A Quest to Turn an Old DIVX Player Into a Raspberry Pi Media Center

If you’ve ever visited a movie pirating website — don’t worry, we’re not narcs — you have probably heard of the DivX codec format. But, in the early 2000s, there was a separate disc-based video rental system called DIVX. The idea was that you’d buy a DVD-like DIVX disc and pop it into your DIVX player, where it was only watchable for a few days before becoming trash. It was a commercial disaster and DIVX players have been obsolete for well over a decade, which makes them perfect for hacking into a media center like Roberto Piva is doing.

Piva got a KiSS DP-500 DIVX player from his father. While it can function as a regular DVD player, it’s main purpose was to play DIVX discs. DIVX was sold through Circuit City, a company that went out of business years ago. Even if they hadn’t, nobody liked the idea of paying $5 for DIVX disc that was going to stop functioning after 48 hours. So, for all practical purposes, Piva’s KiSS DP-500 was completely useless for its original purpose.

But, he thought it might make a nifty enclosure for a Raspberry Pi media center. The first step was to rip out most of the original internal components. The only things he left inside were the power supply, DVD drive, and PCB for the front panel buttons. He then hacked a USB cable up to power the Raspberry Pi 3 from the DP-500’s built-in power supply.

That power supply’s 5V rail didn’t actually provide enough current for the Raspberry Pi, so Piva eventually switched to an additional power supply for the Pi. With that working, he mounted the Raspberry Pi inside the DP-500 enclosure and routed an HDMI cable out to his TV. Now, he has a media center that runs Kodi that is housed within an obscure DIVX player. Piva plans to eventually get the DVD reader working with the Raspberry Pi, so be sure to follow his work.