Portable DVD Player Raspberry Pi-fied

Heading into the 2000s, set-top DVD players were amazing new pieces of technology. DVDs were of course much smaller than VHS tapes, (as well as the rarer LaserDiscs) and produced excellent quality for the time, without the need to rewind. They were, however, initially quite expensive, priced at many hundreds of dollars before things settled down to VCR levels or less. If you truly had a lot of money to spend, they were also available in a portable form-factor as well with screen included. I don’t remember the prices exactly — likely well into the $1,000s — but do recall being quite impressed at seeing one in the wild before the turn of the millennium.

Today, things have changed, and Redditor “SquareFrustration” has hollowed out an old portable DVD player in order to install a Raspberry Pi inside. While not its original purpose, it’s got a screen, speakers, power supply, and a battery. With these elements, and the ample space of older electronics, it’s a perfect platform for such a build. The Pi is simply screwed into a 3D-printed bracket which is glued to the bottom of the case, and gets it power from a 5V car charger connected to the original 9V input. Pi signals are connected to the DVD player composite input to provide video and audio outputs.

It looks like a fun project as-is, but its creator SquareFrustration notes that the existing buttons could be wired into the GPIO of the Pi. One of these could even make a perfect safe shutdown button. Another suggestion was to add a few 18650 batteries to allow it to be even more portable, which could be a great upgrade for this one, or others who follow its lead. Bonus internal pics of the build can be found on Imgur.