Modified Black and White Television?

[lovenewyawkcity]

Some of the earlier hobbyists, used a modifed black and white television

as an output device.

What would be involved in this?

[sje]

Back in the Old Days it was rare for enthusiast hardware to be able to output to a consumer television directly because of the stringent standards set by the FCC for radio frequency generation in the TV broadcast band. So, an enthusiast would either pay for a video monitor or purchase an RF modulator. The modulator would take a video signal as input and use it to modulate a TV carrier for a broadcast channel, usually channel two or channel three.

The older video game console systems also used an RF modulator; some had an internal version of such.

Nowadays, most consumer televisions have direct video inputs, so an RF modulator is not needed. This is a good thing as I'd guess that old RF modulators are hard to find today.

[n0jcf]

Nowadays, most consumer televisions have direct video inputs, so an RF modulator is not needed. This is a good thing as I'd guess that old RF modulators are hard to find today.

Actually though, modulators have been popular lately for adapting DVD players to
TVs that have only RF input. You can certainly find them at Radio Shack:

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2103095&cp=&sr=1&kw=modulator&origkw=modulator&parentPage=search

and around here I've even seen them at Menards and Home Depot, the big box hardware stores.

There are also options today for converting composite video to SVGA so that you can drive a CRT or LCD VGA monitor, eg:

http://www.svideo.com/video2vga.html

Chris

[sje]

Then again, with the upcoming elimination of analog TV broadcasting in the US, it may be difficult to find a new television that can take an RF modulator output as an input.

But I'll bet there will soon be plenty of older TVs available. Just visit your local junkyard after the conversion in February 2009.