Could Emuelec somehow also play media files?

General
1

Just an idea/question for the developers:

Is it possible to implement kind of a media player into Emuelec/Emulationstation that could play media files like movies or music (e.g. mp4, mp3, mkv etc…)?

2

I believe vlc cli is installed in EmuElec, for reference see:
https://wiki.videolan.org/Documentation:Command_line/

But I think for ease if you want to use it for media you are better off installing CoreELEC onto a seperate sd card.

3

Thanks for answering! Yes, I’ve had CoreELEC on a sd card for media and could install it again on a card, but then I have two sd cards… I know it’s really lazy thinking, but I would prefer not to have to switch between the EmuElec and the CoreELEC-card… so that’s why I was wondering if it could be possible to “merge” Emulation and media-playing into one system…

4

You could try GitHub - 7Ji/HybridELEC: Side-by-side dual-bootable CoreELEC + EmuELEC, and on-eMMC triple boot with Android . As long as your device is supported by the official Amlogic-ng generic image by CoreELEC and official Amlogic-ng generic mage by EmuELEC, they can run the USB/SD dual-bootable image provided in the hybrid-ng branch. Some devices could even use the Android+CE+EE burning image provided in the android-burning branch.

5

Nice Idea! Thanks! I will try it out…

6

hi @7Ji
as to triple bootable setup, curious it’s apllied for usb booting only? or it can support for SD scenario ?

" For triple-bootable Android+CE+EE USB buring image, check the Android burning branch
要找安卓+CE+EE三系统线刷包，请到安卓线刷分支"

thanks.

7

USB burning in this sentence is not “writing something to USB” but burning something to your box via USB, i.e. Android burning.

The android-burning branch provides image that you can use Amlogic USB Burning tool to flash to the box’s internal memory just like an Android image, and all three systems will be on eMMC. I basically make images that trick Amlogic’s tool and the box to think they’re Android images (but in fact not). Android, CE and EE are all unmodified (marked as official) even the image itself is heavily modified. Due to being unmodified, the internal CE and EE are not enterable unless you use my companion Android Application “HybridELEC Rebooter” to reboot into them. (The app also allows you to reboot to external systems so you can have more than 4 systems (but you really should get more boxes in that case) all on one box with easy switch between them)

Due to the nature of how it is made, the android-burning branch’s images are made per box.

The hybrid-ng branch provides images that’re in the same format of CE and EE’s generic Amlogic-ng images, and share the same compatibility with them. It is this image that you should flash to USB drive or SD card. Everything before and after the hybrid logic is the same as official CE/EE so you can mix a HybridELEC USB/SD with official CE/EE. BUT, the CE and EE sources in this branch is heavily modified and it’s impossible to update alone (They’re bonded together as one single system image)

8

Got it and thanks for clarity.

9

Hi 7Ji,

I installed the CE/EM-Combo and it works great. But there’s just one problem: the option to reboot from CoreElec to EmuElec only appears in the shutdown-menu of the pre-installed “Estuary”-skin of CoreElec. If you change to any other skin (e.g. “Amber”), that option is gone unfortunately. Any chance or idea how to fix that problem? Thanks in advance!

10

This is expected as it IS implemented as a modification of the skin:

For other skins, you would need to edit its xml/DialogButtonMenu.xml or similar files that provides a menu to add an item that calls my script /usr/sbin/hybrid_reboot_ee.

And you could also just run the script through SSH manually, if you don’t want to temper with the skin.

I can’t give guidance on how an exact skin could be modified since I only use the default skin (actually I barely run Kodi and do retro-gaming and barely even boot CE/EE these days, not much free time)

11

Wow, thanks for that quick answer. I’ll try it out… Also: I just wrote an issue into your github, but perhaps you can answer it for me here?

Unlike in the official EmuElec 4.6.-version, this version unfortunately only offers the skraping-option with “ARCADEDB”.

Is it possible to add the option to use “SCREENSCRAPER”?

12

Found the solution: EmuElec is capable of playing video files, just copy the media-files into roms/mplayer and there you go!