My brother and I have been talking a lot about the movies and TV shows of our youth, so in tribute to that for Christmas this year I made him a 1 terabyte movie server filled with some of the shows and movies that we watched as kids. Everything from Batman the Animated Series to Knight Rider was included, most of which was originally from my DVD collection.
To build the server I found a VHS copy of The Hunt for Red October for $1 on eBay. I had a Raspberry Pi and a small fan lying around, and removed the magnetic tape from the VHS cassette so that I could replace it with the Pi. I used one of the cassette reel holes as a vent in the bottom, and raised the unit with rubber feet to encourage air circulation. I added some small holes along the side for air intake too.
Once the enclosure was done I wrote an SD card with Raspbian OS and installed Emby. I knew he had two TVs that ran Roku TV and it would be easy to install Emby onto both of them. I dropped the files I had for him onto a 1 TB USB drive and attached it to the Pi, then used Emby over my network to be sure the catalog was accurate.
My final touch was that because I knew his WiFi password I pre-programmed the unit so that the whole server was turn-key. Once he plugged it into the wall anywhere in his home, the server would connect to his network and make the library instantly available. Setup took all of one minute installing Emby on his TV. His reaction was, “Wait, that’s it? How did you do that?”