OT - any Raspberry PI / Debian Squeeze experts out there ?

Is that a fruit based drink for the Ladies?

definitely.

I suspect so.

A bit of scripting required..

Sure, just don't go into X and use a console based utility for viewing a slideshow of images. Perhaps using fbi which is available in raspbian. Have it run as part of the boot.

Harder part might be doing HDMI to VGA. Converters for that weren't cheap when I last looked.

Use a display with DVI or HDMI (the video part is the same and you just need a cable to convert the video between them, but not the digital audio, if you need it you need HDMI).

maybe you would be better off with

It's was a big mistake to omit VGA output from the Pi IMHO. I looked into the cost of a converter and decided instead to buy a new monitor.

Similar to this

Anyone know if it is possible to use one of the USB-to-video (whether VGA, DVI or HDMI) devices with a Raspberry Pi?

Yes and yes.

If you want true VGA then its somewhat harder. HDMI to DVI is just a lead. To VGA is a more complicated converter. Having said that, any TV will have HDMI these days.

Don't know,but I do know there are problems with other USB devices due to the drivers included with the particular flavour of Linux often used with the R-Pi.

MBQ

And any monitor will have DVI. Why is anyone farting about with VGA these days?

I don't think their target market needed it enough to justify the cost - it has composite video and HDMI so most houses have something it can talk to. (The chip they are using does not have SVGA support)

Yes, it auto-boots on power up anyway and you can set it to do passwordless login. All that's then needed is to get a suitable picture display program to run (see below) which should be easy enough though you might have to ask for some help to do it.

Well it can certainly do this, I've set mine up to do it. I'm using a program called jbrout and it chunters through displaying a 1080p image from my digital camera jpegs quite happily. It takes about 4 seconds to process the image (but the screen isn't blank, it just continues to display the previous one).

You could use something like

By login at all?

just run your program as root under the init process (or whatever its called these days). Sick the script in /etc/rc2.d IIRC,

All that's then needed is to get a suitable

Chug chug..

Everything written in python is slow..and often buggy too.

Hmm, that's interesting... wonder if it's configurable for NTSC rates, or if it's PAL only?

How is it for networking ability? If it's got Ethernet then presumably there's nothing to stop you running graphical apps on it and using a remote machine as the display.

cheers

Jules

Because that's all they need?

Because ICBA to buy more monitor leads when I have a big boxful of VGA ones?

They gave some crap about VGA being legacy technology but *every* monitor has a VGA input, but many don't have HDMI/DVI. I had lots of monitors lying around but not one with a digital input. I would be happy to pay extra for a Pi with VGA output, if one was available.

And composite video is s**te. I won't use for TV let alone a monitor.

None of my monitors have DVI (except the new one I bought especially for the Pi) and none of my TVs have HDMI. I don't chuck out working stuff just so I can buy the lastest fashions.