A while back I was working on a system. A nice set up, good quality gear, rack closet, projection, etc. I tried something I wanted to try for a long time. I built an intermission feature into his system and remote. The way I did it was to buy a cheap media player.... this is the one I used:

[Link: ebay.com]

I also bought DVDs with those retro drive-in adds off of the auction site. I put about two hours of them on an SD card. This media player begins playing automatically as soon as it powers up, and automatically repeats the file over and over.

I plugged it into a switched AC outlet so it turns on and off with the system. When on it plays constantly.

For all video devices in the remote I made an "Intermission" button which pauses play back and switches to the HDMI input for the media player. The viewer then sees cool old drive-in adds from where ever it is in the file at the time.

When done they press "Back to the show" and it switches back to the previous device and starts playing again.

The media player keeps playing so the next time they do the Intermission they get a different set of videos.

When the system is shut off the media player shuts off too.

I surprised my customer with this and I didn't charge him for it. I explained that I threw it in for fun and that due to the cheapness of the media player it may not last for ever. He didn't care. He thought it was so cool and when I followed up with him a couple of months later he talked about how fun it is and how impressed family and friends are with the Intermission.

I'm sure others have done this too, but it was a first for me. It cost about $40 to do it and the wow factor was huge.

Craig

Very clever idea - the only part I didn't understand was the content that you used (and looped)
"retro drive-in adds off of the auction site"

Sorry BandW, I wasn't sure if I was allowed to mentioned specific auction websites. Some forum rules don't allow it, but i guess since I linked to it it's not a big deal. I got the DVDs from eBay. The retro drive-in adds are what you see in between features when you go to the drive-in. Favorites are the dancing hot-dog, etc. The DVDs you can get have hundreds of short commercials with '60s soft drink adds, count downs to the movie, reminders to replace your speaker before driving off, keep your lights off if leaving before the end of a show, concession adds, etc.

You could do the same thing with slides of photos, trivia, whatever. It was a fun project.

Craig

Cool. Craig you have a PM.

Cool idea Craig. Can you PM me the disc title? If you don't mind or post it here?

This little "freebie" could pay off big time too.


Little things like this tend to impress and get you great referrals.

Awesome!!

cool...but spent a minute on ebay and did not see anything like it...
maybe you should put it on a flash drive and re-market it :)

Can you PM me the disc title too please? Or a link?

me too too :)

I gotten a few from
[Link: driveinexchange.com]

Awesome idea! Thanks!

Thanks everyone. Here are the that I used.

[Link: ebay.com]

This is another one.

[Link: ebay.com]

Just type "drive in intermission" into the search and you get a few.

Craig

This COMPLETELY makes up for your Harmony thread! It's a stunning idea! I'm stunned!

Haha yes it does! Thanks for posting the links to the content, Craig. So yeah, now stop selling those Harmony's :-)