Features

Features

What OSD/OS does, at a glance. Each line links to the page with the details, and every screen is in the screen tour.

• Modules, like the inputs on a deck: Local Files, Plex, Jellyfin, Emby, YouTube, Netflix and Prime Video, Playlists, an NFC reader, a 90s weather channel, arcade games in MAME and their high score tables, your own shell scripts and Ambient:Mode, each turned on from its own page in Settings (Modules).

• A remote, a keyboard or a gamepad: the arrows, select and back on any of them. Settings → Controls lists every controller connected and sets each apart: its own buttons, and a pad's button labels (Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo or a cabinet's numbers). It also chooses each player's pad, players 1 to 6, for games. It also teaches OSD/OS a button it doesn't know, like a remote's OK (Controls).

• One way to browse. Local Files, Netflix, Prime Video and YouTube open as a horizontal tree, and so does Arcade on its Original screen. The folders you open run along a line across the screen, and every folder branches out to its entries, the one under the cursor in full and the rest faint. Each starts with Recently Watched (Recently Played in Arcade), Favorites and Search (Using OSD/OS).

• Search with the remote, typed on an on-screen keyboard.

• Info screens for films and videos: the story, genre, director, cast and rating. One comes up when the cursor rests on a title (3 seconds by default), or straight away with ►.

• Options on an entry, with ►: add it to Favorites, have it Play at Startup, straight after the boot screen, where it was stopped or from the beginning (Settings → Startup From), without asking, or Add to Playlist (Local Files' and YouTube's videos; Jellyfin's and Emby's from their PLAY button).

• Playlists from several modules at once: Local Files, YouTube, Jellyfin and Emby videos on one list, played in order (on from where it stopped) or shuffled. An online playlist plays each video from where it lives. An offline one downloads every video to the device once, whatever lists it is on (on the OSD/OS image, into the card's OSD-OS partition), and plays without the network (Playlists).

• Transparent Background. Back from a video returns to the menus while the video keeps playing behind them, like a deck's menu over the tape. A Local Files, YouTube or Playlists video first opens a menu of its own over the picture, with its module's settings for it, Browse and Close Video, and the first row of the main menu takes it back to full screen. A slider from TRANSPARENT to SOLID sets how much of it shows through: at SOLID none, while it plays on, sound and all. Select on the setting turns it off. On a Pi 4 or 5, and on desktop Linux, the GPU draws the picture, so the CPU stays free for the menus. It needs libmpv (libmpv2 on Raspberry Pi OS, part of Homebrew's mpv on macOS) (Playback and mpv).

• Wi-Fi in Settings: the networks within reach, each with its lock and signal, joined with a password typed on the on-screen keyboard, and the country Wi-Fi keeps to the rules of (Settings).

• System Information in Settings → About: the device's name, which tells two OSD/OS on one network apart and which LAN Play's games are hosted under, renamed on the on-screen keyboard on the image; its model, OS, processor, memory, storage, temperature and time up; and each connection's IP and MAC addresses (Settings).

• Bluetooth in Settings: search for a keyboard, gamepad or remote and pair it from the couch. A keyboard's pairing code comes up on screen, to type on it (Controls).

• Display Output in Settings, on the OSD/OS image: HDMI, composite, or RGB for SCART through a cable on the GPIO pins, among the outputs the Pi has (it reads which Pi it is: a Pi 4's AV jack, a Pi 5's TV pads). A new output stays only when you keep it on its screen; in 30 seconds without an answer the old one comes back (Display Output).

• Audio Output in Settings: the Pi's AV jack, HDMI or a USB sound card, for a Pi 5's sound on a CRT too, as it has no jack. It changes at once, for a video playing behind the menus too, and a card unplugged is passed over until it is back (Audio Output).

• A mouse pointer (a mouse, or a keyboard's touchpad) that shows while the mouse moves and hides again after 5 seconds (Settings → Mouse Pointer).

• OSD Background in Settings: the color scheme's background all over (Full), none, the menus on black like a deck's on-screen display (Off), or a framed window of it behind the menus, black around it (Window). Over a video behind the menus, a window lies over the picture, which shows whole around it. Settings → Window Frame, offered with Window, frames it with a line, with nothing, or with a line and a DOS window's shadow (Settings).

• Themes in Settings, the whole look at once: the color scheme, the skin, the effects and the menu music. Eight come with it, from a Trinitron's tube to Matrix rain, a fire in the window and a demo's starfield; each part stays the theme's until you pick another, or Off, in its own row; and a new one is a folder (Themes).

• Effects, never over a video: text that runs through the rainbow, shimmers, glows or flickers; Matrix rain, pixel fire, stars, snow, a waving checkered flag or a dithered plasma behind the menus; sparkles, a welder's sparks, lightning or a dripping pixel rainbow round the selected line; a tube's or a tape's look over the screen; and windows that turn over like a cube, fade, ripple, ride a wave in from a corner or spread from a drop (Effects).

• Menu music under the menus and never over anything else: the theme's, or a file of your own, an MP3, WAV, OGG or FLAC, a MIDI file or a tracker's XM, MOD, S3M or IT (Menu music).

• Skins in Settings, apart from the color scheme: the shapes of the window's frame, the title and hint bars and the selected line, and icons of their own, drawn in the color scheme's colors. Two come with it, DOS and Rounded, and a new one is a folder of pictures (Skins).

• A tape loading while a video starts: VHS noise in the color scheme's colours and a dubbing deck's display, with where the video is and, once known, how long it is. Settings → TV / Movie → Loading Effect turns the noise off, and Loading Screen Colors keeps it white on blue whatever the theme (Playback and mpv).

• Hint Bar and Help Line in Settings: the key hints at the foot of every screen and the line about the selected row under a menu, each on or off once the keys are second nature, the menus and the file browser taking their room (Settings).

• Update in Settings: a new release of OSD/OS, with its notes, downloaded from GitHub and installed from the couch (Installation).

• About in Settings: what OSD/OS is, who makes it, what it is made of and under which license, with the license's text to read on the device.

• The logo in a corner of the picture while a video plays, like a channel's: Settings → TV / Movie → Channel Logo picks the corner, all four, or none, and Logo Image a picture of your own in place of OSD/OS's. It is on the About page and on the boot screen's cassette too (Settings).

• Scaling for 16:9 pictures on a 4:3 screen: Letterbox, 14:9, Pan & Scan or Anamorphic. Set it for every module, or for one module in its own settings (Playback and mpv).

• Netflix and Prime Video catalogues from TMDB in the same tree. A title plays in the service's own player (Netflix and Prime Video).

• Arcade games in MAME, from a folder of ROM sets, listed in the same tree by players, decade and maker, or on the Arcade screen, a cabinet's selection screen: the games of a filter (a genre, a number of players, a decade), straight, on an arc or on a 3D wheel, beside the selected one's picture and a box of its high scores, maker, year, players, board and play time, as many lines as fit, with COIN for credits and START or select to play. A game's pictures go round beside the list, RetroAchievements' downloaded into the snap folder beside your own, and its Game Details list its achievements on RetroAchievements, earned and not, with their badges. Settings → Controls' players are MAME's players 1 to 6, and Coin and Start together bring you back to OSD/OS (Arcade).

• Status icons at the right end of every title bar and the bottom right of the Arcade screen: Wi-Fi's signal, Bluetooth, and the arcade's HI, trophy, globe and network while Save High Scores, RetroAchievements, Online Play and LAN Play are on. Settings → Status Icons turns them off (Settings).

• High scores of the games played in Arcade: each game's table as MAME kept it, its entries in the game's order, the columns lined up, read on the device with hi2txt's game definitions, with nothing online (High Scores).

• The OSD/OS image, a Raspberry Pi OS Lite image that boots straight into OSD/OS and shows a VHS boot screen while its services come up (The OSD/OS image).