Old TVs - blu ray

[bigaudioal]

I have 2 working (6 none working but one their way) vintage TVs. All from the 1940s and 1950s. I currently transmit a signal to them using a Blonder-Tongue agile modulator. I have the old Yellow, Red/White RCA connections rigged into the back of it, from the output of a RadioShack 4 way switch. Have an old DirecTV box, old VCR and old DVD player hooked into the switch. So using the switch box I can select a media device and then the agile modulator broadcasts that signal on old analog channel 7 using a half-length dipole antenna that I built for channel 7 frequency. My vintage TVs then just use vintage rabbit ears to pick up that signal. Works very well as you can see from youtube link below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgCbTkjPYIE

I would like to replace my old DVD player with my blu ray (wifi) player so I can stream stuff on youtube to my old TVs. Tons of old programming on there that would look great on my old sets.

Issue is, today's blu ray players only have HDMI output. Does anyone know of a quality HDMI to RCA component (Yellow, Red/White) converter that I could use to get my blu ray hooked up and working? Also, I know some blu rays will not output a signal to some converters due to copyright protections. So any devices out there that do this conversion and are compliant?

Thx.

[CoogarXR]

This doesn't answer your question, but just a suggestion. I have an older Sony Blu-Ray (I'm not at home, so I don't have the model number handy). It has component, composite and HDMI. It also has wifi and wired LAN, crackle, netflix, youtube, and most of the other modern apps. They show up on ebay cheap. Probably cheaper than you could find a quality HDMI>Composite converter.

[bigaudioal]

Originally Posted by CoogarXR

This doesn't answer your question, but just a suggestion. I have an older Sony Blu-Ray (I'm not at home, so I don't have the model number handy). It has component, composite and HDMI. It also has wifi and wired LAN, crackle, netflix, youtube, and most of the other modern apps. They show up on ebay cheap. Probably cheaper than you could find a quality HDMI>Composite converter.

Oh that may be the best option! Can you stream YouTube through your Blu Ray? If you wouldn't mind posting your model number after you can get home and see which one it is, I would really appreciate that.

Thx.

[CoogarXR]

Originally Posted by bigaudioal

Oh that may be the best option! Can you stream YouTube through your Blu Ray? If you wouldn't mind posting your model number after you can get home and see which one it is, I would really appreciate that.

Thx.

Whoops, I missed this message. I'll look at that model number tonight.

[Electronic M]

Another option is to get an older computer with a video card that has composite and VGA out and use the composite to watch web videos. You should be able to find ways of updating the disc reader to what ever format you desire, and with a web browser you are not limited to just the video sites the player's maker wants it to work with. That is basically what I do.

[dr.ido]

I haven't seen any HDMI to composite converters, but I have seen HDMI to VGA converters. The VGA output could then be fed into a VGA to composite converter.

Though for the price of the 2 converters you could probably build something PC based.

If you're more interested in streaming/youtube than actual retail BluRay discs there are various media players that do online, local network streaming and playback from an internal/external hard disk that have composite outputs and are not crippled by copyright restrictions.

I've found the older Sony/Sharp/Panasonic BluRay players I played with to be incredible fussy about what files they will play and frustrating to use. Samsung was better, better still was a generic player sold under the Soniq brand. Though I never tried youtube/streaming on any of them.

You may also run into issues where older players will require firmware updates to play newer releases. If the update is available it may disable the composite/component outputs (I think this is now required as part of the BluRay license terms).

[bigaudioal]

Originally Posted by dr.ido

I haven't seen any HDMI to composite converters, but I have seen HDMI to VGA converters. The VGA output could then be fed into a VGA to composite converter.

Though for the price of the 2 converters you could probably build something PC based.

If you're more interested in streaming/youtube than actual retail BluRay discs there are various media players that do online, local network streaming and playback from an internal/external hard disk that have composite outputs and are not crippled by copyright restrictions.

I've found the older Sony/Sharp/Panasonic BluRay players I played with to be incredible fussy about what files they will play and frustrating to use. Samsung was better, better still was a generic player sold under the Soniq brand. Though I never tried youtube/streaming on any of them.

You may also run into issues where older players will require firmware updates to play newer releases. If the update is available it may disable the composite/component outputs (I think this is now required as part of the BluRay license terms).

My research tends to be showing the same issues. So frustrating. Just want to be able to show some great old programming that is on youtube, but is too long (files would be too big) to burn to DVDs.

[bandersen]

Here are a few HDMI to Composite converters. I haven't tried one myself yet.
http://www.amazon.com/Etekcity%C2%AE.../dp/B008FO7PQA

http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-HDMI-to-...-/261407702065

http://www.sabrent.com/category/vide...rters/DA-HDRC/

[bandersen]

I use a Panasonic DMP-BD87 BluRay with WiFi to watch YouTube, NetFlix, Hulu, etc.

[maxhifi]

I stream Youtube and especially Netflix every day from a 2010 vintage Samsung Blu-ray to my RCA CTC-38 though a cheap modulator. The Blu-Ray has a horrible Youtube search function but in all other ways works great, especially for Netflix. This is a super idea.

[CoogarXR]

My player is a Sony BDP-BX58. There's a few on ebay right now.

[dr.ido]

Reading the pages of those HDMI to composite converters none of them actually mention HDCP support. I think only one of them actually mentioned bluray.

I don't think they actually can offer HDCP support (at least not within the terms of the license) as it kind of defeats the purpose of HDCP in the first place.

The only converters I can think of (not that I've searched recently) are the HDFury products. A quick google now suggests they may be having licensing/dmca related issues (not that I dug very deep). They do appear to be still available, but they are not cheap.

Another issue you may have is that HDMI doesn't seem to support 4:3, at least not by default. In the past I've tried connecting a HDMI DVD player (that doesn't enforce HDCP) to 4:3 LCD panels with native resolutions of 640 x 480 and 800 x 600 (via a passive HDMI to DVI adapter). With the DVD player set to 4:3, 480p playing a disc correctly encoded as 4:3 the image is always squashed.

The same player, the same disc, connected via component (still 480p) the image is full screen as it should be.

[lnx64]

Bluray spec allows non HDCP devices, but at 480i only, if I remember.

Thing is, composite is 480i, so you should be ok.. As long as the device is smart enough to output it in the right aspect ratio.

[kramden66]

i have a lg that's like 2 or so years old and it has the component out puts and regular video output , it also does Netflix , youtube and vudu , that might be the route to go , getting an older player off ebay.

[dr.ido]

As a side note - I checked out the generic BluRay players (sold under the Audiosonic brand) in Kmart yesterday and they still had composite and component analog outputs.

Hearing here and elsewhere that new players only had HDMI I had assumed that the analog sunset had already expired, but I hadn't actually checked.

While these could be the last of the pre cut off stock I'm not so sure. A few years back this location and most others in the area drastically cut back their electronics sections. They finally got sick of getting stuck with obsolete stock (up until probably 2004 it wasn't uncommon to find stock from the 90s hanging around).