Old RCA TV cabinet finds new life as a HDTV set - Videokarma.org TV - Video

wa2ise · #1 10-20-2007, 08:36 PM

And not as a fish tank... It used to have a CTC19 chassis in it, but that's long gone. Now, it's what it looks like, a 19 inch VGA monitor and a pair of computer speakers inside it, with wood trim cut to fill in the spaces. I bolted the monitor down to the floor of the cabinet, so it won't slide out. This cabinet used to have a 19 inch CRT in it, so that's the same. The set top box is a Samsung ATSC HD receiver, here getting the Sox-Indians game on FOX over the air. Using an old UHF hoop antenna.
for some reason I can't upload this image to this board directly.

- found the reason, it was just a little too wide, went beyond 900 pixels. The Audiokarma upload page doesn't tell you why it fails, it just goes blank. Cropped the image to 888 pixels, now it uploaded.

MRX37 · #2 10-20-2007, 09:06 PM

Interesting upgrade. Cosmetically it needs a bit of work. (The beige monitor just doesn't look right in the wood cabinet)

Does the HDTV receiver have a VGA output? if not, how did you connect the monitor to it?

wa2ise · #3 10-20-2007, 09:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MRX37

Cosmetically it needs a bit of work. (The beige monitor just doesn't look right in the wood cabinet)

Does the HDTV receiver have a VGA output? if not, how did you connect the monitor to it?

Yes, the ATSC receiver box does have a VGA output. That was a reason why I picked that one to buy.

I've nover been much of an interior decorator, maybe I should have painted the VGA bezel on the monitor. But the old plastic bezel was brown and a barf green surround on the CRT...

MRX37 · #4 10-20-2007, 10:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wa2ise

Yes, the ATSC receiver box does have a VGA output. That was a reason why I picked that one to buy.

I should get one of those.......

wa2ise · #5 11-28-2007, 10:18 PM

An update: I tucked the ATSC receiver inside the cabinet, and added an extension IR remote "eye" to the front of this "set". I scrounged an IR "eye" from a dead cable box, and literally soldered it in parallel (with about a foot of shielded 2 wire and ground cable) with the existing "eye" inside the Samsung ATSC box. Well, it worked. Occasionally, hacking around does work..

The IR eye has three leads, a ground, B+, and signal out that feeds a digital chip. Must be an open collector pull down sort of thing, as having two in parallel didn't burn anything out, and it still works. All the front panel controls of the ATSC box are also on the remote, so I didn't need much worry about them being inaccessable once I mounted this box inside the cabinet, with a couple sheet metal screws into new holes on the removable top lid of the box. And there's on screen display of channel numbers.

So now this thing is a complete HD TV... But it still looks like a monitor in a TV cabinet...

wa2ise · #6 12-01-2007, 09:35 PM

New pictures

mr_fixer · #7 12-01-2007, 10:07 PM

while i do not like the color scheme, i love your ingenuity. i would have tried to remove the crt from the monitor case and placed it behind a roundie picture mask just for shock value. but that is just my artistic preference. Logan

YamahaFreak · #8 12-03-2007, 01:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mr_fixer

while i do not like the color scheme, i love your ingenuity. i would have tried to remove the crt from the monitor case and placed it behind a roundie picture mask just for shock value. but that is just my artistic preference. Logan

Ooh, good idea! I bet that would look real close to a period set.

vinyldavid · #9 12-03-2007, 01:06 AM

hmmmmm..I need to get me one of those converter boxes. Then I can use my monitor as a TV screen!

fdrennen · #10 12-03-2007, 04:34 AM

That's a good idea, I have a 20" monitor that would be good to use as a TV!

MRX37 · #11 12-03-2007, 11:21 AM

Um, masking off part of the CRT doesn't sound right to me, since analog and standard definition digital are and will remain in the 4x3 screen format.

fdrennen · #12 12-03-2007, 01:15 PM

I got to thinking about this and What would be the pros and cons of using the atsc reciever vs. a card in a computer. The computer cards start at about $50 and the receivers go for >$200?

wa2ise · #13 12-03-2007, 02:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MRX37

Um, masking off part of the CRT doesn't sound right to me, since analog and standard definition digital are and will remain in the 4x3 screen format.

It's a kind of fudge, as my ATSC receiver box prsents the same aspect ratio to HD and SD signals. The aspect ratio I have here is 5 by 3, not quite 16 by 9, but such that SD images are not really out of whack. Anyway, 5 by 3 is what they were thinking of back in the early days of HDTV development. I wanted to favor HD anyway. But doing 16 by 9 exactly looked kinda small... Well, I could overscan horizontally.

Any ideas for correcting the color scheme? paint the monitor bezel some color?

YamahaFreak · #14 12-03-2007, 03:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wa2ise

It's a kind of fudge, as my ATSC receiver box prsents the same aspect ratio to HD and SD signals. The aspect ratio I have here is 5 by 3, not quite 16 by 9, but such that SD images are not really out of whack. Anyway, 5 by 3 is what they were thinking of back in the early days of HDTV development. I wanted to favor HD anyway. But doing 16 by 9 exactly looked kinda small... Well, I could overscan horizontally.

Any ideas for correcting the color scheme? paint the monitor bezel some color?

You might be able to fashion a piece of plywood to fit over the entire front of the set, with oval holes for the speakers and a space for the speaker controls to poke out. Then paint that piece.

Do the speakers stick out past the front edge of the cabinet?

ChrisW6ATV · #15 12-03-2007, 03:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fdrennen

I got to thinking about this and What would be the pros and cons of using the atsc reciever vs. a card in a computer. The computer cards start at about $50 and the receivers go for >$200?

Using a computer as a digital-TV tuner is a whole subject in itself. The quick comparison to a stand-alone TV tuner is that the computer will use more power than the box, because of all its other components and functions. Also, if you are thinking of using the computer with something other than a computer monitor, you have to be sure the computer has outputs to match what your TV has (composite video or component, etc.).

There can be huge advantages to using a computer for HDTV tuning with a flat-panel or projection display, as I do. You can set it up to work as a Tivo-style digital recorder, and you can get free program guide information from the Internet if you connect it. Once you have set up your computer this way, it opens up many other uses as well. DVDs played in a properly-set-up computer into an HD display can look much better than almost any stand-alone DVD player, other than the Toshiba HD DVD players. You can show your digital camera pictures on the big screen, view Google Earth, Web sites, and play digital music files through your home stereo system, too.