As you may recall from my recent A little retro beauty blog, I came into the possession of an amazingly cool Jetson's-like television. (I am guessing this beauty is circa the 1960s, but I'm not too sure, so if you have any information on this I'd love to hear it.)
The great thing is that this little scamp still functions as shown above. I would love to have it working here in my office, sitting on the corner of the desk muttering away to itself. The thing is that I need a VHF feed to drive it (the above pic was taken in a local TV repair shop where they managed to generate a suitable signal).
The problem, of course, is that no one transmits analogue television signals anymore – everything has gone digital. So what am I to do?
Actually, while I think about it I should note that someone has disconnected the "Rabbit Ears Antenna" at the back and added a coaxial cable connector as shown below, so this will make things just a tad easier.
One option would be to pick up an old VHS video recorder along with a few tapes ("I Love Lucie," perhaps). However, that would get boring after a while. Also, I don't want to spend my days waiting for VHS tapes to rewind (I've spent enough of my life doing that).
Given a choice, my #1 vote would be to have the ability to have the CNN (cable network news) channel playing all day in the background. That way I would actually have a clue what was going on in the world (if "it" isn't on National Public Radio on my drive into work or back home again, then I don't know about "it").
Perhaps not too surprisingly, I don't have any form of cable here in my office. What I do have is a WiFi connection to the Internet. So, what I would ideally like is something like an Apple TV as discussed in my Using "Henry" to stream iPad videos blog. That is, I want a small box that can connect via WiFi to the Internet on one side and stream live television out of the other side. Ideally it should output VHF, but if it outputs a digital signal I need some sort of converter.
Any ideas?
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用户1651405 2013-9-12 15:43
用户1406868 2013-3-11 23:45
Well, I was going to suggest that, too (to find a source with composite video and an RF modulator (does Radio Shack still carry them?), but realized that you wouldn't be able to get sound through the TV's internal speaker.
An alternative is to find a cable-TV set top box which accepts local signals and delivers an NTSC signal on channel 3 or 4. There are a lot of thse around. eBay is your friend.
用户3601100 2013-3-11 19:28
Well, you can use some digital receiver that has a composite video output and hook it up to a VHF modulator salvaged from some old videogame or computer of the 80's and 90's... this way you avoid messing with the TV set itself... good luck!
用户1406868 2013-3-10 16:32
Since I see a coaxical cable connector, you could find an STB (set top box) which has coax connector as output and connect it to the input.
The other alternative could be, if you could find a DVD/HDD recorder with RF out and receives the digital transmission, you could connect the RF out of the recorder to the input. But, you would need to change the coax connector to RF connector.
用户1406868 2013-3-9 12:18
I'm not sur eof what is happening in the USA where I guess the writer is located.
Here in Australia its still possible to buy Set Top Boxes (STB) that receive terrestrial digital signals. Most STB have an RF modulated output that connects to a regular (read analog) TV set. Just tune in on te TV to a vacant channel corresponding to the STB and away you go.
Probably getting harder to gte these days but worth a try
Robert