Using a Sony Watchman in 2019! - Portable CRT TV
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 ส.ค. 2024
- How to use a Sony Watchman portable TV in 2019. Product links below.
Sony Watchman FD-240 - thrift store find
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3.5mm male to coax female adapter: amzn.to/2YV6zYU
Indoor VHF transformer: amzn.to/2tgBJhr
Balun 300-75 ohm antenna matching transformer: amzn.to/2stn2ak
RF Modulator: amzn.to/3IfuASc
TV antenna with amplifier (not from this video, but this should work): amzn.to/45ax66g
Sony CCD-TRV138 Hi8 camcorder - thrift store find
This test was made for educational purposes only.
I was the coolest kid on the school bus when I could use one of these to watch the Price is Right on the way to school.
On the way to school what time did you go to school? That sure didn't come on at least in my area till around 11:00 and most other places I think it's about the same that you would be watching that in the middle of the day not first thing in the day I suppose maybe in California where the time difference is a chance but still doesn't make much sense
@@ericcook5745 Precisely what an troll would say to bring another person down to pretend like you didn't know what he meant. It's a nostalgia thing and if you need to bring someone down, make it yourself. I bet you kick puppies for fun.
I had this as a teen and it came in handy on Oct 17, 1989 at Candlestick Park. I was able to dial in to a news station in Monterey and Sacramento.
1989 World Series Quake Broadcast with Al Michaels
th-cam.com/video/YUKNvoAAa8s/w-d-xo.html
I have one of these, and it's disgusting that Sony didn't include a 3.5mm RF input, or even A/V inputs to make this a portable test monitor! But when scanning through the tuning dial 12/2020, I was shocked - here in Los Angeles - to see a snowy analog TV channel coming in from Mexico. With the built-in antenna rod!
Still wish it had an input....
I had one of these as a kid in the 90s.. crazy how far things have come..
Little black white tv that barely gets any stations to high quality HD right in our hands today..
Did it get HBO
@@iamwitit4351
Lol no.. you could only get regular TV through the antenna.. the one I had anyways had no jack to connect to anything.. including cable TV.
@@throwaway6795 HBO was channel 6 back then
Ugh just imagine this connected to a Saturn via amplifier and playing games using Bluetooth controllers made by limitedrun games. Love modular things like this!
... it’s just a TV. Nothing special, just about as modular as using headphones with a music plauer
Q
I had one of these. Won it from McDonald's. Sold it for $10 at a pawnshop to buy some pot when I was a teenager, which was kind of a ripoff considering how cool it was at the time. They probably cost a lot back then.
Anyways, it was lousy. The screen worked fine, but the difficulty of getting TV stations with the antenna made it practically unusable. It's so amazing that we have smartphones now.
You’re so cool
@@Fusion991 Thanks!
God, I miss the 80's!!!
I LOVED my Sony black and white Watchman so much.
I would pay almost anything if Sony were to come out with a modern digital version of it, but keep its old-school look.
Sony, if you ever see this ....PLEASE make one just for a limited anniversary edition.
sony and the rest of the japanese crew have gone boring and safe now. boring designs.
Today we can make it by self , not so much difficult , if you know how to manage it
You should be able to go directly from the modulator to the antenna jack with straight coax and the 3.5mm adapter. Since the modulator outputs a 6mhz wide analog signal at 63mhz, the watchman should see that as ch3 with no issues. In fact you should be able to just strip one end of the coax off and tape the bare copper to the antenna and get the same (albeit slightly degraded) results. The mess in the middle is just a string of failure points.
I guess so. Maybe you can make a video doing that.
@@erasertech16 To be more clear, I'm pretty sure what you've got in your setup is converting an unbalanced signal from the modulator to a balanced signal and then the thing right after it converts a balanced signal back to an unbalanced signal.
They basically are converting between two different types of analog transmission line, one type with a center conductor and a ground shield around it (the coax, unbalanced) and one type with two equal but opposite copies of the same signal (the twin leads with the plastic separating them, which is balanced). The coax is more convenient but the balanced is better at cancelling noise. Those converters just change one to the other and vice versa (because back in the day your antenna would output one or the other and your tv would take one or the other).
Ahh thanks bro I thought something was off too but this video was still very useful! I cancelled those 2 parts tho, so I’m glad I read the comments
This device was out of this planet in the 80's. Those who had it were the luckiest people then.
Absolutely!
A year or so ago I found a New-In-Box "Casio TV 890B" at Goodwill for $3.00.
I bought one years ago, used it at work and out camping. Still have it and its put up in the c!part some where. Got my money out of it.
Bought it a best buy for $60.
Thanks so much man I have a crt with only antenna so this helped a lot
Glad it helped
my grandfather gifted me the exact same watchman tv i remember that it was 300.00 back then when i was a kid
This was a cool tv back then because it had a tube instead of the Led screen but the drawback was that it was black and white.
I left mine behind once the digital conversion happened. Suddenly I had 3 TV paperweights.
Thanks for the info but I’d just buy a digital TV instead.
I bought a portable digital tv works like a charm
Analog stuff is so cool! Kind of miss the analog times and its weird quirks. Like the bouncy image when turning on a CRT!
Me too!
So very cool... I love the old ones ,they had character and quality. Great job. On the video I enjoyed it .
I have a Casio version, its the same problem no analog now. its too bad its in great condition
Wonderful device. It makes you wonder why the Americans abandoned their technologies to the Japanese, mainly due to the Korean War, but it is not the whole story of this abandonment. This kind of device without dvb-t decoder is no longer used. It would be tedious but a great challenge for an advanced or elite electronic technician, to change the tuner by a dvb-t tuner inside this sony watchman
2023.
Imagine jonesin so bad for a Jeopardy episode you got all this gear just to realize Alex ain't there anymore😊
No Alex and no analog signal :(
7 bucks really good deal people usually sell them for 20
My dream TV gadget from Rain Man (1988).
I was just building a pc and I was wondering how many Hz this screen is as I am on a tight budget and want to play games, thankyou
I just got one for 3 dollars only had the watchman
I would recommend checking out your local thrift store. Mine sells old monitors from around 10 yrs ago for 5-10 dollars.
CRT monitors are are in the thousands in hz
Team Rat Man where tf can i find thrift store heaven damn
@@willpitts9957 No they are not. The high-end CRT monitors topped at around 75 to 85 Hz.
If a homemade antenna in Puerto Rico works for local channels, I bet this will do too
In the 90s I never had money for a probable tv. Was only a kid for the most part. But then again the antenna channels I didn't watch much
Reminds me that movie The Rainman
You have a newer model. I have one from 1990 and it is only a 2" screen with no antenna jack. Model FD-10A. I won it back in the day. They sold for around $99 at the time. I have is a plug in labeled "ear" for head phones. Mine is worthless now since all the local stations went to satellite.
That's cool. I had no idea mine was a newer model.
I would buy one now if they came out with a digital black and white
Could you just plug the RF modulator directly into the 3.5 mm to coax adapter?
No, because the TV only takes a UHF or VHF signal, so you need that adapter to convert it from coaxial signal to that UHF VHF signal.
yes
@@idontmindpineappleonpizza8825 coaxial is UHF and VHF
I think you're confusing composite video and coaxial video.
@@tristan6509 so could I get a 3.5 mm to coax cable and connect it to my vcr?
@@danielmiyahara9089 yes, you can connect the VCR's RF output to the TV's antena port.
AV to RF, HDMI to AV (color bars) TV transmitter sold in Aliexpress also VHF channel 7 also works.
That's cool! Where does the VHF channel work? Where I live there was a mexican-american analog channel that worked a few years ago but it eventually got shut down.
3:39 is what you have been waiting for.
Watching from india 30 April 2021😉
Sony version of the game boy before the game boy but u watch TV on the go
I took this to the Philippines
For vacation I picked up analog
That's cool. I didn't realize there were some countries still using analog broadcasts.
@@erasertech16 Like ABS-CBN Ch. 3 Cebu or Ch. 46 Pampanga?
@@erasertech16 I would guess a lot of those small Island countries don't have digital TV yet (eg. Fiji, Cook Islands etc). Probably Afghanistan, poor countries like Rwanda, Chad, Ethiopia, The Gambia.
@@iaincowell9747 on the belgian-netherlands-german border you can still recieve analog
@@dario1w894 I live near that border, what channels are they?
Great video, I’ve got a Sony mega watchman which is a lot of fun. I sometimes use it as a portable radio!
Great video man! :)
Hi hello I would like to know if this model of Walkman is still being made? Is this Sony VRT Walkman still being made?
No, I don't think they manufacture these any more.
Great find, thumbs up for sharing this video, thanks.
Definitely cool stuff.
Just curious: why go from 75 ohm to 300 ohm to 300 ohm to 75 ohm with two transformers?
It would be nice to have a VHF wireless video transmitter, you can "stream" your video from PC to any analog TV at home.
That would be cool. Maybe Apple is working on one!
@@erasertech16 I ordered a device called HLLY TVX-50M, found from eBay, it is a risky purchase because I am not sure it will work as expected, but a TH-cam video demonstration. th-cam.com/video/zFUSe_4xPPY/w-d-xo.htmlsi=1c_4EhUF-TZMGAx9
@@erasertech16 There is a device called HLLY TVX-50M capable of transmitting VHF/UHF signals to television sets with range about 200 feet. I made a risky move of ordering it, according to TH-cam video it is compatible with NTSC and PAL TV set. Also cannot find the company who made it, the website is long gone.
I understand the majority of the converters that you're using but one thing I don't understand is why you got to run the antenna through the AV setup to get this to work why couldn't you just plug it into the TV already I'm wondering how this is supposed to work to begin with without a analog to digital TV converter?
DTV Converter Box is my option
long story short, even with the shorter method in the comments, this probably won't be worth it unless it's a model with direct AV input. AV to RF modulators are expensive, relative to what you're getting. Hell, most things dont even have AV these days, so you'd probably need a converter for that too.
Fascinating device, this video unit.
why cant you just use it normally to watch tv?
Because there's no analog TV broadcast stations anymore. They switched to digital.
Will you look at that. Now that’s interesting
hi thanks a lot for this video so nice ! I want to know if its possible to play a video on this portable crt tv from hd drive or from a tablet or something else but in wireless ? thanks a lot
Is the amplifier on TV antenna bi-directional? I thought it will only amplify signal from antenna side.
Your assumption is probably correct.
Satisfying 💕
I want to buy this. Where you from buy this... Please tell me...
You can still use it there was still analog tv stations
привет у меня тоже такой сони тв. он не ловит тв каналы. а радио работает. что делать? я хочу смотреть тв а он не ловит
Nagyon jó nézki nekem nagyon felelne
Hey! Where are you from?
Hello i was wondering how would you do this to put out into hdmi? I would love to try to connect my pc or console just for fun and also mine is a color Watchman.
I have an old video that does that. Check it out: th-cam.com/video/D7E-BPxiF2M/w-d-xo.html
Awesome video thanks
Can you connect a dtv converter box into the ext antennae port w a proper adaptor?
I haven't tried that but I think that will work as long as the converter box has an RF out port.
I connected all my little tv’s to the digital converter, antenna and watch tv
So, can we not use those adapters to hook it up to one of those cable boxes to convert the digital signals to analog & watch tv?!!?
Yes, you can use a converter box instead of all the adapters. I thought of that after I made the video lol.
@erasertech16 OMG that is fantastic! I love vintage tech! I have to have one now! I always wanted one when they were new back in the day but they were too expensive there! You got one for an amazing price! Thank you so much for making & sharing this video with us!
Do you have a process to convert a Sony fd10-a?
Just found one at a yard sale and wondering the same thing
Anyone in 2020
Was the RF modulator used to show tv shows on television, or on a channel? Because I don't know how people show movies and TV shows on channels and televisions. Is there some kind of machine?
The modulator was used to connect TVs that don't have AV connections to VCRs. It essentially converts AV signals to coax so you can use an older TV.
@@erasertech16 11:14 Today, when you buy a watch man, you don't have TV channels, you have to set them yourself. The problem is if you don't understand how to repair a TV. Then Watch man is 100% useless to you.
i have an dk bw 5 inch cmtronic and it cant play broadcast sound how do i make the broadcast sound work
I'm not sure
then how do i colour the bw dk tv i have
NTSC-M and PAL-M
why did you ad an extra adapter
Yeah, that's weirdly wired. :)
Where did you buy this ?
I bought it at a thrift store a few years ago.
These were barely used because they chewed through batteries. No AC.
You're right!
Is there a way that i can recieve the digital over the air tv channels?
This is an analog TV so it cannot receive a digital signal.
Hi there, will that work with Digital Antenna?
No, I don't think so. This is a fully analog device. Unless you use a digital to analog converter... that would be an interesting experiment.
What else can you use besides a camcorder for the input signal?
Anything with an AV out signal like a DVD player.
@@erasertech16 thanks for your help!
TH-cam? Nah this is sick.
nice!
About how far can you go in your house and still pick up the signal using the antenna? I doubt you could go to another room, but what about across a large living room/kitchen?
I just tried with a setup, could only get a few feet before picture gets fades away.
Wondering if another amplifier or better antenna would be enough for cross house.
If you want good distance you can use a Blonder Tongue AM-60-XXX the where the XXX is the larger the number the higher the frequency it can broadcast. Avoid the AM-30-XXX as these have less power. If you attach the Blonder Tongue to an antenna in your attic or roof you can send a signal to cover your home, maybe even your whole property. You could even add an amp in-between the Blonder Tongue and the antenna and go even further.
It’s not portable after all those connections.
Correct. But it can be with the setup at the end of the video. Watch the full clip.
I bought this back in 1991 for about £80 in john Lewis
Can you hook any camera to this? To see in the screen
Like for example the Sony a7iv camera
I guess so as long as your camera has HDMI output.
Can I just plug it into a dish Joey
I'm not sure.
Ray man!
I used this all the time in 1983 or 1984 I will be dammed to have to connect All those thing... That was the point just pull the antenna up and adjust the video video...Why can't we get original analog signal anymore?.... The world is gonna shut down when there is no power.Or satellite going down
You can't because there are no analog TV signals anymore (at least in the US). You can buy modern versions of this for digital TV but they're not made by Sony and reception seems to not be as good.
@erasertech16 That's what I'm saying.The world will fall once digital goes down Ham shortwave radios will be the way
When you made this video, were you aware of COVID on the horizon?
lol, of course not. Why do you ask?
I remember these existed but never seen one live they were not that popular maybe they were too expensive
how many inch is?
do you sell it?
Camera screen not tv
But not channel work
Yup
I want one but with chargeable
How is a CRT like that so flat?
@Spaghetti no, it’s a crt. It’s mirrored or something. That’s why it’s so long.
@Spaghetti and all the space is just repositioned downward from the viewing part instead of behind it. Not to mention it’s just smaller in general compared to regular TV screens. It is a CRT, heck even some camcorders used smaller 1.5” CRTs
@Spaghetti yes, they used it in the viewfinder. Much smaller than this. Some watchmans did use LCDs but the most common ones used CRTs. You can tell which watchmans used LCDs by the model number, As they used FDL- instead of just FD- .
sony watchman is from the 90s
Why doesn’t this work with a GameCube?
here with one in 2021
totally a boring thing....just wasting time, money, everything... who have no common sense, he would buy this product...if it was the product of 90's time then it is okey
Buy a new tv
That's no fun :)
0:40 No... No!!! Oh NO NO NO NO... NOOOOOOOO!!! ... Gahhhhhhhhhh!!!
How the hell am I supposed to do this without a screwdriver.
Rip 🪦 analog television