If you had a TV that could still tune above channel 69, (nice!) you could use it to eavesdrop on cellular calls, right up until the analog cell network was finally shut down.
I worked for a Catholic hospital for 32 years. At one time before we had cable, around 1975, I built a 16 channel "cable" system that brought in all of the vhf, uhf, and a couple of satellite channels. We also had an in-house education channel and a religious channel as well. I used commercial modulators and down convertors. I used the cable channels and everything was adjacent channel so you had to balance outputs closely. I even built a controller for the VCR's for the education channel that ran them on a regular schedule and between programs displayed informational text similar to what you showed. Eventually it was replaced by commercial cable sometime in the late 2000's after I retired.
St Mary's/mayo has the modern equivalent of that, where it has a mayo kids channel, where usually they do childrens programming, but when i decided to turn it on it was just showing a live feed of a dark atrium, spooked me
I'm a cable technician, I think what you've done here is really cool. I have a lot of experience with those modulators, they were used mostly for injecting security camera feeds, or for distributed video in bars and such. But the problem with a lot of them is that they are very noisy and they bleed over into adjacent channels, they also output at very high decibel levels which exacerbates that bleed, you should try and equalize the output levels on your modulators, see if reducing the gain helps, if the outputs are lower, you'll have less problems with noise and you may be able to get more channels packed together, then you can amplify the equalized signal into your distribution. We have the same problems you do with noise on the cable plant, disconnect unused outlets and terminate them if you want to reduce noise further. It's too bad you don't have access to a cable meter, I am pretty sure you could use a software defined radio. Also the full map of what is where on the frequency spectrum is available from the crtc. Let me know if you have any questions I'd be happy to help!
It's a fun setup. Reminds me of something I did 20-ish years ago, when we built our new townhouse, when analog cable TV was still a thing. I went nerdy tech overboard with our new construction and put in a couple of cameras - one at the front gate (where we also had put in a combo intercom + remote gate lock switch so your phone would ring when someone rang at the gate, you could talk to them on your phone, and then buzz them in wby hitting #, but I digress...). One camera was on the garage eve, etc. Then I ran those camera outputs into video modulators, put in some frequency filters on the main CATV in to squash CATV channels above 65, and injected the modulated cameras into our CATV so when someone rang the doorbell I could turn on channel 68 and see who it was, or I could watch channel 65 to see who had pulled into our driveway in front of the garage. It was easy to do and really fun. Shortly thereafter everything went digital with our CATV but by that time I had sold the townhouse anyway so it wasn't my problem anymore, lol.
As a Detroiter, the Global TV links make me smile, as we used to watch Bob McAdorey (The McAdorey Report) on Global News regularly in the olden days...
Love this! I am an aging millennial who has been hit HARD with the 90s nostalgia stick and have numerous CRTs around the house. I was looking for something exactly like this and I'm so glad I came across you! I used to have a TV-guide type setup using an old XBMC plugin called "pseudoTV" that I might dig around and try to get a channel running. Thanks! Definitely subscribing!
Yeah, I still prefer watching a CRT. Our lounge telly is CRT and no intention of changing that. Although the way it's fed is a little more modern. A media player box straight into the video input. Just put whatever we want to watch on USB and plug it in. It's nostalgic enough, once sitting down and watching it. No broadcast TV in our household.
The picture of CRT is objectively better, and nobody will ever change my mind. Also, how is this such a thing? Often find myself looking around the internet for TV commercials from my city from the 80s and 90s...
Boy you really want the wayback machine! Holy Moly the processing, and cabling complexity in order to get a simulation of old analog cable TV is off the chain!
I have a pair of BlonderTongue 19" rack mounted modulators that were from the Sahara Casino Hotel in Vegas. both are fixed channel One is set for channel 4 and other for channel 7. I came across them from a bin of IT equipment at an auction.
To minimize interference and signal loss, ensure you are using RG-6 coaxial cable for your internal TV system and not RG-59. RG-6 and RG-59 are both types of coaxial cable that can be used with analog television, but RG-6 is thicker and has better shielding, so it is far less susceptible to inteference from over-the-air signals. Reportedly, RG-6 is also better at carrying the high-frequency signals for UHF channels. Back in the 1990s, when I used RG-59 cable, I could still see ghosted images of off-air TV channels superimposed on cable channels with the same frequency, but when I switched to RG-6, the ghosting disappeared. RG-6 may also help block out interference from power supplies and modern wireless communication. Interestingly, when I was a teenager, I had a TV in my bedroom but no cable. One day, while the rest of the family was out, I connected a long extension cable from my bedroom TV and VCR down to the cable that had been feeding the family TV. Because I did not have a sufficiently long length of coaxial cable, I used _audio_ cable with coaxial connection adaptors. The audio cable _was_ able to carry TV signals, but the higher and higher I tuned, the weaker the signals became. By around cable channel 65 (equivalent to UHF channel 14), the picture was extremely fuzzy.
Yeah, the signal loss in coax cables (both RG59 and RG6) increases with frequency. Both have about 3x the loss measured in dB when going from channel 6 VHF to the top of the UHF dial. Also RG59 has about 1.5x the loss in dB as RG6. RG6 is definitely the way to go.
@@MrFiver1111 I know what you mean -- my RG-6 cables all have screw-on connectors that are difficult to tighten or loosen, especially when reaching behind a VCR or large TV. There are adaptors you can get that change the screw-on connector to a simpler, easier, push-on connector.
@@MrFiver1111I use RG6 for amateur radio and this is the biggest issue I had to solve. I went with the solution CATV companies use and just used compression fittings, originally F connectors until I found out you can also get them in BNC.
The LTE filter could be more than a novelty, a lot of receivers are subject to frontend overload, meaning that a strong signal can obscure a weak signal even on a different frequency. So, if you are near a cell tower it could impede reception of TV channels. This is an awesome setup, and I'd like to do something like this in the future.
Yep. I would add that I had problems with DTV reception on the 1st gen receivers and found that a nearby FM station was overloading the tuners on my equipment. I installed an FM trap and was able to scan in about 25 more channels once the tuner could "hear" over the local station.
Update: I just opened a a box of 10 Blonder Tongue MCIM-D modulators from ebay, that I bought immediately after watching this video . Thanks for the tip of using PC/CD audio jumper wires for power, @11:22.
I want to do this so terribly bad. I’m an electrician by trade with an extensive computers background and I STILL feel lost. Glad to have found your channel, I’ve been playing with this idea for about 10 years.
Nice analog cable system you've got running! Every so often I think about putting something together, but I don't have a good place to set up many video sources and modulators. Your Weather Channel has me thinking about trying to recreate some of the local cable stuff we had in my area in the late 80s and early 90s. One of my favorites showed local information and classified ads including photos. Every year around Christmas it would change to showing photos and holiday messages sent in by viewers and local businesses. It ran off a Commodore Amiga, but a Raspberry Pi would be a great alternative other than the lack of "Guru Meditation" errors.
Ahhh yes, that what I'm looking at is how I remember that same font from the early 80s Weather Channel. Great classic setup from cartoons, music videos, sports, news, educational programs for children, movies, house and weather.
I’d also imagine that any marginal or faulty coaxial cables would introduce some noise on some or all frequencies. But I’m imagining that you knew this already.
Definitely. All the parts I'm using are old cable co stuff that people pulled from their houses and gave away to thrift stores or at garage sales. It's quite good quality (way better than the cheap stuff you used to buy at Walmart or Radio Shack) but I've done swaps to make sure there are no faulty bits (and I've found several).
Always interesting to see how "channels" were handled so differently in the US/Canada than here in Europe. TVs with a crude "channel" selector were not usually seen here from the seventies. All TVs, even low-end ones, had some form of preset tuning where you select a "programme" that is pre-set to a "channel". No TV stations here would say they are "on channel 7". That would differ per area anyway. We had "programmes" like "BBC 1" or "NLD 1" and it would be on a channel unknown to the general user, they would have preset it (or the shop would have done that) once and they would never see it. Also, on cable the use of UHF was quite normal. There were some countries that used "cable channels", but the original TVs made for broadcast would not have them. Our local cable network just used UHF instead, at least in the beginning. Only when there were lots of channels and when digital started to be introduced in parallel to analog, the "cable channels" were being used.
Back in the 80s/90s TV stations in Canada and the US used to be far less centralized than they are now, with stations being very local or regional and with only a minor/part time National Network affiliation. Each station had unique schedules with a lot more local programming, each station operating as a kind of mini studio in itself. So for example CBC Winnipeg (CBWT) would have a radically different schedule or programming than CBC Calgary. Only the prime-time programming from 8-11PM was co-ordinated across the network, otherwise each station was its own entity. So the local stations tended to have a very strong sense of branding in each city, with its own “shows” and local celebrity hosts. Example, everyone in Winnipeg remembers Bundy from MTN13 or Laurie Mustard of Switchback on CBC Winnipeg.
@@TransCanadaPhil That's so very different compared to most of Europe. For instance here in Sweden, all TV stations (both of them) had nation-wide coverage, were public service and had no commercials. In 1992 we got our third terrestrial station, TV4 (TV3 was cable and satellite only). This was the only commercial station that could be received using a normal roof top antenna (until digital television was introduced). The concepts of markets, affiliation and syndication were for a long time completely alien to me. And still are in a way. We didn't even have local commercial radio until 1993.
@@testcardsandmore1231 In the Netherlands it was the same. We had 2 (later 3) national programmes which were transmitted from about 10 sites, of course everywhere on different channels. At first they had no commercials, later commercials were introduced but only at major points between shows, e.g. before and after the news. In the eighties, city-wide cable was introduced, and it would have national programmes from the neighboring countries. In the nineties, commercial TV was introduced, but only on satellite and cable, no terrestrial transmission. Later, terrestrial DVB was introduced and these programmes were transmitted there. As in the eighties when cable was introduced everyone of course already had a TV, usually without support for cable channels, cable was made compatible with existing TVs: it used UHF (something that was deemed impossible before). In those days, it was still considered important to have backward compatibility.
@@testcardsandmore1231 yes Europe seemed to have a much more national and public service broadcasting oriented system from what I’ve researched over the years. One major factor in Canada was the very early rise and widespread adoption of Cable Television even compared to the US. As early as the late 1970s most Canadian homes subscribed to Cable TV rather than receiving signals over the air with an aerial. Even compared to the US, adoption here was far faster. A major reason was because Canadian Cable companies had an ample supply of easy and free programming they were able to redistribute, namely U.S. stations. They’d setup Aerials near the US border, then capture and redistribute the U.S. based channels like ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, and later FOX into Canadian cities that were not otherwise available over the air. Combined with the 3-4 local channels available in each city, the US channels, plus public access channels, The average Canadian home already had about 13 channels available by the late 70s/early 80s. Far more than even in the US at that time. The average Canadian had access to both public service television networks from both Canada and the US (CBC and PBS), plus all the major commercial networks from both the US and Canada too.
in the USA UHF CH14-19 (470MHz-512MHz) is the UHF-T band which can be used for land mobile (two way radio) happens mostly in large metro areas like NYC. outside of them they are normal TV channels. Indianapolis uses RF 14,16,17,19 for DTV
I live in Mexico City and developed a setup just as yours, except that I was unable to use any of the VHF channels: there are certain times during the day that channels 3 and 4 are impossible to be seen since there are lots of interference, coming, perhaps, from cellular phones. However channels 14 to 69 are Ok providing you don't jumpt into a used one. Congratulations for your setup!. I had been unable to find a STEREO MODULATOR anywhere, so for now all my channels are mono. Also I added a couple of ATSC channels, that are modulating before the TDT receivers, so I can feed tune from the digital modulator to the analog tvs through my tdt receivers. I am continuously adding channels to my whole setup just for fun.
Back between the mid 90s/2000s I (a satellite TV enthusiast since age 13 located in Germany) built a headend to add 22 channels to our standard cable lineup. I added the channels in UHF, the headend was a mix of a commercial headend and receivers with decoders (Eurocrypt/D2Mac, Videocrypt) and RF modulators. The channels were satellite channels from different satellites and most were pay TV the cable company did not even offer or were not available in my country (Germany) for regular subscription. Needless to say, some neighbors were soon interested in a cable hookup, for a short time I became a cable company! The headend was in my parents garage with lots of dished on top of the flat roof. I still wonder that I never got in trouble because the channels must have backfed into the regular cable system since I did not use any filters when combining the 2 systems. But maybe my amplifiers were not strong enough to go very far in the grid. Also how much electricity it consumed, but it must be a lot with all the receivers, decoders, Secam/Pal converters, amplifiers etc.
This showed up in my recommended videos to watch. Firstly, I haven't seen the name "Baycrest" since I was a kid. My parents had a Baycrest TV that was made in 1979, I think it was in our family until 2000. That's alot of equipment to run that setup!
Generally the only time you’d need an LTE or 5G filter is if you live near an actual cell tower. Near meaning you can actually see the tower from your house. Otherwise it usually doesn’t provide any noticeable difference.
Then there's some transmission towers like the one by me, the WCSN tower has a 4g/5g cell tower across the street from it 🙃 always comes in spotty no matter what you do.
Hah, hell yes, love to see the new setup! I thought I was crazy for iterating on your idea most recently with a fifth channel that I'm modulating through a VCR and by adding network logos and interstitials to each channel...but you've gone and done even more channels! So jealous of how you can modulate digital channels too. I need to do a full tour of the hardware and software I'm running one of these days and when I do I'll link you. You're always my number one inspiration with this project. I finally got my house wired up throughout and it's been great having my own channels in every room. I'm interested in the Blonder Tongue rack mounted modulators. So they can't be changed and you have to buy them and just deal with what they output to? I've been considering a Thor Broadcast rack-mounted modulator as a far far far future solution if my ChannelPlus modulators ever start to fail but that might be a solution too. As for audio, I've been getting great results with the RCA HDMI to Composite adapters that don't require any external power, but I'm glad the external soundcards are working for you. I need to adjust my gain levels myself. Great stuff!
Not modulating any digital channels unfortunately, the equipment is still just too expensive. The only digital channels I get are picked up over the air from an attic mounted antenna. The Blonder Tongue modulators are fixed frequency, yes. But they did make configurable ones too. They're just less common as they were more expensive and these were typically used in situations where you set it once and left it. The stereo Channel Plus modulator (model 5615) and the Blonder Tongue modulators give the best quality signal in my opinion. The sounds from the 5615 is fantastic too.
@@probnotstechThanks for the tips! Looking into it those Blonder Tongue modulators are nice and cheap. What connectors do you use to get the composite out to whatever they use? Thinking one day I'll get a rack of those plus the stereo ChannelPlus for my music channel. By the way, I've posted my own updated tour of my own network. Definitely want to pretty it up down the line but hey, it works.
Thank you for walking us aroung your work. I am jealous of the space you must have to be able to keep multiple vintage CRT TVs and the rest equipment. Would you consider doing a video showing all your VHS equipment as well?
In the UK, stereo sound on an analogue signal would be a bit more difficult. You's need a modulator that is capable of streaming NICAM digital stereo alongside the PAL signal. Yes, we had digital stereo sound on our analogue broadcasts! Another thing I can't help but ask and I'm sure you'd have done if you were European, adding a Teletext service to at least the weather channel! There actually are online teletext services that range from old pages recovered from off air videotapes to actual live services and the Pi is more than capable of producing the required visual data for output over composite!
You know, I wonder if I even have a TV that supports teletext. We never had it here, but I remember buying a Toshiba TV in 1998 that had it (or at least something called TEXT that showed a big empty black box on the screen anyway).
@@MrFiver1111 "I guess it would be the universal teletext mode but nothing ever loaded" I'd say it's more likely that they produce one remote for all territories but not one TV for all territories. So the European version of a TV is multistandard and has a Teletext decoder, but the US version of that same TV is NTSC only and doesn't have a Teletext decoder. The lack of a P100 in the top left corner would suggest no Teletext decoder.
Not sure why this was in my recommended tab, but what an awesome project! I just bought a house with a bunch of coax hookups in the walls still, might just have to put them to use with this project.
Going back a bit farther in CATV land, the early community channels used a fixed B&W camera that looked at a merry go round setup where printed paper was placed on the outside of the merry go round. There was some sort of timer / mechanical linkage that would pause the paper long enough to be read. .
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I appreciate that tu youth like you love this. I am from late 40's saw first tv signal in Argentina in 1951. Saludos
I’m from Winnipeg too. Garden City area. I remember always having that weather channel back in the day on Videon. Were you on the West side (Videon) or the east side (Greater Winnipeg CableVision/Shaw)? I remember back in the day playing around with my outdoor antenna and on a good day you could tune in channel 12 KNRR and WDAZ directly over the air from Winnipeg. As for those higher UHF channels, I remember I often could listen in on analog cell phone calls using an old TV on UHF channels 82 and 83; used to have lots of fun doing that on an extra old Black and white tv that we had laying around. Cool setup, this is exactly the kind of crazy setup I might have done 15-20 years ago in the SD era! Your personality kind of reminds me of myself when i was younger, I have the same kind of obsession with understanding how the cable system works and broadcasting. I went to Tec Voc and took broadcasting when i was in high school.
I was on the East/Shaw side - always found it weird going to houses on the West side of the river and their channels were different. Also had a lot of fun picking up KNRR. We lived in the South end of the city and my bedroom was on the 2nd floor, so KNRR was never a problem (they had a great afternoon cartoon lineup in the early/mid 90s). I was, however, never able to get WDAZ for anything more than a temporary blip from weird weather patterns.
I have a CCTV system with 140+ cameras and custom VMS software. I seriously been considering getting a few of those IP combo modulators and having a analog CCTV monitor circuit going around my place. Old CCTV systems from Bosch, Funkwerk and Siemens did that where the central switch matrix would have a distribution box that would essentially allow all camera feeds to go through one coax for satellite monitors
I've the old Ku and Cpan analog receivers back in the day. I also combined one on ch.2 ,the other on ch.4 w/certain spitters, 6 satellite dishes was crazy
I think the purpose of the LTE/5G filters is to prevent a strong LTE signal from overloading the tuner. I remember years ago having a cheap pocket radio that didn't have a good FM tuner. A local radio station would overpower the other stations across the whole band.
I love the setup, very jealous. With the DTV boxes, I have had them overheat when I didn't have them plugged into coax, the connector on the back actually was hot to the touch.
The power connector you made for the MICM-Ds ... that is really cool. I can find those all over the place, but finding the rack mount for them or a power supply for them ... not so much.
Wow and I thought I was the only one that did this. My setup runs channel 2, 4MTS stereo, 5, 7, 9, 12 MTS stereoCATV 27 and 47. Im only running 2 raspberry pi for canned content, plus 2 ATSC boxes for a few stations that require a seperate antenna for a different direction. Then my cable boxes on 2 of them set to channels I watch regularly. All mixed in to the digital feed from antenna. All my modulators are either BT or Wavecom commercial except my channel 4 MTS stereo which is a Radio shack model that they sold briefly about 35 years ago. I have a series of distribution amplifiers and RF pads to balance the levels. The advantage to the commercial modulators is they have adjustable RF outout which makes balancing the levels a breeze. Mine has been running about 15 years now. Even since the transition to DTV. My Pi is also the first gen running Kodi just to stream videos. One is on a 5 disk DVD player that is loaded with a bunch of disks in rotation
Your setup is really cool. I was actually looking at getting the distribution amps you use. And that Radio Shack stereo modulator is definitely a rare thing. Until I saw it in your video I had no idea a consumer RF modulator was ever sold that modulated in stereo. I've been tempted lately to add a digital ATSC channel, but the modulators are still just too expensive for me right now. I've found some modulators that support QAM for a reasonable price, but my TVs only do ATSC on antenna mode or QAM on cable mode - not both.
@Probnot, this has got me thinking about how one could accomplish something similar in the more modern, more digital domain. Same programming format, just a different approach. I'm playing with ideas right now but I'm imaging It would involve a central server that stores all the media, and creates the programming schedule for whatever channels are configured, and then the player(s) (either on that server, or as stand alone units) would receive commands to change "channels" from a universal remote system such as RTI, URC, or Control4. This would mean each tv would only tune to one channel or HDMI, then the commands would pass back to the player. and the player would only have to play a single stream at a time, changing whenever it received a command. this keeps much of the same experience of linear programming, but greatly simplifies the hardware side of things. I feel like this could be fairly simple to get working in a rudimentary manner, but could take a lot of work to make slick. I'm stating to look at IPTV in my exploration. not sure how much the concept overlaps, but it seems like there are a few iptv docker options that might slot right in with my existing unraid server. As part of this whole adventure I would also want to play with DLSS for bringing the older shows closer to the present for our modern panels.
your previous videos inspired me to try autoplaying video game commercials and bad video game cartoons over Pis and letting stream viewers change channels via extron crosspoint rs232. I'd love to just put movies on shuffle that i can just turn on around my house. i hope to find some gear that will let me build a similar less complicated setup to the one you have someday. i hope that said gear will still be on ebay when i can finally get around to it though :D
I've always wanted to do something like this, But now I would try to do a digital HD setup because I don't have any CRT monitors. SD content wouldn't look right. I think I can find some used 1080p modulators from an old cable head end online. Also, your DB level at the TV for each channel is very important, I would recommend finding an old cable db meter to check each channels output level and put attenuation on the output of each channel modulator as needed. You are right, its a balance and you might be overshooting some channels and getting bleed over. Also, for a closed cable system, make sure you have no open outlets or leakage points because as much as you need to worry about receiving interference, you also don't want to leak out interference.
Man, I would love to find an old cable dB meter. Tools like that are damn impossible to find nowadays. Regarding digital HD stations, I would love to add one or two... but ATSC modulators start at around $300, so I haven't bothered yet. I've seen some QAM (cable standard) modulators for slightly cheaper. The problem is that I modulate my channels on UHF, not CATV frequencies (so my older TVs can receive them). And newer TVs seem to only scan for QAM signals on CATV mode. When set to UHF, they would scan ATSC (since ATSC is used for OTA). So I'm kinda stuck with the harder to find & more expensive ATSC modulators.
I had a problem with 3 of them in series (unamplified). For some reason 2 work great, 3 was a problem. Every few months I tear the whole thing apart with a new idea to make it better/simpler. Then after a few hours I end up right back where I was lol
I know this might be counter intuitive, but have you ever considered a modulator that broadcasts over the air for home use? Perhaps to broadcast into portable/handheld TV's & be able to roam around the house and perhaps for your immediate neighbors to see?😁 😂 I always wanted to do that since I have a few portables. That'd be my dream build, but I'm very impressed with your CATV setup. I've subscribed to your channel as a result. Cheers
The LTE filters help because the signal is gonna be really strong coming from the phone in your house, if that makes sense. It’s not because of any worries concerning distant cell towers, but more about the nearby mobile phones. It has to do with what older tuners can handle, and the near-far effect or sum
Wow, that is super cool! I have got a similar setup myself but in much much smaller scale. Just a DTV box, a couple of DVD players and a VCR connected to various consumer grade modulators.
Nice to see the updates! Would be cool if you could set up cable radio too 👀, I’m working on that myself, relaying the local FM and piping in some broadcasters I like.
The LTE filters are probably helping. LTE has a lot of power behind it from the transmission tower. That kind of power will bleed over into other bands. Lower end electronics don’t have band pass filter in them to block out strong signals. You can test this with a consumer SDR, you’ll notice broadcast FM and AM signals where they don’t belong because consumer SDRs are cheap and don’t have filters.
Yeah it definitely helps, and I figured it was bleeding of strong signals, as well as some harmonics. An SDR would be fantastic in figuring out weird harmonics from some of these modulators. Getting them to play nice feels like being a kindergarten teacher with a class of 30 kids hyped up on candy.
I've been looking to do something like this but on a much simpler basis - primarily to distribute Teletext signals around my house using RF. I'm in the UK, and all my TVs - mainly pre-2009 Panasonic plasma displays, with one CCFL LCD - are sufficiently ancient to still have built-in Teletext decoders. It's pretty straightforward to set up a Pi to generate the signal through its AV-OUT, and then to modulate it via a VCR for internal distribution. Voila - live Teletext on every TV in the house, just like the old days!
Good job on this one man. I love the wall of gear. Maybe you can take a shot at designing a modern digital home cable distribution system, with a central computerized control. And maybe make it remote access. If thats legal. LOL.
For the final amplifier that goes to the house, you can use an AGC one (Automatic Gain Control) or one with multiple inputs and attenuators builtin for each input. I don't know if in Canada/US you have it, but here in Italy some comapanies (like Mitan Technologies) make "special" amplifiers which amplify only certain channels and/or bands, maybe that will help filterning the signal and avoiding rumors. An alternative is using a programmable amplifier, where you can program it to amplify only certain channels or bands and usually they also have AGC bultin. P.S. if you plan buying something from europe be careful that we use different channnel/frequency, so specify the frequencies you are using and also the bandwith
I live in very east Quebec where we only get 3 Digital OTA channels (TVA, Télé-Québec and Noovo). Since I only really watch those channels plus Radio-Canada and CBC, I was thinking about doing this. Both are streaming free online and I can make them play 24/7 on a FireTV stick. So probably gonna buy modulators and HDMI converters to add them to the DTV channels.
4:00 British channel was showing "A bit of Fry and Laurie" very much an homage to Monty Python and a product of the same university dramatic club as the M.P. crew. Stephen Fry was talking and Hugh Laurie (Aka Dr. House MD) was facing away. Definitely woth a watch, along with Blackadder goes forth 😂
Yeah Bit of Fry and Laurie is excellent. One of my favourite sketch comedy shows (among Monty Python, Kids in the Hall, Mitchell and Webb, and Whitest Kids U Know)
0:44 - This article may help: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-American_television_frequencies I can remember my family having an old 1970s-era TV with knobs connected to basic cable when I was a kid. It wasn't until we got our first VCR, which included a cable-ready tuner, that we were able to tune cable channels above 13. I actually still have a small TV with knobs from the mid-1980s. It still works, but its capacitors are starting to wear out -- the picture flickers a bit when the set is turned on after being left off for a long time. ☹
Oh yeah, I have my own spreadsheet that maps out all the frequencies. For whatever reason they've always fascinated me, but I suck at explaining things "off the cuff" like that.
There actually were passive converters that shifted the midband and highband frequencies to the broadcast UHF frequencies so they could be tuned with a standard UHF tuner. There also were converters than essentially let you tune through the broadcast VHF channels "twice", I'm not sure if they worked by shifting frequencies or using two coax drops (maybe both depending on how the cable plant was set up).
I used to have a Radio Shack (Archer) model 15-1281 that did exactly that. It was a powered device and shifted the cable bands up into the UHF band. I used it to shift a security camera in my parents house from a ch.3 modulator up into the 90s and injected it into the cable TV. Never heard of the "twice" VHF converter.
For the record not all cable TV was in that gap, there were multiple standards and some really did use UHF over coaxial for cable broadcast. My college actually had a cable TV system that worked this way so you didn't have to have a decoder box.
This is an awesome project! Would love to do something similar with WeatherStar and a small CRT. Might do something like this but with virtual machines within Promox with a shared hardrive. For all of the channel content, did you rip those tv shows to 480p? Curious of the quality since I mostly have 1080p movies and would have to source over the air quality stuff to get that same feel.
I appreciate the amount of work that went into this, but I'm wondering if it could be done with less equipment. 🤔 like, running a bunch of VMs for the video signals, with each running out some kind of USB device for AV in a pass-thru. I'd have to do some research, but it should be doable.
So a hospital I stayed at recently had analog cable still up some how and it was actually using the analog tuner on the tv if I ever go again I’m tempted to bring my vcr and hook it up
But I would actually broadcast anamorphic widescreen minus 12 px on each side of the 704x480 frame to overcome the overscan those newer tv put on. And I wonder if you broadcast telecine stuff towards the analog tuner of a new tv if the set will properley ivtc it back to 23.976p That could be neat. I’ve always been a fan of anamorphic over ntsc. You can even burn down your own widescreen movies at 24p ( 23.976) on vhs tapes! That’s stunning on a widescreen crt 😊
If you had a TV that could still tune above channel 69, (nice!) you could use it to eavesdrop on cellular calls, right up until the analog cell network was finally shut down.
I remember doing that. But didn't they switch frequencies after a few seconds? I always got little snippets of conversations.
Not exactly... cellular calls are digital and encrypted, not analog. At best, you'd pick up screeching noise bursts.
@@rpelzerthat's the case now, but for decades we had AMPS which was fully analog FDMA based...
@@int0x2eUsed to hear some pretty interesting things growing up from old tvs. Even cb radio would bleed in from time to time.
Yeah I used to listen in. Still have the old 1977 fleetwood monochrome TV I got at woolco.
I worked for a Catholic hospital for 32 years. At one time before we had cable, around 1975, I built a 16 channel "cable" system that brought in all of the vhf, uhf, and a couple of satellite channels. We also had an in-house education channel and a religious channel as well. I used commercial modulators and down convertors. I used the cable channels and everything was adjacent channel so you had to balance outputs closely. I even built a controller for the VCR's for the education channel that ran them on a regular schedule and between programs displayed informational text similar to what you showed. Eventually it was replaced by commercial cable sometime in the late 2000's after I retired.
St Mary's/mayo has the modern equivalent of that, where it has a mayo kids channel, where usually they do childrens programming, but when i decided to turn it on it was just showing a live feed of a dark atrium, spooked me
I'm a cable technician, I think what you've done here is really cool. I have a lot of experience with those modulators, they were used mostly for injecting security camera feeds, or for distributed video in bars and such.
But the problem with a lot of them is that they are very noisy and they bleed over into adjacent channels, they also output at very high decibel levels which exacerbates that bleed, you should try and equalize the output levels on your modulators, see if reducing the gain helps, if the outputs are lower, you'll have less problems with noise and you may be able to get more channels packed together, then you can amplify the equalized signal into your distribution.
We have the same problems you do with noise on the cable plant, disconnect unused outlets and terminate them if you want to reduce noise further.
It's too bad you don't have access to a cable meter, I am pretty sure you could use a software defined radio.
Also the full map of what is where on the frequency spectrum is available from the crtc.
Let me know if you have any questions I'd be happy to help!
Hello realcojo what would you recommend for video loss on a security camera network?
It's a fun setup. Reminds me of something I did 20-ish years ago, when we built our new townhouse, when analog cable TV was still a thing. I went nerdy tech overboard with our new construction and put in a couple of cameras - one at the front gate (where we also had put in a combo intercom + remote gate lock switch so your phone would ring when someone rang at the gate, you could talk to them on your phone, and then buzz them in wby hitting #, but I digress...). One camera was on the garage eve, etc. Then I ran those camera outputs into video modulators, put in some frequency filters on the main CATV in to squash CATV channels above 65, and injected the modulated cameras into our CATV so when someone rang the doorbell I could turn on channel 68 and see who it was, or I could watch channel 65 to see who had pulled into our driveway in front of the garage. It was easy to do and really fun. Shortly thereafter everything went digital with our CATV but by that time I had sold the townhouse anyway so it wasn't my problem anymore, lol.
Sounds like a neat setup!
As a Detroiter, the Global TV links make me smile, as we used to watch Bob McAdorey (The McAdorey Report) on Global News regularly in the olden days...
You're tempting me more and more to make a set up kind of like this once we move to the new house.
You totally should!
Do it.
Doit.
Love this! I am an aging millennial who has been hit HARD with the 90s nostalgia stick and have numerous CRTs around the house. I was looking for something exactly like this and I'm so glad I came across you! I used to have a TV-guide type setup using an old XBMC plugin called "pseudoTV" that I might dig around and try to get a channel running. Thanks! Definitely subscribing!
Yeah, I still prefer watching a CRT. Our lounge telly is CRT and no intention of changing that. Although the way it's fed is a little more modern. A media player box straight into the video input. Just put whatever we want to watch on USB and plug it in. It's nostalgic enough, once sitting down and watching it. No broadcast TV in our household.
The picture of CRT is objectively better, and nobody will ever change my mind.
Also, how is this such a thing? Often find myself looking around the internet for TV commercials from my city from the 80s and 90s...
aging millenial? 🙄
the age cutoff for millennials is 42, so yeah @@JimmyHandtrixx
I had this very TV. It was a hand-me-down from my grandmother. Back from a time where The Bay was into electronics
Boy you really want the wayback machine! Holy Moly the processing, and cabling complexity in order to get a simulation of old analog cable TV is off the chain!
I have a pair of BlonderTongue 19" rack mounted modulators that were from the Sahara Casino Hotel in Vegas. both are fixed channel One is set for channel 4 and other for channel 7. I came across them from a bin of IT equipment at an auction.
To minimize interference and signal loss, ensure you are using RG-6 coaxial cable for your internal TV system and not RG-59. RG-6 and RG-59 are both types of coaxial cable that can be used with analog television, but RG-6 is thicker and has better shielding, so it is far less susceptible to inteference from over-the-air signals. Reportedly, RG-6 is also better at carrying the high-frequency signals for UHF channels.
Back in the 1990s, when I used RG-59 cable, I could still see ghosted images of off-air TV channels superimposed on cable channels with the same frequency, but when I switched to RG-6, the ghosting disappeared. RG-6 may also help block out interference from power supplies and modern wireless communication.
Interestingly, when I was a teenager, I had a TV in my bedroom but no cable. One day, while the rest of the family was out, I connected a long extension cable from my bedroom TV and VCR down to the cable that had been feeding the family TV. Because I did not have a sufficiently long length of coaxial cable, I used _audio_ cable with coaxial connection adaptors.
The audio cable _was_ able to carry TV signals, but the higher and higher I tuned, the weaker the signals became. By around cable channel 65 (equivalent to UHF channel 14), the picture was extremely fuzzy.
Yeah, the signal loss in coax cables (both RG59 and RG6) increases with frequency. Both have about 3x the loss measured in dB when going from channel 6 VHF to the top of the UHF dial. Also RG59 has about 1.5x the loss in dB as RG6.
RG6 is definitely the way to go.
What I hate about RG-6 is that I can never get the F connector on
@@MrFiver1111 I know what you mean -- my RG-6 cables all have screw-on connectors that are difficult to tighten or loosen, especially when reaching behind a VCR or large TV.
There are adaptors you can get that change the screw-on connector to a simpler, easier, push-on connector.
@@MrFiver1111I use RG6 for amateur radio and this is the biggest issue I had to solve. I went with the solution CATV companies use and just used compression fittings, originally F connectors until I found out you can also get them in BNC.
The LTE filter could be more than a novelty, a lot of receivers are subject to frontend overload, meaning that a strong signal can obscure a weak signal even on a different frequency. So, if you are near a cell tower it could impede reception of TV channels. This is an awesome setup, and I'd like to do something like this in the future.
Yep. I would add that I had problems with DTV reception on the 1st gen receivers and found that a nearby FM station was overloading the tuners on my equipment. I installed an FM trap and was able to scan in about 25 more channels once the tuner could "hear" over the local station.
Holy moly you've achieved something I have spent hours thinking and dreaming of! I wasn't even going to have multiple channels! Seriously cooooo
Update: I just opened a a box of 10 Blonder Tongue MCIM-D modulators from ebay, that I bought immediately after watching this video . Thanks for the tip of using PC/CD audio jumper wires for power, @11:22.
I want to do this so terribly bad. I’m an electrician by trade with an extensive computers background and I STILL feel lost. Glad to have found your channel, I’ve been playing with this idea for about 10 years.
Nice analog cable system you've got running! Every so often I think about putting something together, but I don't have a good place to set up many video sources and modulators.
Your Weather Channel has me thinking about trying to recreate some of the local cable stuff we had in my area in the late 80s and early 90s. One of my favorites showed local information and classified ads including photos. Every year around Christmas it would change to showing photos and holiday messages sent in by viewers and local businesses. It ran off a Commodore Amiga, but a Raspberry Pi would be a great alternative other than the lack of "Guru Meditation" errors.
"cable ready" thats a phrase i haven't heard in years
Ahhh yes, that what I'm looking at is how I remember that same font from the early 80s Weather Channel.
Great classic setup from cartoons, music videos, sports, news, educational programs for children, movies, house and weather.
I’d also imagine that any marginal or faulty coaxial cables would introduce some noise on some or all frequencies. But I’m imagining that you knew this already.
Definitely. All the parts I'm using are old cable co stuff that people pulled from their houses and gave away to thrift stores or at garage sales. It's quite good quality (way better than the cheap stuff you used to buy at Walmart or Radio Shack) but I've done swaps to make sure there are no faulty bits (and I've found several).
Always interesting to see how "channels" were handled so differently in the US/Canada than here in Europe.
TVs with a crude "channel" selector were not usually seen here from the seventies. All TVs, even low-end ones, had some form of preset tuning where you select a "programme" that is pre-set to a "channel". No TV stations here would say they are "on channel 7". That would differ per area anyway.
We had "programmes" like "BBC 1" or "NLD 1" and it would be on a channel unknown to the general user, they would have preset it (or the shop would have done that) once and they would never see it.
Also, on cable the use of UHF was quite normal. There were some countries that used "cable channels", but the original TVs made for broadcast would not have them. Our local cable network just used UHF instead, at least in the beginning. Only when there were lots of channels and when digital started to be introduced in parallel to analog, the "cable channels" were being used.
Some super cheap black and white TVs had those channel selectors or dials even in the 80's and 90's. I had 12 inch one myself (in Sweden).
Back in the 80s/90s TV stations in Canada and the US used to be far less centralized than they are now, with stations being very local or regional and with only a minor/part time National Network affiliation. Each station had unique schedules with a lot more local programming, each station operating as a kind of mini studio in itself. So for example CBC Winnipeg (CBWT) would have a radically different schedule or programming than CBC Calgary. Only the prime-time programming from 8-11PM was co-ordinated across the network, otherwise each station was its own entity. So the local stations tended to have a very strong sense of branding in each city, with its own “shows” and local celebrity hosts. Example, everyone in Winnipeg remembers Bundy from MTN13 or Laurie Mustard of Switchback on CBC Winnipeg.
@@TransCanadaPhil That's so very different compared to most of Europe. For instance here in Sweden, all TV stations (both of them) had nation-wide coverage, were public service and had no commercials. In 1992 we got our third terrestrial station, TV4 (TV3 was cable and satellite only). This was the only commercial station that could be received using a normal roof top antenna (until digital television was introduced).
The concepts of markets, affiliation and syndication were for a long time completely alien to me. And still are in a way. We didn't even have local commercial radio until 1993.
@@testcardsandmore1231 In the Netherlands it was the same. We had 2 (later 3) national programmes which were transmitted from about 10 sites, of course everywhere on different channels. At first they had no commercials, later commercials were introduced but only at major points between shows, e.g. before and after the news.
In the eighties, city-wide cable was introduced, and it would have national programmes from the neighboring countries.
In the nineties, commercial TV was introduced, but only on satellite and cable, no terrestrial transmission.
Later, terrestrial DVB was introduced and these programmes were transmitted there.
As in the eighties when cable was introduced everyone of course already had a TV, usually without support for cable channels, cable was made compatible with existing TVs: it used UHF (something that was deemed impossible before). In those days, it was still considered important to have backward compatibility.
@@testcardsandmore1231 yes Europe seemed to have a much more national and public service broadcasting oriented system from what I’ve researched over the years. One major factor in Canada was the very early rise and widespread adoption of Cable Television even compared to the US. As early as the late 1970s most Canadian homes subscribed to Cable TV rather than receiving signals over the air with an aerial. Even compared to the US, adoption here was far faster. A major reason was because Canadian Cable companies had an ample supply of easy and free programming they were able to redistribute, namely U.S. stations. They’d setup Aerials near the US border, then capture and redistribute the U.S. based channels like ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, and later FOX into Canadian cities that were not otherwise available over the air. Combined with the 3-4 local channels available in each city, the US channels, plus public access channels, The average Canadian home already had about 13 channels available by the late 70s/early 80s. Far more than even in the US at that time. The average Canadian had access to both public service television networks from both Canada and the US (CBC and PBS), plus all the major commercial networks from both the US and Canada too.
in the USA UHF CH14-19 (470MHz-512MHz) is the UHF-T band which can be used for land mobile (two way radio) happens mostly in large metro areas like NYC. outside of them they are normal TV channels. Indianapolis uses RF 14,16,17,19 for DTV
I live in Mexico City and developed a setup just as yours, except that I was unable to use any of the VHF channels: there are certain times during the day that channels 3 and 4 are impossible to be seen since there are lots of interference, coming, perhaps, from cellular phones. However channels 14 to 69 are Ok providing you don't jumpt into a used one.
Congratulations for your setup!. I had been unable to find a STEREO MODULATOR anywhere, so for now all my channels are mono.
Also I added a couple of ATSC channels, that are modulating before the TDT receivers, so I can feed tune from the digital modulator to the analog tvs through my tdt receivers.
I am continuously adding channels to my whole setup just for fun.
Back between the mid 90s/2000s I (a satellite TV enthusiast since age 13 located in Germany) built a headend to add 22 channels to our standard cable lineup. I added the channels in UHF, the headend was a mix of a commercial headend and receivers with decoders (Eurocrypt/D2Mac, Videocrypt) and RF modulators. The channels were satellite channels from different satellites and most were pay TV the cable company did not even offer or were not available in my country (Germany) for regular subscription.
Needless to say, some neighbors were soon interested in a cable hookup, for a short time I became a cable company! The headend was in my parents garage with lots of dished on top of the flat roof.
I still wonder that I never got in trouble because the channels must have backfed into the regular cable system since I did not use any filters when combining the 2 systems. But maybe my amplifiers were not strong enough to go very far in the grid.
Also how much electricity it consumed, but it must be a lot with all the receivers, decoders, Secam/Pal converters, amplifiers etc.
Sweet setup and a herculean effort!
This showed up in my recommended videos to watch. Firstly, I haven't seen the name "Baycrest" since I was a kid. My parents had a Baycrest TV that was made in 1979, I think it was in our family until 2000. That's alot of equipment to run that setup!
Generally the only time you’d need an LTE or 5G filter is if you live near an actual cell tower. Near meaning you can actually see the tower from your house. Otherwise it usually doesn’t provide any noticeable difference.
@@lurch789 You get like 30000x more cancer when you open your blinds but sure.
@@lurch789absolute bullshit
This exactly, it prevents intermod, etc from a nearby transmitter... Not a gimmick.
Then there's some transmission towers like the one by me, the WCSN tower has a 4g/5g cell tower across the street from it 🙃 always comes in spotty no matter what you do.
Hah, hell yes, love to see the new setup! I thought I was crazy for iterating on your idea most recently with a fifth channel that I'm modulating through a VCR and by adding network logos and interstitials to each channel...but you've gone and done even more channels! So jealous of how you can modulate digital channels too. I need to do a full tour of the hardware and software I'm running one of these days and when I do I'll link you. You're always my number one inspiration with this project. I finally got my house wired up throughout and it's been great having my own channels in every room.
I'm interested in the Blonder Tongue rack mounted modulators. So they can't be changed and you have to buy them and just deal with what they output to? I've been considering a Thor Broadcast rack-mounted modulator as a far far far future solution if my ChannelPlus modulators ever start to fail but that might be a solution too.
As for audio, I've been getting great results with the RCA HDMI to Composite adapters that don't require any external power, but I'm glad the external soundcards are working for you. I need to adjust my gain levels myself.
Great stuff!
Not modulating any digital channels unfortunately, the equipment is still just too expensive. The only digital channels I get are picked up over the air from an attic mounted antenna.
The Blonder Tongue modulators are fixed frequency, yes. But they did make configurable ones too. They're just less common as they were more expensive and these were typically used in situations where you set it once and left it.
The stereo Channel Plus modulator (model 5615) and the Blonder Tongue modulators give the best quality signal in my opinion. The sounds from the 5615 is fantastic too.
@@probnotstechThanks for the tips! Looking into it those Blonder Tongue modulators are nice and cheap. What connectors do you use to get the composite out to whatever they use? Thinking one day I'll get a rack of those plus the stereo ChannelPlus for my music channel.
By the way, I've posted my own updated tour of my own network. Definitely want to pretty it up down the line but hey, it works.
New video:
Linus Tech Tips: “I sleep”
Technology Connections: “I sleep”
Probnot’s tech: “real shit?”
Thank you for walking us aroung your work. I am jealous of the space you must have to be able to keep multiple vintage CRT TVs and the rest equipment. Would you consider doing a video showing all your VHS equipment as well?
Perhaps at some point. I don't have a lot of space, so things are kind of all over.
In the UK, stereo sound on an analogue signal would be a bit more difficult. You's need a modulator that is capable of streaming NICAM digital stereo alongside the PAL signal.
Yes, we had digital stereo sound on our analogue broadcasts!
Another thing I can't help but ask and I'm sure you'd have done if you were European, adding a Teletext service to at least the weather channel! There actually are online teletext services that range from old pages recovered from off air videotapes to actual live services and the Pi is more than capable of producing the required visual data for output over composite!
You know, I wonder if I even have a TV that supports teletext. We never had it here, but I remember buying a Toshiba TV in 1998 that had it (or at least something called TEXT that showed a big empty black box on the screen anyway).
@@probnotstech Did the big black screen have P100 in the top left corner in white text?
Not that I recall, I think it was completely blank.
I guess it would be the universal teletext mode but nothing ever loaded
@@MrFiver1111 "I guess it would be the universal teletext mode but nothing ever loaded"
I'd say it's more likely that they produce one remote for all territories but not one TV for all territories.
So the European version of a TV is multistandard and has a Teletext decoder, but the US version of that same TV is NTSC only and doesn't have a Teletext decoder. The lack of a P100 in the top left corner would suggest no Teletext decoder.
Not sure why this was in my recommended tab, but what an awesome project! I just bought a house with a bunch of coax hookups in the walls still, might just have to put them to use with this project.
Going back a bit farther in CATV land, the early community channels used a fixed B&W camera that looked at a merry go round setup where printed paper was placed on the outside of the merry go round. There was some sort of timer / mechanical linkage that would pause the paper long enough to be read. .
I appreciate that tu youth like you love this. I am from late 40's saw first tv signal in Argentina in 1951. Saludos
As someone who's nearly 40, I appreciate being called a youth :)
@@probnotstech you so are...yes.
That’s a fantastic setup. I mean, I live in a small apartment so I won’t attempt something like that, but I really really like the idea!
I’m from Winnipeg too. Garden City area. I remember always having that weather channel back in the day on Videon. Were you on the West side (Videon) or the east side (Greater Winnipeg CableVision/Shaw)? I remember back in the day playing around with my outdoor antenna and on a good day you could tune in channel 12 KNRR and WDAZ directly over the air from Winnipeg. As for those higher UHF channels, I remember I often could listen in on analog cell phone calls using an old TV on UHF channels 82 and 83; used to have lots of fun doing that on an extra old Black and white tv that we had laying around. Cool setup, this is exactly the kind of crazy setup I might have done 15-20 years ago in the SD era! Your personality kind of reminds me of myself when i was younger, I have the same kind of obsession with understanding how the cable system works and broadcasting. I went to Tec Voc and took broadcasting when i was in high school.
I was on the East/Shaw side - always found it weird going to houses on the West side of the river and their channels were different. Also had a lot of fun picking up KNRR. We lived in the South end of the city and my bedroom was on the 2nd floor, so KNRR was never a problem (they had a great afternoon cartoon lineup in the early/mid 90s). I was, however, never able to get WDAZ for anything more than a temporary blip from weird weather patterns.
I’ve wanted to do this for a long time but I probably never will do I applaud you on seeing it through.
I have a CCTV system with 140+ cameras and custom VMS software. I seriously been considering getting a few of those IP combo modulators and having a analog CCTV monitor circuit going around my place.
Old CCTV systems from Bosch, Funkwerk and Siemens did that where the central switch matrix would have a distribution box that would essentially allow all camera feeds to go through one coax for satellite monitors
I've the old Ku and Cpan analog receivers back in the day. I also combined one on ch.2 ,the other on ch.4 w/certain spitters, 6 satellite dishes was crazy
I wish I had a neighbor like you. This is the coolest setup I’ve ever seen 😎👍
I think the purpose of the LTE/5G filters is to prevent a strong LTE signal from overloading the tuner. I remember years ago having a cheap pocket radio that didn't have a good FM tuner. A local radio station would overpower the other stations across the whole band.
Yes. The tuner of the TV or any amplifier connected to the antenna.
I love the setup, very jealous. With the DTV boxes, I have had them overheat when I didn't have them plugged into coax, the connector on the back actually was hot to the touch.
Yeah they run really hot. The ones with the built-in power supply are the worst for that.
10:11 The Zero does actually have composite output, it's just that it doesn't have a port so you have to solder wires to the board to get it.
This has inspired me to do my own setup to recreate 90's and 2000's YTV.
The power connector you made for the MICM-Ds ... that is really cool. I can find those all over the place, but finding the rack mount for them or a power supply for them ... not so much.
So why is it when I switch channels on my TV I always seem to land on a commercial? lol This video made my day!
Wow and I thought I was the only one that did this. My setup runs channel 2, 4MTS stereo, 5, 7, 9, 12 MTS stereoCATV 27 and 47. Im only running 2 raspberry pi for canned content, plus 2 ATSC boxes for a few stations that require a seperate antenna for a different direction. Then my cable boxes on 2 of them set to channels I watch regularly. All mixed in to the digital feed from antenna. All my modulators are either BT or Wavecom commercial except my channel 4 MTS stereo which is a Radio shack model that they sold briefly about 35 years ago. I have a series of distribution amplifiers and RF pads to balance the levels. The advantage to the commercial modulators is they have adjustable RF outout which makes balancing the levels a breeze. Mine has been running about 15 years now. Even since the transition to DTV. My Pi is also the first gen running Kodi just to stream videos. One is on a 5 disk DVD player that is loaded with a bunch of disks in rotation
Your setup is really cool. I was actually looking at getting the distribution amps you use. And that Radio Shack stereo modulator is definitely a rare thing. Until I saw it in your video I had no idea a consumer RF modulator was ever sold that modulated in stereo.
I've been tempted lately to add a digital ATSC channel, but the modulators are still just too expensive for me right now. I've found some modulators that support QAM for a reasonable price, but my TVs only do ATSC on antenna mode or QAM on cable mode - not both.
@@probnotstech yes atsc modulators still too much for me too
@Probnot, this has got me thinking about how one could accomplish something similar in the more modern, more digital domain. Same programming format, just a different approach.
I'm playing with ideas right now but I'm imaging It would involve a central server that stores all the media, and creates the programming schedule for whatever channels are configured, and then the player(s) (either on that server, or as stand alone units) would receive commands to change "channels" from a universal remote system such as RTI, URC, or Control4. This would mean each tv would only tune to one channel or HDMI, then the commands would pass back to the player. and the player would only have to play a single stream at a time, changing whenever it received a command. this keeps much of the same experience of linear programming, but greatly simplifies the hardware side of things.
I feel like this could be fairly simple to get working in a rudimentary manner, but could take a lot of work to make slick. I'm stating to look at IPTV in my exploration. not sure how much the concept overlaps, but it seems like there are a few iptv docker options that might slot right in with my existing unraid server.
As part of this whole adventure I would also want to play with DLSS for bringing the older shows closer to the present for our modern panels.
I have a collection of TVs and always wanted to set up a system like this. Now I have an idea of what to do, thanks!
If there is ever an internet apocalypse, you will be sitting pretty except for maybe the weather ch.
Very neat combo of analog and digital!
this is impressive.
Great stuff - especially adapting the Raspberry Pi and having a music shuffle
"Religious channel... huh no signal. Ah well, no loss" 🤣
I’d drop my Telus subscription for yours any day!
That is all very impressive!
your previous videos inspired me to try autoplaying video game commercials and bad video game cartoons over Pis and letting stream viewers change channels via extron crosspoint rs232. I'd love to just put movies on shuffle that i can just turn on around my house. i hope to find some gear that will let me build a similar less complicated setup to the one you have someday. i hope that said gear will still be on ebay when i can finally get around to it though :D
I've always wanted to do something like this, But now I would try to do a digital HD setup because I don't have any CRT monitors. SD content wouldn't look right. I think I can find some used 1080p modulators from an old cable head end online. Also, your DB level at the TV for each channel is very important, I would recommend finding an old cable db meter to check each channels output level and put attenuation on the output of each channel modulator as needed. You are right, its a balance and you might be overshooting some channels and getting bleed over. Also, for a closed cable system, make sure you have no open outlets or leakage points because as much as you need to worry about receiving interference, you also don't want to leak out interference.
Man, I would love to find an old cable dB meter. Tools like that are damn impossible to find nowadays.
Regarding digital HD stations, I would love to add one or two... but ATSC modulators start at around $300, so I haven't bothered yet. I've seen some QAM (cable standard) modulators for slightly cheaper. The problem is that I modulate my channels on UHF, not CATV frequencies (so my older TVs can receive them). And newer TVs seem to only scan for QAM signals on CATV mode. When set to UHF, they would scan ATSC (since ATSC is used for OTA). So I'm kinda stuck with the harder to find & more expensive ATSC modulators.
I've got an RPi1 laying around. I should use it for something like this.
The pi zero also has Composit out, but only Composit (no audio) (it is the two pins next to the header with TV next to it).
I just got recommended this video. This is so cool!
cool setup
The modulators should be looped through in series unamplified and then the final box out to the house for distribution use the amplified outputs.
I had a problem with 3 of them in series (unamplified). For some reason 2 work great, 3 was a problem.
Every few months I tear the whole thing apart with a new idea to make it better/simpler. Then after a few hours I end up right back where I was lol
I know this might be counter intuitive, but have you ever considered a modulator that broadcasts over the air for home use? Perhaps to broadcast into portable/handheld TV's & be able to roam around the house and perhaps for your immediate neighbors to see?😁 😂 I always wanted to do that since I have a few portables. That'd be my dream build, but I'm very impressed with your CATV setup. I've subscribed to your channel as a result. Cheers
The LTE filters help because the signal is gonna be really strong coming from the phone in your house, if that makes sense. It’s not because of any worries concerning distant cell towers, but more about the nearby mobile phones. It has to do with what older tuners can handle, and the near-far effect or sum
Wow, that is super cool! I have got a similar setup myself but in much much smaller scale. Just a DTV box, a couple of DVD players and a VCR connected to various consumer grade modulators.
Nice to see the updates! Would be cool if you could set up cable radio too 👀, I’m working on that myself, relaying the local FM and piping in some broadcasters I like.
The LTE filters are probably helping. LTE has a lot of power behind it from the transmission tower. That kind of power will bleed over into other bands. Lower end electronics don’t have band pass filter in them to block out strong signals. You can test this with a consumer SDR, you’ll notice broadcast FM and AM signals where they don’t belong because consumer SDRs are cheap and don’t have filters.
Yeah it definitely helps, and I figured it was bleeding of strong signals, as well as some harmonics. An SDR would be fantastic in figuring out weird harmonics from some of these modulators. Getting them to play nice feels like being a kindergarten teacher with a class of 30 kids hyped up on candy.
Super informative, relaxed.. loved it man... def a project I would love to do something like this when I have my own home
For the DTV boxes maybe make small holes through the top and attach a fan to each.
I have the same one but never use it because it's crap, I had to take it fully out of the shell and stick a heatsink on the chip.
I've been looking to do something like this but on a much simpler basis - primarily to distribute Teletext signals around my house using RF. I'm in the UK, and all my TVs - mainly pre-2009 Panasonic plasma displays, with one CCFL LCD - are sufficiently ancient to still have built-in Teletext decoders. It's pretty straightforward to set up a Pi to generate the signal through its AV-OUT, and then to modulate it via a VCR for internal distribution. Voila - live Teletext on every TV in the house, just like the old days!
They do make raspberry pi hats that hook to the GPIO and convert digital audio to amplified analog stereo if you want to skip the external USB audio.
Good job on this one man. I love the wall of gear. Maybe you can take a shot at designing a modern digital home cable distribution system, with a central computerized control. And maybe make it remote access. If thats legal. LOL.
I've considered adding some digital channels, but the price of the equipment is still absurd. Plus it wouldn't work on my older TVs.
For the final amplifier that goes to the house, you can use an AGC one (Automatic Gain Control) or one with multiple inputs and attenuators builtin for each input. I don't know if in Canada/US you have it, but here in Italy some comapanies (like Mitan Technologies) make "special" amplifiers which amplify only certain channels and/or bands, maybe that will help filterning the signal and avoiding rumors. An alternative is using a programmable amplifier, where you can program it to amplify only certain channels or bands and usually they also have AGC bultin.
P.S. if you plan buying something from europe be careful that we use different channnel/frequency, so specify the frequencies you are using and also the bandwith
That's brilliant.
Crazy, but brilliant, like all the best projects!
Dude this is seriously impressive.
Huh... I'd like to have a setup like this on the TVs at our local antique radio museum!
I live in very east Quebec where we only get 3 Digital OTA channels (TVA, Télé-Québec and Noovo). Since I only really watch those channels plus Radio-Canada and CBC, I was thinking about doing this. Both are streaming free online and I can make them play 24/7 on a FireTV stick. So probably gonna buy modulators and HDMI converters to add them to the DTV channels.
This is my dream project. So cool!
4:00 British channel was showing "A bit of Fry and Laurie" very much an homage to Monty Python and a product of the same university dramatic club as the M.P. crew. Stephen Fry was talking and Hugh Laurie (Aka Dr. House MD) was facing away. Definitely woth a watch, along with Blackadder goes forth 😂
Yeah Bit of Fry and Laurie is excellent. One of my favourite sketch comedy shows (among Monty Python, Kids in the Hall, Mitchell and Webb, and Whitest Kids U Know)
@@probnotstech ahhhh Mitchell and Webb...
"Cheese.... Petril.... Cheezoid hates self!"
0:44 - This article may help:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-American_television_frequencies
I can remember my family having an old 1970s-era TV with knobs connected to basic cable when I was a kid. It wasn't until we got our first VCR, which included a cable-ready tuner, that we were able to tune cable channels above 13.
I actually still have a small TV with knobs from the mid-1980s. It still works, but its capacitors are starting to wear out -- the picture flickers a bit when the set is turned on after being left off for a long time. ☹
Oh yeah, I have my own spreadsheet that maps out all the frequencies. For whatever reason they've always fascinated me, but I suck at explaining things "off the cuff" like that.
There actually were passive converters that shifted the midband and highband frequencies to the broadcast UHF frequencies so they could be tuned with a standard UHF tuner. There also were converters than essentially let you tune through the broadcast VHF channels "twice", I'm not sure if they worked by shifting frequencies or using two coax drops (maybe both depending on how the cable plant was set up).
I used to have a Radio Shack (Archer) model 15-1281 that did exactly that. It was a powered device and shifted the cable bands up into the UHF band. I used it to shift a security camera in my parents house from a ch.3 modulator up into the 90s and injected it into the cable TV.
Never heard of the "twice" VHF converter.
You must be a close neighbour. Subbed. 🍻
Might be more expensive than a cable subscription, but hell of a lot more customizable.
And more fun!
I feel like we have the technology now to pack all of this into a single device. I'd buy one
I still, use VHS Laserdisc 8track and LPs. Thank god I found this channel I'm not alone. Haha
it's really a bummer that it's only cable. You could theoretically broadcast it over-the-air.
Just came across your channel. Really cool set up.
Get a few ATSC boxes to pass digital channels in analog for the older tv sets.
Way ahead of you :) 13:59
Nice, I had wanted to do something similar but never did. I'm impressed 👍
I love everything about this
This is beautiful, on some real bro shit, that's some good stuff bro
This is VERY Interesting because i want A Wi-Fi Free Home That Works Perfectly
For the record not all cable TV was in that gap, there were multiple standards and some really did use UHF over coaxial for cable broadcast. My college actually had a cable TV system that worked this way so you didn't have to have a decoder box.
This is an awesome project! Would love to do something similar with WeatherStar and a small CRT. Might do something like this but with virtual machines within Promox with a shared hardrive.
For all of the channel content, did you rip those tv shows to 480p? Curious of the quality since I mostly have 1080p movies and would have to source over the air quality stuff to get that same feel.
Love it, brings back so many memories!
9:17 that pink AV cable... From a C.H.I.P. or pocketCHIP? Lol
It is, good eye!
Amazing setup!
I appreciate the amount of work that went into this, but I'm wondering if it could be done with less equipment. 🤔 like, running a bunch of VMs for the video signals, with each running out some kind of USB device for AV in a pass-thru. I'd have to do some research, but it should be doable.
It could be, but I'm not aware of any "off the shelf" USB device that outputs a composite video signal and audio. Plenty that do the opposite though.
Plus, Raspberry Pi’s are very inexpensive, especially the older originals, that have composite out video on the RCA connector
Clabretro has basically done the same thing, give or take a few features, and have it down to a hand full of raspis and 2 rf modulators
So a hospital I stayed at recently had analog cable still up some how and it was actually using the analog tuner on the tv if I ever go again I’m tempted to bring my vcr and hook it up
The Fallout vibes are strong with this one.
BT makes a rf combiner unit I’ve seen them on eBay. I got one for the local access station back in the day that was just using splitters before then.
Analog Cable TV Headend System made of Home RF Modulators.
But I would actually broadcast anamorphic widescreen minus 12 px on each side of the 704x480 frame to overcome the overscan those newer tv put on. And I wonder if you broadcast telecine stuff towards the analog tuner of a new tv if the set will properley ivtc it back to 23.976p
That could be neat. I’ve always been a fan of anamorphic over ntsc. You can even burn down your own widescreen movies at 24p ( 23.976) on vhs tapes! That’s stunning on a widescreen crt 😊