{"id":4632,"date":"2024-06-03T09:21:27","date_gmt":"2024-06-03T14:21:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimsghost.place\/?p=4632"},"modified":"2024-12-28T18:01:12","modified_gmt":"2024-12-28T23:01:12","slug":"organillo-magia-v5-en","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimsghost.place\/?p=4632","title":{"rendered":"Organillo Magia v5"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The story of our home theater began sometime in the early-to-mid 2000s \u2014 and since then, it has turned into one of those endless TV series we love to watch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

As the earlier chapters of this long \u201ccinematic saga\u201d 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 \u201cprevious episodes\u201d here to set the stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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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 \u2014 and quickly replaced most of the news and entertainment functions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The AOL and Microcom floppy disks still hang as keychains on the cabinet above my desk \u2014 shocking the younger generation:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Back then, the TV turned into nothing more than a monitor for the VCR \u2014 and that was it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I\u2019m not going to share photos of my Betacam and VHS collection \u2014 I don\u2019t want to fully cement my status as an \u201cold-timer.\u201d But yes, I still have them! Along with matching VCRs. And, just in case, I even have a 3.5-inch floppy drive \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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 \u2014 used to watch movies on DVD \u201con the big screen.\u201d At that time, every computer came with a built-in DVD drive, making a standalone player unnecessary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This role as a secondary monitor for the computer became the TV\u2019s \u201cswan song\u201d in our home. Sometime in the early-to-mid 2000s, the dream of a \u201cbig screen\u201d finally knocked the TV off its pedestal \u2014 replacing it with a projection system. No TV sets from that era could compete with projectors in terms of screen size.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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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\u2019t matter much. The best we had access to were DVDs from the local rental shop \u2014 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\u2019t push much data through.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Since then, our paths and the TV\u2019s have completely diverged. I don\u2019t have any photos of our very first home theater \u2014 a budget multimedia presentation projector that projected straight onto white wallpaper. That setup could be considered \u201cVersion Zero.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 \u2014 with a real screen and a decent \u201ccinema-grade\u201d projector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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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 \u201cbig-screen movies,\u201d and the house was always packed.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

At the time, our player was a DIY home NAS in a sleek custom case \u2014 something I managed to build using the most basic tools and materials I had on hand:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Back then, it didn\u2019t have any sort of \u201cbrand.\u201d 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 \u2014 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I can no longer remember where the name “Organillo Magia” came from. It doesn\u2019t sound quite right in any language in the world!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I do recall that “Organillo” was chosen because it sounded similar to “Armadillo” \u2014 those little armored critters \u2014 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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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 \u2014 just like any respectable player should have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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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<\/a>), while “Organillo Magia” was reborn as a much more compact version based on the second-generation Raspberry Pi<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Unfortunately, the return to a bulky size and complex features \u2014 including a vertical \u201copen\u201d DVD drive, built-in display, numerous control buttons, and more \u2014 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“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:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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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 \u2014 I just never got around to finishing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so, this is the brief history of our home theater and the players built for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It spans nearly 20 years of our lives\u2026 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\u2019t start this story by reminiscing about truly prehistoric times \u2014 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. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The new projector can throw an even larger image, but we\u2019ve reached the limits of our living space \u2014 there\u2019s simply no room in the house for an even bigger screen. For now, we\u2019re not ready to move just to accommodate it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When designing “Organillo Magia v5,” the decision was made to “return to its roots” \u2014 to the second, minimalist version, which was still considered the most successful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Incidentally, in the photo above, you can still spot it on the top shelf of the stand, slightly left of center. However, it\u2019s turned sideways, so the only thing visible to the viewer is its DVD add-on.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This back-to-basics approach resulted in a very simple project, which was completed in just a couple of evenings:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Even the power supply wasn\u2019t built into the unit. Instead, I opted for an external plug-in power adapter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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