Analog broadcasting inside the house from a pc.
 

Good day everyone! I am new to this forum, so let me introduce myself: My name is Nikolai, and I am a 19 year old college student who loves vintage electronics. I collect vintage tv's, radios, telephones, old hi fi equipment, vinyl, anything to do with reel to reel tape, etc. I also do a fair share of restoration work. So on to the question, I recently got my hands on a bunch of blonder tongue agile modulators, and I decided it would be really neat to have a bunch of them going at the same time at different frequencies, to create multiple "stations" around the house for my vintage tv's. Now the problem, how could I set up a computer to play a set of movies or whatever content 24/7 in the background. I have a computer I could dedicate to this. I would imagine some sort of television station broadcasting software, but I'm not able to find anything on Google. I mean this should be possible, tv stations do this right? So I would like a couple of different channels, one would cycle through movies on a hard drive, and another would just show a test pattern for example. Any ideas on how to accomplish this? I realize this maybe more of a computer question, but in the context of old tv's. Anyway, thanks in advance!

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I sort of do this (I just don't run it constantly). What I use is old-ish machines with S-video port equipped video cards (I can't run anything newer than windows 7 and support those cards). Some cards you need to look for the maker's software to fix under scan. What I do once I have it working with no under-scan is play videos with VLC media player and my web browser when I want to watch youtube or the like.

It should be possible with VLC and a big enough hard drive to make a playlist that runs 1-3 days and IIRC there is a way to make the play list repeat too. As far as web videos you could download them and add to VLC's list or just come up with ideas.

I've got enough computers to do this on 3-4 channels but I only watch maybe 0-1 hours a day most of the week so I prefer to put my setup to sleep when not in use to save wear....Case in point: my favorite PC for this (a Dell Dimension 9200) has died of capacitor plague a second time and is waiting on me to order replacement caps.

Some of my B-T modulators have gotten to need repeat repair work from long service hours.

Also if you are transmitting without wires if some clown tries to send the FCC after you their chances of success radically drop if you are not on 24-7 but rather on a somewhat random schedule...

I had a similar set up for a while. 3 modulators, one of which was connected to a TV-out on a PC. Nowadays, you could use a HDMI-to-composite or VGA scan converter to get your PC's signal downgraded to composite level.

Many media players have a playlist repeat function. Just add all your videos, set it to play full-screen, and set the list to repeat.

Beware though, all that equipment running 24/7 will make your electric bill creep up.

Thank you for your quick and thorough replies! I greatly appreciate, I think I have some ideas to try out now.

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Doesn't the FCC allow unlicensed broadcasting, as long as it's under 1 watt, or is it more complicated?

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IIRC there is like 3 different conflicting sets of rules*. Some based on power, others based on distance, and interference...I always check that there are no other analog or digital stations receivable on the channel I want to use so no one in the ~1 block range I can transmit is bothered with interference. It is all cable and sat in my neighborhood but you never know who is using OTA in a bedroom or kitchen.

*Depending on which you break they either turn off the TX and warn you, destroy the TX and or fine you.

I enjoy vintage equipment and have three pre-war radios of which I frequently use two. I would be confused trying to do what you suggest. We use cat 6 cable to distribute 5 simultaneous cable channels or record on our Windows computers. This requires a special adapter with cablecard.

Prewar radios? That's awesome!!! As you probably know, they quit broadcasting analog television a couple years back. So, I am trying to transmit an analog television broadcast around the house. The agile modulator is basically a low power vhf transmitter. I can already do this, but I wanted to have multiple "tv stations", so that I could use my tv's "the real way", wirelessly and using the channel selector knob. The wired approach is a solution, but I would like to have it all wireless. You could also do this with radio, but thankfully we still have analog radio broadcasting!

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Of course, there is no one any longer broadcasting television on this analog spectrum, so there would really be no longer any nearby TV stations (at least on the VHF channel range, no?)

No. VHF high band and VHF low band is very much in use for (digital) television broadcasting.

jr

DTV OTA broadcasts use the same carrier channel assignments and most of the channels that Analog NTSC did. There are two VHF DTV carriers viewable in my area. One is channel 5 (it or a close-by low band FM interfere with channel 6) and the other the other is Channel 8. I use a Zenith IIRC DT-900 DTV box in manual mode to tell me what RF (not virtual) channels each carrier is on and have a chart (it's at home presently so no pic till later) of what carriers I can detect (even the ones I can't watch)

The UHF band is pretty packed with DTV stations (IIRC between 20 and 50 is the worst).
I have a decent number of pre-1964 VHF only sets so I have transmitted on VHF primarily CH2, 7, 9, 11, 13 (some of my mods are fixed channel, and some of my equipment has died or been swapped so things have varied). I have some gear that can do UHF and I'd like to test my UHF tuners so I may go UHF soon (finding a good empty channel could get fun :D )....I have one device that can do beyond UHF 83...I may have to make a Channel 84 if any of my continuous tuners can receive it.

FCC tally of stations within a 75 km radiusof Pewaukee:

https://transition.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/t...his+Page%2FTab

Can you detect most of them?

jr

This is what I got as of ~2-3 months ago:
https://c3.staticflickr.com/1/455/30...4fb90ca4_z.jpg

I have cable and don't like what is on OTA enough to cut a slice out of what little free time I have to watch it. I mainly keep the DTV boxes I have for emergencies, DXing, and knowing what channels NOT to transmit on.

An idea for a solution on multiple channels and one PC would be a bit tedious to set up but here we go, I'll base it on 3 channels

3 PCI video cards with S/composite out, or more if you have the slots.
3 cheap USB sound cards
Use built in/AGP/PCIE what ever you have and your built in sound for your monitor to make this a little easier.

build, setup, install drivers,
Windows should give you 3 desktops now.
Open VLC 3 times drag each one to a different desktop.
Go to each one and manually select the audio output device and fullscreen it after setting up the playlist.

Personally I would stack 3 original XBOX'x loaded with XBMC for simplicity, but hey you work with what you got, at least I do.

Still have an analog LPTV here...
 

on Ch 4. Its a Hispanic satellite service. As I understand it, the analog LPTV shutdown has been extended.