HDMI to RF, some thoughts

[judge]

Sooner or later I’m going to have to move to converting HDMI to RF for my vintage TVs and I am wondering if anyone has any experience of this. There are converter boxes readily available, but I would like something with these features:

1. I should be able to display 4:3 programs on my old TV full height without the bands I would see on my widescreen TV
2. I should be able to choose between letterboxing and other modes for widescreen programs
3. The downsampling should be of decent quality
4. I should be able to watch copy protected sources without artifacts on my old TVs
5. It would be nice if the converter would accept composite input too, so I don't have to have multiple converters
6. It would be nice if I could broadcast the signal, like I can with my old Blonder-Tongue

Anyone know if any of the converters can do these thing? The first four are the most important.

[Electronic M]

Originally Posted by judge

Sooner or later I’m going to have to move to converting HDMI to RF for my vintage TVs and I am wondering if anyone has any experience of this. There are converter boxes readily available, but I would like something with these features:

1. I should be able to display 4:3 programs on my old TV full height without the bands I would see on my widescreen TV
2. I should be able to choose between letterboxing and other modes for widescreen programs
3. The downsampling should be of decent quality
4. I should be able to watch copy protected sources without artifacts on my old TVs
5. It would be nice if the converter would accept composite input too, so I don't have to have multiple converters
6. It would be nice if I could broadcast the signal, like I can with my old Blonder-Tongue

Anyone know if any of the converters can do these thing? The first four are the most important.

Don't convert directly to RF. There are few HDMI converters that will convert driect to RF and those that do have RF sections that flatly suck compared to your Blonder Tongue.

Get a HDMI to composite video/audio adapter and feed that to your Blonder Tongue (if you have outer inputs you want to feed the BT get an AV switch box from the 90's*).

I've yet to get an HDMI converter that does everything you want scaling wise with the 2 I bought.

There is a thread here on how to eliminate letterbox with an exetron scaler box (which takes composite and spits out VGA) and a VGA to composite adapter. That combo definitely allows letter box to be eliminated in your choice of crop or vertical stretch (which are the only 2 respectable options). Some menu configuration is necessary for it to work.

I bought a bunch of stuff for this a month ago and need to get to setting it up (all I had time to do was a quick 'does it work after shipping' test).
The only thing one really needs to convert HDMI to composite on these days is a computer driving a vintage set...all DTV/cable boxes I've seen still support RF or AV and a PC can do anything any video player can, including playing BluRays, and then some.

*If one of the other devices you want to connect is a VCR you can plug your HDMI to composite converter into the VCRs AV input and tune the VCR so it passes that through when you're not watching a tape....If you don't have a VCR and want remote controled AV switching look for an old home theater amp that has video inputs and outputs... those have built in AV switchers that can be controlled by the amps remote.

[WISCOJIM]

Originally Posted by Electronic M

Currently loosing an IRL game of TV storage Tetris.

Maybe some guidance from Nam June Paik would help?

.

[Electronic M]

Originally Posted by WISCOJIM

Maybe some guidance from Nam June Paik would help?

.

Lol. I plan to do some weird things (like resting wide consoles on their sides to minimize floor space consumption, but hacking up sets to make into sculpture ain't on the list.

[judge]

I currently have an older Roku plugged in to my blonder tongue, but the writing is in the wall for the older models, in terms of the streaming services they support. New models are HDMI only. In terms of computers, the only output a lot of them have now is USB3 and maybe a HDMI.

[Electronic M]

Originally Posted by judge

I currently have an older Roku plugged in to my blonder tongue, but the writing is in the wall for the older models, in terms of the streaming services they support. New models are HDMI only. In terms of computers, the only output a lot of them have now is USB3 and maybe a HDMI.

Desktops support PCIe and they made S-video out equipped PCIe graphics cards... windows 10 even supports (albeit not as well as 7 did) some.
Usb3 is already out of date. USB-c / thunderbolt is replacing it and supports HDMI, DVI and VGA outputs via plug in adapters.... what is really fascinating is that you in addition to pipelining graphics through the most recent usb-c revisions IIRC it supports PCI bus protocol...a new laptop that a has no on board PCI expansion provisions can work with a desktop PCIe card in an external USB-c connected enclosure.

Personally I'm leaning towards using a VGA to S-VIDEO/composite adapter with my media PC since windows 10 has not created good support for turning off the default overscan compensation on the S-VIDEO out of the graphics card I'm using...the card also has VGA and my VGA to S-VIDEO converter has very nice scaling features.

[judge]

I meant USB-C. Doh! Interesting info about its support for PCIe.

I’ve just finished reading a long thread about HDMI to composite adapters on avsforum.com. This is the tail end. Upshot is that there may be a secret menu in later Rokus to set the output resolution. There is also a box called a VHD-HD2CV that will convert aspect ratios as well as HDMI to composite, but it is $200. The thread, though old, is an interesting read.

I’m away from home ATM, so will try the magic key combination on a new roku when I get back.

[Wageslave]

I use an HDM68 HDMI to RF modulator off of eBay to connect a Fire stick to my 4:3 TV's. I don't have letterboxing or overscan issues, but it looks like it does compress the width of the picture to fit. The picture is quite sharp for RF, and looks every bit as good as my Roku over composite. The only crappy thing is that you are stuck using VHF channels only, as it is using the CATV channel layout.

[judge]

Originally Posted by Wageslave

I use an HDM68 HDMI to RF modulator off of eBay to connect a Fire stick to my 4:3 TV's. I don't have letterboxing or overscan issues, but it looks like it does compress the width of the picture to fit. The picture is quite sharp for RF, and looks every bit as good as my Roku over composite. The only crappy thing is that you are stuck using VHF channels only, as it is using the CATV channel layout.

Bought one. At ~$36 it’s certainly worth a try.

[Wageslave]

Originally Posted by judge

Bought one. At ~$36 it’s certainly worth a try.

Hope it works out for you.

[mr_rye89]

Interesting. I haven't found the need for HDMI to composite/rf conversion yet because I have a Roku that I bought last year that have composite A/V out, DTV box has composite out, BD player has one, and my Raspberry Pi 3 has one too, though I plan on getting another to use as a dedicated SDTV Kodi frontend so I can eliminate the DTV box. and I need to get a splitter/amp so I can get the VCRs/LaserDisc player patched in.

[Electronic M]

If the VCRs have 2 or more AV inputs you could use them to switch between some of the AV sources you have.

[Wageslave]

Originally Posted by judge

Bought one. At ~$36 it’s certainly worth a try.

How did that modulator end up working for you?

[judge]

Originally Posted by Wageslave

How did that modulator end up working for you?

It was supposed to be here last Friday. It appears to be lost and the vendor is being a little weird about it.

[judge]

I got the HDM68 RF modulator, and I'm really impressed. I connected my Roku to it and the RF side to my Predicta Siesta. It has the clearest picture I've seen on the Predicta - I can actually read the text from the Roku. Furthermore, this is the only adapter I've used that doesn't have any audio noise when there is text on the screen. As far as the audio goes, the level is just right - every other RF adapter I have used, apart from the Blonder-Tongue, has a very low audio level.

I like the controls too. There is a channel changer on the front, and you aren't limited to just channel 3 or 4. There are also controls for audio level, video level and output level. The output level is high enough to broadcast, though not as high as the Blonder-Tongue.

The only down side is that the output from the Roku is horizontally compressed - there is no option to stretch it or letter box it. In practice I didn't find that much of an issue.

I also connected up my DVD player (an old oppo DV-980H) and played some 4:3 programs that reproduced perfectly with no stretching. With 16:9 source material I could use the oppo setup menu to control if it was letter-boxed or squished.

There is a settings menu that primarily controls the audio carrier frequency, but there is also a setting called "A/V carrier rate" that can be either 12db or 16db. I've no idea what that means!

I see there is also a unit called the M69 which has regular A/V inputs.