I've been searching for a way to export video from a linux pc (fedora/centos) to external hardware (SD composite port) and someone mentioned kodi. My question is, is kodi suitable for this task? I don't know a single thing about kodi (yet).
This is for a TV project whereby I need to play a standard 640x480 video and send it out (preferably by usb or something) to an external device which can display the video on a normal SD TV. So firstly I need to know if kodi can do this and secondly if it is compatible with any external hardware that could do this. Thanks for any advice.
Your terminology is a bit confused. I take it you simply want to play a video file that you have on your computer to an SD TV via composite video? (Which incidentally is the lowest quality connection you are likely to see in this field - but I will assume you are stuck with an SD analogue TV with composite in).
You simply need a video card with composite video out. Unfortunately for regular PCs such devices are rare these days because HDMI has become so universal.
However you have one very cheap and popular option - a raspberry pi (RPI). It has HDMI out but also composite. And XBMC works very well on it.
I suggest you get an RPi and install openelec. See in general here
http://kodi.wiki/view/Raspberry_PI It's hard to go wrong with something that costs so little. There are some extra expenses like an SD card, a power supply and some sort of controller (like a remote, or a keyboard). However many people have those things already. Go for a RPi B rather than the B+, as the composite port is a little harder to access on the B+.
PS in case I wasn't too clear, you don't need XBMC to simply play a video file via composite - it is a matter of having the right hardware to connect the computer to the TV. Then you can use any media player software, XBMC is just a fancy media player, but if your goal is simply to play one file it is perhaps overkill. On a RPi the mplayer or omxplayer commands would play a one off file.
thankyou for your response. I don't want to confuse sending the video image with sending desktop image. In sending the video out to composite port I only want pure video to fill the external screen and not any other desktop stuff like window borders and play buttons or command text etc. Thus I'm not sure if the RPi will do this, and I'm not sure a video card with composite port would do this either however if I'm wrong please say so. Any further thoughts are appreciated.
Well you have the answer. Not much more that I can say.
so are you saying kodi will do what I need? is that the answer?
My answer is in my post #2. If you want to play video through composite, you need a graphics card with composite out. That includes the graphics hardware on an RPi.
There are probably numerous dubious conversion boxes that will take VGA or DVI or HDMI and turn it into a composite signal, but the results are usually unpleasant.
XBMC/Kodi will play a video just like many other pieces of software.
ok thankyou for that clarification, it sounds like kodi is not going to do what I need. I may have to go for a separate hardware media player.
It'll still have some sort of user interface and good luck finding one with composite out these days.