the attic more than once to inspect the cable running from the electronics stand to the projector (there was that one time a squirrel chewed through it). Still, no 4K — not a chance!
I spent an absurd amount of time troubleshooting the issue, until it finally occurred to me to connect the Raspberry Pi directly to the projector, bypassing the receiver and all the cables. It turned out that the tiny “tail” I had pulled out of my stash to adapt the Raspberry Pi’s micro-HDMI port to a standard HDMI port on the back panel was too old. It couldn’t handle the bandwidth needed for 4K at the required frequency. As a result, every device downstream, including the projector itself, automatically downgraded the resolution to 1080p — the maximum that could manage 60Hz over such line.
And the irony is, I knew this potential issue existed! The long attic cable had been carefully chosen for its high bandwidth capacity, and I trusted it completely. But the tiny adapter “tail”? I didn’t even think about it! This little oversight cost me nearly a week of frustration.
I had to buy a new one:
After replacing the “tail,” everything snapped into place. The Raspberry Pi fan spun up a bit, the projector blinked as it switched modes, and the image on the screen instantly pulled me into its glorious 4K.
In the end, I can’t help but blame the Raspberry Pi designers for this. Seriously, what was the point of introducing micro-HDMI? What was wrong with the standard HDMI ports on the Pi 3? There’s more than enough room on the board — both the Pi 4 and Pi 5 have plenty of space. You could fit two, maybe even four full-sized HDMI ports if you wanted to. Consumer devices with micro-HDMI inputs are few and far between. In most cases, everyone is forced to use adapters to convert one size to another. Maybe that’s the real reason — the adapter manufacturers probably threw some money their way to boost their sales.
With that, the only real adventure in the project came to an end, as did the project itself. All that was left was to wait for the 3D printer to finish printing the case parts and to assemble everything with screws:
The power button has a built-in LED that indicates the power state — whether the device is plugged in or not.
The only additional RGB LED shows the status of the Raspberry Pi:
- Green: The player is ready to use. The light turns off when the Pi goes to sleep.
- Red: Occasionally flashes, mirroring the onboard ACT LED on the Pi.
- Blue: Flashes to indicate a network connection. Stays on permanently if the connection fails for any reason.
And that’s it. No other controls are present on the player itself. All of its controls are located here (apologies, but the Cat insisted on being included):
This remote control from an unknown brand has been with me for many years. It has survived multiple iterations of my players, and I’ve grown very attached to it. In addition to its backlit keyboard, which is convenient for searching by title, it supports Air Mouse mode. You simply wave it around like an invisible pointer, moving the cursor across the interface. The separate touchpad comes in handy for those rare situations where precise “aiming” is required — like when an interface element is too small, and for some inexplicable reason, your hands are shaking.
In terms of decorative touches, the only thing added were stickers for the front and back panels of the player:
The stickers were printed on a regular printer using thin, self-adhesive vinyl sheets with a “pearl-like” finish. They were then laminated, cut out, and applied. Simple, quick, and reliable.
Despite the advancement of technology and the massive shift of video content to the Internet via platforms like YouTube, Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, and others, I still have a sizable collection of DVDs. I get that for many people, this might seem like an anachronism, akin to video cassettes. But I have them — and I have hundreds! From time to time, we revisit old movies and TV series stored on those discs. For us, they’re still relevant. There’s no law saying we have to just toss them out simply because technology has moved to the cloud.
As a result, every version of my “Organillo Magia” has been able to play content from CD and DVD discs. This fifth version of the player is no exception. Like the second version, it has a dedicated external drive. I didn’t make it — I just bought it off the shelf:
It’s a standard external USB DVD drive. The hardest part of this process was finding one that fit perfectly with the size of the player, so they could stack neatly on top of each other. This wasn’t easy!
Just kidding… It was incredibly simple. I bought the DVD drive first and then designed the player’s case in CAD to match its size, before printing it on the 3D printer. 🙂
This setup also added extra USB ports and a memory card reader to the system:
And that’s the entire project for the fifth version of “Organillo Magia.” It couldn’t possibly get any simpler or faster — unless you just bought a ready-made player. Honestly, that would probably be even cheaper. The Raspberry Pi 5 now costs absurdly high amounts (for this project, I bought mine for around $40–$50 before the “semiconductor crisis”).
But buying a ready-made player wouldn’t bring even a fraction of the satisfaction you get from building something with your own hands — even if it’s as simple as this project!
The final result:
We still have a TV, by the way. You can see it on the right side of the last photo, hanging on the wall. We turn it on once a year. Literally. Just to watch the local broadcast of the New Year’s Eve celebration at downtown. After all, you’ve got to know the exact moment to clink champagne glasses and yell, “Happy New Year!” It doesn’t make sense to fire up the projector or drag a laptop out of the room just for that.
Plus, it’s hooked up to an over-the-air antenna and can show local news if the internet goes down. This is useful during hurricanes, for example. Cellular networks and internet often fail in such situations, as does electricity. But a simple gas generator solves the power issue, allowing us to stay informed about what’s happening around us. So far, this setup has saved us exactly once — during Hurricane Harvey, when we found ourselves isolated on our personal “island” without any connection to the outside world. Everything around us was flooded so deeply that cars were completely submerged. And who knows what the future holds? That’s why the plain old TV still hangs on the wall. We turn it on once a year and occasionally dust it off.
In closing:…
Of course, our home theater is seamlessly integrated with Home Assistant through the KODI integration to adjust the home’s environment based on the player’s activity.
In my case, when a movie starts playing, the house automatically dims the lights in all main areas, disables any automation that might disrupt viewing, turns on wall sconces in a “background” dimmed mode (but only if it’s already dark outside), silences secondary voice notifications, and so on. The smart home takes care of everything autonomously, creating the perfect ambiance for watching a movie and ensuring maximum comfort. If the player is paused or turned off, the house automatically reverts all settings to their original state.
And with just the press of the Play button, everything transforms seamlessly — a true movie-night magic.