A Raspberry Pi That Plays Random 90s TV

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Growing up in the 90s, television was a different experience.

You turned on the TV, and whatever was playing at that moment would become your entertainment.

Nowadays you yourself are in control, you choose what you want to see, whenever you want.

Strangely enough, I miss that feeling of having something selected for me, something I cannot influence.

Maybe it’s just my nostalgic musings, but why not create an afternoon project out of it and actually find out if there’s something more to this nostalgic feeling.

The Project

– Take a Raspberry Pi (I used a cheap tiny Raspberry Pi 3A+)

– Fill the SD card with all your favorite shows from your childhood

– Add a script that starts playing those shows in a random order at startup

The idea is to have it plugged into a television or monitor and I can just turn it on whenever I feel like watching some random 90’s tv.

The Shows (which defined the 90’s for me):

Here’s what’s currently playing on my device:

– Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

– Star Trek: The Next Generation

– StarGate SG-1

– Saved by the Bell

– Friends

– Dinosaurs

– Family Matters

– The Simpsons

– The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air

– X-Files

– Home Improvement

– Sliders

– 3rd Rock from the Sun

– The Wonder Years

– Married with Children

– ALF

– MacGyver

– Xena: Warrior Princess

This is just a list to get started with, if you have any more 90’s tips, let me know! (Mastodon details at the bottom)

Instructions

This really only took an afternoon, it’s that simple.

Step 1:

Take an SD card and install Raspberry Pi OS Lite (64-bit) on it.

You can use Raspberry Pi’s imaging software, make sure to preconfigure it so it connects to the wifi and that you have your authentication details set (I made a user account called ‘retro’)

Step 2:

Once the image is made, boot it up with your raspberry pi and ensure that you can log in.

When logged in, create a video folder to store your files

mkdir video

Then take the SD card, plug it back into your computer (you might need a linux pc for this) and dump all your videos into a newly created ‘video’ folder in the root of your home directory.

If the above is too much of a hassle for you, you can just as well just keep these videos on an attached USB stick, just make sure to update the path in the script.

Step 3:

Install the software needed to play the videos:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install vlc pulseaudio

Step 4:

Save the following script in the root of your home directory as startVideo.sh (nano startVideo.sh):

#!/bin/bash

VIDEO_DIR=&quot/home/retro/video&quot

pulseaudio --start
pactl set-default-sink 1
mapfile -t video_files &lt &lt(find &quot$VIDEO_DIR&quot -type f | shuf)

for video in &quot${video_files[@]}" do
    cvlc --fullscreen --play-and-exit &quot$video&quot
done

This just makes a list of all your videos, shuffles them and feeds them to VLC for playing. (use cvlc instead of vlc when you don’t need an interface)

The pactl command was needed in my case to ensure the audio also outputs over hdmi, if you are using the headphone jack, just leave out this line, note that this might differ on other Raspberry Pi devices.

Make sure to adjust the VIDEO_DIR path to wherever you are storing the videos

Step 5:

To ensure it’s always playing, we’ll make a systemd service so it auto starts playing at startup:

Save the following file as /etc/systemd/system/videoplayer.service (you can use sudo nano followed by the file location)

[Unit]
Description=Video Player Service
After=multi-user.target

[Service]
User=retro
Group=retro
ExecStart=/home/retro/startVideo.sh
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

And then register it as a service:

sudo systemctl enable videoplayer

Step 6:

Reboot and cross your fingers!

Future improvements

Right now I just have this plugged into a spare monitor (that has speakers built-in), but I’m looking for a small CRT to put in the corner of my office.

That would involve finding a HDMI to SCART, HDMI to s-video or similar convertor though.

Tags

TV, Nostalgia, HomeLab

You can get in touch through Mastodon:

@rxpz@social.linux.pizza

TV Time Machine: A Raspberry Pi That Plays Random 90s TV was published on 2025-09-20

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