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#communityentertainmentsystem

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Andrew (Television Executive)<p>I've covered the "Why Community Media" thing a lot, so I won't get back in to that here. </p><p>But why <a href="https://retro.social/tags/CommunityEntertainmentSystem" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>CommunityEntertainmentSystem</span></a> ? </p><p>Because the fundamental problem that is facing most community media creation is discovery.</p><p>Connecting an audience with a game or a television program or a piece of music or whatever is fundamental for most people, and it's the only way artists are likely to get paid. </p><p>And, right now, 95% of content discovery happens at the behest of billionaires, and I want to cut in to that.</p>
Andrew (Television Executive)<p>Okay <a href="https://retro.social/tags/CES" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>CES</span></a> <a href="https://retro.social/tags/CommunityEntertainmentSystem" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>CommunityEntertainmentSystem</span></a> </p><p>Let's start with what and why and then get in to how and talk about plans. </p><p>What? </p><p>It's a box that plays <a href="https://retro.social/tags/CommunityMedia" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>CommunityMedia</span></a> (which you can learn about at <a href="https://communitymedia.network" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="">communitymedia.network</span><span class="invisible"></span></a> among other places.) </p><p>Basically, I want some independent radio streams and television networks and whatever is happening on peertube. </p><p>Independent, community media. </p><p>But also, let the thing play some video games, yeah? </p><p>Games are media, and small games and community centered games are very good, and I want people to be able to play the games I make in the same place where they watch the television I produce, and listen to the music I distribute. </p><p>And I'm not alone in making these things, and putting together a common distribution mechanism for them would be helpful.</p>
Andrew (Television Executive)<p>I was working through some ideas about the possibilities of building a simple DIY game console in time for <a href="https://retro.social/tags/assemblyRequired" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>assemblyRequired</span></a> in another thread (<a href="https://retro.social/@ajroach42/113806601692106740" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">retro.social/@ajroach42/113806</span><span class="invisible">601692106740</span></a> ) </p><p>I was trying to come up with a way to do it for under $15, but none exists off the shelf. It is absolutely possible for me to write some software that will enable me to turn a $5 microcontroller a $4 SD card in to the console that I want. </p><p>But, as I talked through it, I realized that for an extra $5-10 I could do something much cooler. </p><p>This is a <a href="https://retro.social/tags/CommunityEntertainmentSystem" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>CommunityEntertainmentSystem</span></a> thread.</p>
Andrew (Television Executive)<p>Lost like an hour to troubleshooting why my wifi settings weren't working on my raspberry pi Model 3A+ </p><p>It's because it was a Raspberry Pi Model A+ V1.1 not a Model 3 A+ </p><p>No wifi. </p><p>I don't have any other Model A's handy, so I'm on a 3B+ now, because if I can get everything working there 1) that's probably good enough frankly. I have way more of these than I thought and I can use those up before I buy anything else and 2) it'll probably also work on the A+ with minor modifications when I actually start getting those. </p><p>So <a href="https://retro.social/tags/CES" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>CES</span></a> <a href="https://retro.social/tags/CommunityEntertainmentSystem" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>CommunityEntertainmentSystem</span></a> v1 is in progress! and now I'm just searching for an on screen keyboard that supports TV remotes.</p>
Andrew (Television Executive)<p>This is a thread about set top boxes. </p><p>This time last year I was working on a Kodi based <a href="https://retro.social/tags/CommunityEntertainmentSystem" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>CommunityEntertainmentSystem</span></a> or <a href="https://retro.social/tags/CES" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>CES</span></a> that I had to shelve because life got complicated, and because the basic concept was probably fundamentally flawed. </p><p>Kodi is a very powerful piece of software, but it is too much to bend to your will. If I was selling a Kodi based product, I'd need to sell it *as* a Kodi based product. It's too big and obvious to hide. </p><p>I could probably make kodi do everything that I want, but not without becoming a full on Expert in Kodi and I'm not ready to devote that much time and energy to a software that, on the surface at least, makes so little sense.</p>
Andrew (Television Executive)<p>So what is to be done? </p><p>We're partnering with the local chamber of commerce to make a channel dedicated to local sights and events, and to get some of their funding for advertising. </p><p>I'm working on a <a href="https://retro.social/tags/CommunityEntertainmentSystem" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>CommunityEntertainmentSystem</span></a>, a set top box for indie media. I prototyped one with Kodi, but I wasn't thrilled with the results, so I'm working on something new. </p><p>In the meantime, I've got a barebones version that just plays a single channel (soon, it will be the Explore Ellijay channel we're building with the Chamber of Commerce) and we run that in several businesses around town. </p><p>But this is still not enough to reach the kind of critical mass a project like this needs to survive in a world where we're effectively competing not only with youtube and twitch, but also with disney plus, warner/hbo/discovery max, Netflix, Amazon, and terrestrial television.</p>
Andrew (Television Executive)<p>I'm working on on <a href="https://retro.social/tags/CommunityEntertainmentSystem" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>CommunityEntertainmentSystem</span></a> a bit this morning, and I think I might take things in a different direction? </p><p>I have been building things around Kodi, but not for any good reason, and I wasn't happy with it. </p><p>I think today I'm going to try Jellyfin.</p>
Andrew (Television Executive)<p>So I'm back to the drawing board. </p><p>I'm looking for hardware that can be reasonably picked up for very cheap, that is abundantly available, that can be repurposed in to set top boxes. </p><p>I have a couple of contenders: </p><p>- I have 50 little compute sticks that are going to be v1 of our <a href="https://retro.social/tags/CommunityEntertainmentSystem" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>CommunityEntertainmentSystem</span></a> and I can get more of these on the used market in the $50 range (but that's too much money!) </p><p>- The various Pis (raspberry and otherwise) can pretty much all do what I want, and some of them are even cheap enough to consider, but consistently available becomes a concern, and price fluctuates pretty hard. As I said to sundog earlier today (before I went down this thinclient rabbit hole) a Pi is probably where I'll land. Probably of the orange variety. It just seems like overkill. </p><p>- The little Walmart GoogleTV boxes that we've been fiddling with absolutely have the juice to do it, but we're still struggling to get a device tree that will let the things actually function. Turning them from GoogleTV set top boxes in to Linage OS devices looks like it's going to be difficult enough, getting a real linux distro might be a step beyond what we can accomplish with the toolset available to us today (or maybe it isn't, and it'll all just work.)</p>
Andrew (Television Executive)<p>The <a href="https://retro.social/tags/CommunityEntertainmentSystem" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>CommunityEntertainmentSystem</span></a> is an extension of <a href="https://retro.social/tags/CommunityMedia" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>CommunityMedia</span></a> (see <a href="https://communitymedia.network" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="">communitymedia.network</span><span class="invisible"></span></a>) it will serve as the distribution point for all the media that is produced within our network of communities. </p><p>Games, movies, tv, music, podcasts and more can be packaged for distribution on the CES. </p><p>In the first software version, these things are all hand curated by me. In future revisions, we'll be releasing mechanisms for folks to curate their own streams, and we're exploring how to leverage activitypub for federated channel curation.</p>
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