Kodi Community Forum

Fellow Kodi Fans,

This isn't a Kodi specific question, but I figured someone here would probably know.

I'm trying to bring an older desktop box I retired about a year ago out of retirement to use as a Kodi box. It's a Gateway E4300. The specs on Gateway's website list its graphics card as:

ATI Radeon X300SE with 128MB DDR Video Memory and TV Out

All of my TVs are older CRT type TVs so composite video is good enough. I thought since the video card had TV out capabilities an inexpensive adaptor like this would be all I'd need. I just tried connecting it to a couple of TVs and got no output whatsoever. Does anyone know if additional configuration is needed to enable composite video output? I'm running Kodi 15.2 on Arch Linux. Any tips or tricks would be greatly appreciated.

Those kinds of adapters depend on the video card supporting them, as they don't actually do any conversion in the adapter. This might also require some support from the software to enable composite video output, but I'm not sure.

Meh, i would probably get an RPi2 for composite output, its right there and easy to use.

(2016-02-18, 03:53)nickr Wrote: [ -> ]Meh, i would probably get an RPi2 for composite output, its right there and easy to use.

I've been thinking of eventually using a RPi2, or two, for Kodi, but was hoping to start out with some older PCs I already had lying around to keep costs down. I tend to stay a bit behind the times hardware wise. I've been curious about the RPi's for a while, but have yet to acquire one. I may have to get one sooner rather than later. I'm anxious to get Kodi boxes set up in my living room and bedroom and retire my TiVo.

Kodi on its own won't replace TiVo, you'll need a PVR (wiki) backend. Also I'm not sure if the graphics card in your old box is even supported by kodi (but I am not an ati/AMD fan or expert).

(2016-02-18, 04:20)nickr Wrote: [ -> ]Kodi on its own won't replace TiVo, you'll need a PVR (wiki) backend.

I know. I dropped cable a few years ago and just watch old shows on DVD or from my PC. All I've been using my TiVo for is to transfer files from my PC to TiVo for viewing on the living room TV. And even for that limited use I have to pay TiVo $13 a month.

OK kodi will certainly do what you want.