God damn - I had this idea myself! Great minds think alike, but fools seldom differ.

I was thinking of an additional step of having it transcode overnight to a more mobile phone friendly resolution, like let’s say 480p, as well as introducing a time to live (TTL) so that I don’t end up with an ever expanding YouTube library that never gets watched.

Actually I seem to recall there was a YouTube something (Youtube custodian? Something like that) that did all this for you directly. But I think I would like to try doing it as a cron job because it could run on low end hardware like a Raspberry Pi.

Yes, I figured as much :)

Pressing x to doubt on the orange pi 5 - box86 ain’t that good, yet, surely? :)

PS: OP appears to have a VERY old rig - perhaps they can’t (or don’t want to) upgrade to mini-pc?

• CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E7500 @ 3.8GHz OC
• RAM: 8GB DDR2
• GPU: ATI Radeon HD 3850 512MB
• Storage: 1TB SATA SSD
• PSU: 450W 80+ Bronze
• OS: Windows 7 x64

FWIW, I can run all of the games demonstrated on my Lenovo M93p tiny at good speeds (and that only takes about fifty watts of power / cost $50-70 USD)

For $10, that’s quite impressive. I’m familiar with several of those games, including Just Cause 2, which I have run on i7-4785t (iGPU only) at 630p, hitting 69fps (albeit it AA off etc, AF 4x, textures high, shadows low, medium water and object details etc).

OTOH, the i7-4785T doesn’t hit 90+ degrees to do it :) (sits around 70) and sips ~40W.

EDIT: from the video, the test rig was -

Test Bench Specs:

• CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E7500 @ 3.8GHz OC
• RAM: 8GB DDR2
• GPU: ATI Radeon HD 3850 512MB
• Storage: 1TB SATA SSD
• PSU: 450W 80+ Bronze
• OS: Windows 7 x64

There use to be one called PDFDRIVE. I mean, there still is, but there use to be too :)

I’d ask why…but “because I fucking wanted to” is entirely cromulent (and 100% valid) response. Just wish it had some screenshots or videos of it in action that we could geek out over.

EDIT: I need reading glasses, clearly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGS9su_inBY

The next step for the dev (are you here?) - get IE running and post from your N64 onto this Lemmy thread. I double dog dare you :)

What I did was this -

• Lenovo M93P tiny (i7-4785t, 8GB, no GPU: cost $50. I can do upto PS2 at 1.5x, AAA games upto 2014/5 and later indies)
• Offline (once art scrapped by below etc)
• Windows 8.1 install (era appropriate, correct drivers, offline, yadda yadda) + ClassicShell
• Installed Xbox 360 dongle with drivers
• Installed games I wanted / emulators (eg: Dolphin for Wii and GC, PCSX2 for PS2 etc)
• Installed Playnite, set it to launch full screen
• Define scripts / launch conditions (e.g., Getting AntiMicroX to launch when Luanti launches, so that it can be played with controllers instead of keyboard, then shutdown cleanly when return to PlayNite)
• Replaced Explorer.exe as the default shell in Regedit

End result: turn on PC, boots into Windows (in about 2 seconds), launches Playnite (which is full controller / couch mode compatible). Additionally, I can fine tune things like EDID (fine grained control of display modes), ReShade (per game sharpening etc effects), to say nothing of the extra Win programs I can run.

With a bit of skill, you can make games look way better than they have any right to, even on low end hardware. I can dig up some screenshots of Just Cause 2 and FireWatch running in 540p for you if you’d like…you’d be hard pressed to tell it wasn’t much higher resolution (viewed on 75" tv from 8 feet away).

Reason I did it this way:

People will tell you Batocera is awesome (and it is) but…there are just some things that run better natively (e.g., Fallout 3 GOG Game of the Year Edition, Just Cause 2 etc). Windows lets you play windows shit natively and the emulation scene (Dolphin, PCSX2 etc) is mature. No need for Wine, Proton blah blah. It just … runs.

Playnite lets you “hide” games you don’t want the kiddies to run. Once you’re done with it, you can exit and return to desktop - you have normal PC (though if you do the shell replacement I mentioned, you will have to exit, CTRL-ALT-DEL to get task manager, then run explorer.exe. I only set Playnite as default shell because I wanted ZERO flashes or indication this was a normal windows PC on boot; if a small 2-3 second desktop flash doesn’t annoy you, then just set Playnite to launch at start, black screen desktop and go from there. It’s much easier for something that is multi-use). Also, because it’s just a front end, you should in theory just be able to make a shortcut to “Jellyfin.exe” and launch it as needed from Playnite (haven’t explored that myself tho).

Win 8.1 (with Classic Shell) launches fast, is lightweight, and doesn’t need hacking to get around log in permissions and shell replacement the way Win 10 and later might. You wouldn’t want to leave it hooked up to the net unsupervised, but on a HTPC being treated mostly as an offline appliance, the so-called security trade-offs are worth it to me (plus, I have firewall and other isolation in place).

PS: Controller-wise: Xbox 360 wireless + dongle for me. 1 $30 dongle can host up to 4 controllers and I already had to controllers :)

PPS: Can I be honest with you? After all this - the kids decided they just prefer the Wii. I had to laugh. Fine…we’ll use the Wii (even though I replicated everything on the M93p - INCLUDING upscale, making wii controllers etc work in Dolphin, bought a Dolphin bar etc. I even put the fucking wii music as the background in Playnite!). So much work … ignored LOL. Eh, I learned a lot doing it :)

PPPS: We have a Google chrome cast with TV dongle attached to the TV, so it can stream Jellyfin from the media server just fine. I really recommend those things (not the new one, the old hockey puck style one) or the off-label one you can get now (ONN I think?). Actually, come to think of it, I’m pretty sure Wii can stream JellyFin now in glorious 480p too lol

It’s a more convenient method for some to pirate content, as it requires comparatively little set up. Think: Netflix but yaaar. You pay upkeep but they ensure content is there (as best as possible).

Other similar options include things like Flixify and FMovies.

It always surprised me folks into self hosting prefer pirate streaming. That’s still someone else computer - I’d rather D/L it myself when possible. I get it though - some of the services are very good and near Netflix level convenient.