Hi Guys
I think I have a similar problem to other posters here but none of the answers seem to do what I'd like. Actually I have two problems, but they're both due to the project I have in mind. Please let me give you some background first as it'll help understanding.

I have a 42" 5 year old plasma screen that I currently use showing a DVD of a real fire, at least during the Winter. Other times it shows an aquarium or woodland scene. What I want to do is create a cut down version even of DSL to auto-run an AVI or MPEG when a PC boots up. I don't need a login screen to display and I don't want or need a desktop, browser, editor, terminal, anything but the ability to run a single Mpeg. Almost like an embedded system in fact.

I'm thinking of either a Pico-itx or Nano-itx as the PC hardware and would like to boot up from an SD card which would contain the essential OS files and the MPEG/AVI. There should be 1GB, maybe 2GB, of RAM available at boot up. All that's needed from the user perspective is a single button to power on and off the system. I don't care that an SD card can only take so many re-writes and can't take a swap file because I'm not writing to the card, only reading.

I've come across a distro called GeeXboX which might also be a good start - very small indeed.

Can anyone help me?

I haven't used it but it looks like you regenerate the GeeXboX's Iso to include the movie that you want. From their website (see the ISO generator page):

GeeXboX's customization is interesting in many ways, such as :

* Include a movie : You just have to put your movie or sound files and the playlist into the iso directory of the generator and regenerate the image. The GeeXboX will then boot off the CD and will automatically play the provided list/file.
Good lucks!

I'm going to give GeeXboX a run out over the weekend. I'm in a hotel room Monday to Thursday nights and that's not conducive to getting stuff done even with VirtualBox installed on my laptop. :-)

"Include a movie : You just have to put your movie or sound files and the playlist into the iso directory of the generator and regenerate the image. The GeeXboX will then boot off the CD and will automatically play the provided list/file.
Good lucks!"

That's the theory. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to work as stated in the docs and wiki. Looks like I'll have to get my hands dirty and start compiling from the source code.

It's not that hard ... search the boards for kiosk - that's basically the
same idea, just that you want an x-session not with only a browser (rather
than a window manager with a browser), but a media player like xine or
mplayer instead; the concept is the same.



Cheers,
Tink