Background Music Videos
Back in the 1980s, if you walked into an arcade, bar or shopping mall, you'd likely see televisions with MTV playing in the background. I wanted to recreate that sort of atmosphere. This project got started in early 2023 when Microsoft abandoned Windows 8.1 and I found myself with an old, relatively obsolete PC. I connected the PC to my gameroom A/V stuff including an old stereo and a flatscreen TV. Then I added another pair old PC monitors. Two or three screens are visible from just about any place in the room.
I Googled "free video grabber" and came up with various reviews recommending various grabbers that were (allegedly) safe and effective. With videograbber.cc and loader.to I found I could grab just about anything from YouTube. I got the sense that these grabbers come and go so your mileage may vary. Also, each download comes from a different, questionable-looking url. My antivirus rejected about one in ten downloads. I'd simply try again and the next attempt would come from somewhere else. Maybe don't do any of this on computer you care about. More recently, I found cobalt.tools to be excellent.
Then it was off to YouTube to collect music videos. The video quality often wasn't great. But then again, it wasn't great back in the 1980s. In addition to collecting music videos, I added some period movie trailers, period TV show intros and even some old MTV promo spots and goofy movie quotes. I have some videos from the 1970s. Most of the material is from the 1980s. 1990 was my cutoff. Eventually I was up to over 900 files, which is days of material. Since I only use it a few hours at a time, it doesn't feel repetitive. I wouldn't be surprised if there were more elegant ways of accomplishing all this. But I'm not a computer nerd and this is what I came up with.
For a media player I used VLC, which was already on the PC. This was important because VLC has an audio compression tool. YouTube audio levels are horribly inconsistent from one video to the next. The VLC tool did a good job of leveling it all out. My compressor settings are actually pretty aggressive. They cause some songs to sound a bit off. But at low to moderate volume levels (i.e. background music) it sounds fine. I also took advantage of the random shuffle function.
VLC compressor settings.
I was initially using the PC's analog audio output, VGA output and HDMI output. It worked, but took a lot of configuring. As soon as the PC detects an HDMI connection, it wants to do screen extensions and route audio through the HDMI. I wanted more of a hardware solution so I bought an OREI 1x4 HDMI splitter with analog audio extraction (UHDS-104A). It provides up to four duplicate HDMI outputs for the monitors plus an analog audio output for the stereo system. The PC "sees" only a single HDMI output so there's no configuring to mess with.
OREI UHDS-104A.
As a final aside, 2023 was also the year I discovered that unlimited cellular-based 5G Internet service had become available in my semi-remote area. I was finally able to ditch my Flintstones-like, data-limited, POS, HughesNet satellite service and enjoy some streaming video options. To that end I successfully installed Windows 10 on the old gameroom PC and got it back on the Internet
Monitor 1.
Monitor 2.
Monitor 3.