Cinema Media Playback Server

Anthony Piantine · May 4, 2019

I work at non profit serving people with disabilities in the Midwest US primarily through summer camp and we recently built a 100 capacity cinema with the help of Marcus theaters.

I am looking to build a media playback/Theater Management server to accomplish the following goals

Dolby decoding with 8 Channel Digital AES/EBU audio output(Preferably a db25 connector)
Flawless Video output to Panasonic EZ570 projector (Seems like I always have handshake issues with HDMI)
Either Dual Monitor or a remote GUI for playback control and monitoring
Blu-ray Optical Drive
4TB Raid (Potentially an SSD for acceleration?)
SSD boot drive

What Im worried about with using a PC for playback is that I do not ever want to see the desktop or any cue that could indicate that it is a computer sending video to the projector. Is it possible (I know its not necessarily a hardware question.. at least I don't think) to have one of the screens in a dual monitor system to not be accessible by anything but a certain program, etc? So it would basically be black unless a program specifically sent video to that display. So in the end it would not be possible to drag a window over to it, see the desktop or move your mouse onto it. Can you set your bios to output to the on board graphics then somehow also send content to a dedicated GPU?

I've never messed around with an SSD accelerated (correct term?) RAID nor do I know if it would even help in this instance.

I am fairly comfortable programming and have begun writing a media player software that fits my needs:

Light weight and reliable
If no content then screen should be black
Very custom scaling options (I am projecting with a 16:10 projector onto a 21:9 screen)
Blu-ray playback
Externally controlled playlist(To set the preroll, main film, and post credits video order)
Scheduled

If you know of any software that comes even close to fitting my needs I'd love to hear about it

I also may do "theater management" through this server. Basically just automation of the whole show. All of our lighting is DMX controllable and the projector as well as some other audio components have serial and network control. I may have the server control everything or I may for the sake of stability have an Arduino control the individual components and have the Server only control the Arduino over serial. Haven't decided for sure on that yet.

Like I said we are a non profit so "low" cost is important(I know I'm asking for a lot). I will probably end up doing everything from used parts. I thought about getting a server on Ebay as the cost to performance seems to be very good and the Size/Noise of a server is no problem. Assuming the server was 1 or 2u I would probably get a different case to fit everything I need.

Any help/input would be greatly appreciated.