Add RCA Component Sound And Video Hook Ups

[Electronic M]

All, but the cheapest DVD players I've seen had S-Video output on them...

[Jon A.]

I have a Toshiba SD3300. Chinese-made naturally, but not a Wally-World exclusive.

[Electronic M]

Too bad you don't live here. I can walk into a thrift shop any day of the week and grab a once expensive DVD player for under 10$ any day of the week.

[Penthode]

I have seen no point in going to the trouble of modifying an early set for a baseband video input. I always felt the time is better spent optimizing the RF, IF and Chroma alignment. Besides I like to keep the set as close to factory spec as possible.

I haven't found a tube TV set which hasn't benefited from a sweep alignment. Even a sweep alignment check will reveal bad tubes in the tuner or IF strip which a tube checker won't reveal.

[Kevin Kuehn]

So we're about one step away from putting the flat screen inside the roundy cabinet. Modern technology must be pretty addictive.

[Carmine]

Originally Posted by Kevin Kuehn

So we're about one step away from putting the flat screen inside the roundy cabinet. Modern technology must be pretty addictive.

I don't see it that way at all. Gober'ment has dealt OTA a shitty hand, leaving us only flawed convertor boxes to continue using old sets. As long as the mods are easily reversible it's no worse than putting radial tires on a '69 Imperial. I don't just use my old cars for parades and I don't just use my TVs to run loops of "I Love Lucy".

To the OP, I'm curious if this solves the signal overloading and buzz issues I have with my tube sets + convertor boxes. Nothing worse than trying to show off the nice picture on your vintage set to a friend and then a commercial comes on for vaginal mesh lawsuits and the fine-print buzz makes everyone cover their ears. Or Captain Kirk looks sharp as can be, then another lawyer commercial comes on showing male breast-growth against a white background and the contrast overloads giving you a horrible picture. (Of course I find myself covering ears and eyes in these examples regardless of the TV's age)

I understand that I could use a transmitter, but that's not really practical if you want to watch TV in a room separate from the convertor box. For example, let's say my convertor/transmitter is in the living room and I decide to watch some before TV bed. Now how do I change channels? Certainly the convertor remote isn't going to reach around corners and down the stairs.

Or do I now need to get a transmitter for every room with an old TV? Just in case I'm not getting enough RF radiation and don't have enough wall-warts plugged in 24/7? A reversible mod like this sounds quite alright to me. Just a matter of a few minutes with a soldering iron and I'm back to 2009. Hardly dumping a flatscreen in a cabinet.

[damen]

Thank you! This is far from gutting the set and adding a flat screen which will never happen but like you said 10 minutes or less with a solder gun and its back to 100% original since no holes were drilled or any like that. There is no buzz in the sound or signal overload on this set with this mod. and no need for that extra converter box which is nice.

Originally Posted by Carmine

I don't see it that way at all. Gober'ment has dealt OTA a shitty hand, leaving us only flawed convertor boxes to continue using old sets. As long as the mods are easily reversible it's no worse than putting radial tires on a '69 Imperial. I don't just use my old cars for parades and I don't just use my TVs to run loops of "I Love Lucy".

To the OP, I'm curious if this solves the signal overloading and buzz issues I have with my tube sets + convertor boxes. Nothing worse than trying to show off the nice picture on your vintage set to a friend and then a commercial comes on for vaginal mesh lawsuits and the fine-print buzz makes everyone cover their ears. Or Captain Kirk looks sharp as can be, then another lawyer commercial comes on showing male breast-growth against a white background and the contrast overloads giving you a horrible picture. (Of course I find myself covering ears and eyes in these examples regardless of the TV's age)

I understand that I could use a transmitter, but that's not really practical if you want to watch TV in a room separate from the convertor box. For example, let's say my convertor/transmitter is in the living room and I decide to watch some before TV bed. Now how do I change channels? Certainly the convertor remote isn't going to reach around corners and down the stairs.

Or do I now need to get a transmitter for every room with an old TV? Just in case I'm not getting enough RF radiation and don't have enough wall-warts plugged in 24/7? A reversible mod like this sounds quite alright to me. Just a matter of a few minutes with a soldering iron and I'm back to 2009. Hardly dumping a flatscreen in a cabinet.

[Electronic M]

Originally Posted by Carmine

I understand that I could use a transmitter, but that's not really practical if you want to watch TV in a room separate from the convertor box. For example, let's say my convertor/transmitter is in the living room and I decide to watch some before TV bed. Now how do I change channels? Certainly the convertor remote isn't going to reach around corners and down the stairs.

There are IR remote extenders. They have a IR receiver like a TV set that they feed to an amp and another IR emitter that is aimed at the box....Some are 2 box units that convert the remote signals to RF that travels to the second box by the device the remote is to control.

If you are handy with OP amps you could make the first type of system easily, and cheaply...The second kind would require more effort.

[Kevin Kuehn]

I honestly didn't mean any offense by that flat screen remark. I was just messin' with you guys, that's why I left the I do the same kind of things, simply because we can.

[NoPegs]

Originally Posted by jr_tech

Has anybody here figured out a way to modify an older set to take component video? I imagine that it would be much more difficult to accomplish, but even better picture quality might be obtained.

How about an isolated input circuit for use on "hot chassis" sets?

jr

Well, if you find the "right" DVD player it actually isn't hard at all, for B&W sets.

By "right" I mean one that doesn't bother turning off the YBR ports when its in "composite out" mode. (Older is better, usually.) Essentially the Y (Green) outputs a standard 525 line luminance signal which on modern component inputs results in "no signal" or something not all unlike a B&W set with the horiz oscillator running at 2x normal freq. Easiest way to see if you have this type of DVD player is just whack a scope on the green jack while confirming a normal picture is coming out of the yellow or S-video connection on a normal TV set.

Just shove that signal into the appropriate point on the chassis. (You may need to rig up a phase inverter, depending on if the tuner in your chassis is positive or negative sync. YMMV.)


Edit for related ramblings:

If you're going to add a baseband input to anything B&W you should always try and feed it from an S-video jack, using only the Luma signal pin (and ground, obviously.) Unfortunately a lot of things that have "S-video out" don't actually supply both discrete Luma and Chroma signals, the really cheap crap just mixes them together or duplicates the composite signal on both pins. Same can be said for the really cheap stuff with an "S-video input" on it. Usually a resistor and cap combining the signals near the jack and feeding the result to the same point as the Composite jack goes. (I do miss TVs that had properly designed/engineered comb filters.) Poke an S-video jack with a 2 channel scope sometime to see what goes on. Ideally you're supposed to have pure 525 line Luma available, which is great for pre-color sets! As above you may need to add a sync inverter depending on your chassis. (Possibly bypass a built in sync inverter, as long as its before the vertical drive pickoff, otherwise you'll not get sync.)

[damen]

Its all good! No offense taken.

Originally Posted by Kevin Kuehn

I honestly didn't mean any offense by that flat screen remark. I was just messin' with you guys, that's why I left the I do the same kind of things, simply because we can.

[Robert Grant]

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

I doubt the VHF channels will ever come back. Most of the UHF TV channels (channels 14 to 52) have been auctioned off to other services, so they will never again be used for television broadcasting in this country. The remaining 38 channels may well be auctioned in the future.

The VHF channels are no longer used for telecasting, and may well be auctioned to other services before long as well.
<snip>

The highband VHF channels (7 through 13) are extensively used for digital TV broadcasting in the US, with two of them in your backyard (Channel 19 is actually transmitted on channel 10, and Channel 8 is on, well, channel 8)

The lowband VHF channels (2 through 6) are vastly underused (your Channel 3 is actually 17 and Channel 5 is really 15), as building penetration is poor, RFI from consumer products can be intense, and the FCC placed draconian power limits on the lowband.

There are no plans to reallocate the VHF channels in the foreseeable future. They're no good for smartphones, because a smartphone can't effectively radiate waves nearly two meters long. The government is hoping to pack a bunch of other stations on the VHF channels.

At this point, there have not been any auctions of channels 14-51 for cellular. Channels 70 through 83 were given away decades ago, channels 52 through 69 were auctioned off more recently, and channel 51 is being cleared to serve as a guard band for owners of spectrum on former channel 52. The government is hoping to auction off as many of the channels 51 and below as they can, from the top down.

[wa2ise]

Originally Posted by jr_tech

How about an isolated input circuit for use on "hot chassis" sets?

jr

Well, the best way IS to use the set's tuner and IF strip, and the RF output of a VCR or RF modulator. There the isolation is the small caps on the tuner's input.

As for the CECB I placed inside a TV I did, I used the audio and video output jacks of the CECB to feed the baseband video into the video circuits of the TV, and the audio to audio. For this set, it was easy, as this set used to have a built in VCR that died.

[dano]

I would be interested in hearing from anyone else who attempts a similar mod on a tube-type TV set of any kind. I would like to do this on several of my sets mainly because the modulator is one more box and one more power brick, and because a direct connection will give a cleaner signal. I've seen success here with an early Zenith color set, and Phil Nelson's site documents a composite input on an Admiral B&W set, that's two that I know of. My understanding is that some sets may require a signal inversion or a gain stage, so it would be interesting to document that somewhere. Has anyone successfully added a composite input to an RCA?

[Electronic M]

It is not all that hard to figure out. With a sam's one can look for a video injection point after the video detector, and before the synch take off. Then just observe the waveform amplitude and polarity there on the schematic or in the set with a scope. with that data and the google info on the composite video signal standard one can figure out the gain needed. And then all that is needed is a simple OP amp circuit that ANYONE can design for the specific gain and possibly polarity inversion required for nearly any set. The OP amp could be powered by rectified heater voltage on transformer powered sets, though if the output amplitude is large one might need to use a voltage doubler, trippler, etc to get enough rail voltage for the OP amp....Not to mention the many other power sources both set derived and tacked in that could be devised.