OmaCRT

What it does

A launcher for your CRT.

Browse games, play music and video, or leave the television showing photos and the weather. The launcher draws at 320 by 240; the media below includes launcher captures and desktop recordings.

01 startup

The boot animation.

The launcher opens with a short boot animation: a BIOS-style readout, a beam tracing the logo and a title screen with sound. The readout uses information from your machine.

Then a laser climbs the screen and an arcade hall stands up behind it. The logo flies to the far wall and lights as a neon sign, and the menu opens in a window of dark glass. After a while people come in to play.

Recorded from the launcher at 320 by 240 and enlarged to 640 by 480 for the video.

The boot animation, recorded with sound.

From startup to the menu

  1. 0:03 Tracing the logo
  2. 0:05 Drawing the wordmark
  3. CRT turning to phosphor green as a light sweeps up the wordmark over a receding chequerboard floor.
    0:08 Title screen
  4. 0:09 Into the arcade hall

02 games and media

Games, music and video.

Scan your game folders and browse by system or cover art. Arcade boards get their flyers, their records and a set of filters, and Sega Model 3 runs at the television's own line count. RetroAchievements show under each cover. The launcher also controls music through cliamp and plays local videos and YouTube through mpv.

Game library. Keep your folder layout. The scanner identifies games and fetches matching cover art.
Music. A Spotify search, playback with lyrics, and four of the seven visualisers. Recorded from the launcher.

Starting a game plays a cartridge or disc animation, then switches to the emulator. Every game reaches the television at the same loudness. The pause menu lets you save and load states, rewind or use slow motion, and move the picture for one game or a whole system. What it offers depends on the system and core.

  • Systems. Each console is a small voxel model built to its real size. It drops onto a lit stage when you select it.
  • An arcade list with Double Dragon selected, its flyer on a lit stage and HI 20000 under it.
    Arcade. Flyers for covers, filters by orientation, players and controls, and the record each board keeps.
  • Sega Rally 2 on a dirt straight at 158 km/h, timer and position in the corners.
    Sega Model 3. Sega Rally 2 drawn at 240 lines, captured from Supermodel itself.
  • A pause menu listing save, load, rewind and slow motion, beside the console with the game's cartridge in it.
    Pause menu. Save and load states, rewind and slow motion.
  • The centring page: nested frames at the edges of the screen, a cross in the middle and the game's position at the foot.
    Centre picture. Move a game's picture on the tube and keep it for that game, its system or every game.
  • The TV page: monitor preset, horizontal and vertical shift, horizontal size, sync, and red, green and blue gains.
    TV profile. Shift, width and a colour gain per channel, set once for your television.
  • The pads page: four ports, an 8BitDo Ultimate 2C on the first, the other three empty.
    Pads. Each pad keeps its port, and you can remap it on the television.
  • A SNES list with Super Metroid selected, its box on a lit stage and RA 23/48 B under it.
    RetroAchievements. RetroArch earns them, and each game shows how far you got. The progress here is an example.
  • A list of video search results on the television.
    Video. Search YouTube or play a local file, fitted to the 4:3 screen.
  • Ten vertical faders labelled 31 hertz to 16 kilohertz.
    Equaliser. Ten bands, from 31 Hz to 16 kHz, adjustable in 1 dB steps.
  • Spectrum bars standing on a receding chequerboard floor, reflected in it.
    Mode 7 visualiser. Spectrum bars reflected on a receding floor.
  • Four glowing sine ribbons weaving across a dark field, bright where they cross.
    Silk ribbons. Four animated ribbons driven by the music.

03 idle screens

When you leave it idle.

Choose a logo animation, photos from your Immich server, the weather, a system monitor or a small gallery of paintings. You can rotate between them. While music plays, the screen switches to a visualiser.

Local weather

The sky follows local sunrise, sunset and weather data. Clouds and rain move with the wind, and the town’s windows light up after dark.

Optional sounds include rain, wind, thunder, birds and crickets. They are off by default.

I added the Atomium to the skyline as a local detail.

  • 06:58 Dawn
  • 03:07 Thunderstorm
  • 15:10 Afternoon sun
  • 16:40 Light rain

Rendered from the launcher at 320 by 240 and enlarged. The dawn sequence is sped up.

System monitor

See CPU activity, memory, GPU usage and the busiest processes. The graphs show 90 seconds of load and network history.

The system monitor, captured from the launcher.

Art gallery

Three paintings by René Magritte, redrawn in pixels as homages and hung in gilt frames under a spotlight. Each one moves a little. The apple in front of the face steps aside, a bird crosses the daylight sky over the lamplit street, and one of the men of Golconde raises his hat.

The art gallery, rendered from the launcher.

04 animation and sound

Animation and sound.

I enjoyed building the small animations as much as the launcher itself. These are a few of the details you can see and hear.

  1. Dithered gradients

    The weather screen uses repeating pixel patterns to blend colours into gradients.

  2. Generated sound effects

    The launcher generates its sound effects at startup, including rain and thunder, at an 8 kHz sample rate. It ships no audio files for these effects.

  3. Moving photographs

    Horizontal photos pan one pixel per frame. Portrait photos appear in full against a blurred copy of the same image.

  4. Analogue-style meters

    The CPU meters and music player’s VU needles rise quickly and fall slowly, like the needles on an amplifier.

05 on the desktop

Desktop controls and integrations.

On Omarchy, two Quickshell plugins add a bar panel and a game library overlay. A Television entry in the desktop menu gives you playback, audio and diagnostic controls.

On other Hyprland desktops, use the command line. The launcher’s music, video and photo integrations work without Omarchy.

The Omarchy bar panel, showing video timing, converter status, audio routing and the game library.

  • Bar panel

    Switch the television output on or off, adjust volume and sync, or send a video link. The bar icon shows the output’s status and line count.

  • Themes

    Choose from your installed Omarchy themes. The launcher changes its palette, including the logo and icons.

  • cliamp

    With cliamp installed and configured, control your music from the television, with lyrics and visualisers.

  • mpv and yt-dlp

    Play a local video, search YouTube from the launcher, or send a link from your desktop clipboard. Choose letterbox or crop for the 4:3 screen.

  • RetroArch

    Launch games with settings for each system. Save and load states from OmaCRT’s pause menu. Your existing RetroArch configuration is kept separate.

  • Immich

    Show albums, favourites or photos from this day in previous years, with dates and locations from your Immich server.

  • PipeWire

    Route the launcher, games, video and music to the television’s audio output, then return the audio to the desktop when you switch it off.

  • systemd and I2C

    A systemd service enables DRM leasing at boot. For the RGB-Pi 2, OmaCRT sets the converter’s sync mode over I2C after each power cycle.

Television menu. Playback, settings and diagnostics from the desktop.
Game search. Find a title in Omarchy’s runner and launch it on the television.

Not a fork, not a distribution, not a patch. Omarchy is by the Omacom Foundation. This project is not affiliated with it, is not endorsed by it and does not speak for it. omarchy.org

Get started

Try it on your television.

Install it The manual