Homemade low power TV transmitter?

[Phil Nelson]

Originally Posted by Steve McVoy

The FCC allows a maximum radiated power of 100 mw. This won't cover a whole house, but will work within a rooom. You can find devices that broadcast TV on ch 3. with that power on Ebay.

You can also buy kits. A Google search should turn them up.

I would not recommend the Ramsey kit. I built one a few years ago. The signal quality was abysmal, and the usable range was more like 3 feet than the claimed 300 feet.

Last year, I bought a Recoton video sender. Not really a TV transmitter, since it has receiving and transmitting units, and requires an RF modulator on the receiving end. It works OK in the same room, but the usable range is, again, far less than the manufacturer claims, which sort of defeats the purpose. If your range is 10 feet, you might as well just move your TV 10 feet closer to the source and make a direct connection.

If anyone knows of a better quality video sender, I'd love to hear about it. I would like to be able to tune a station on our satellite TV box and relay it to my workshop in the garage.

Splitters can't be used here. Our system detects them somehow and blocks the signal. When they installed the system, it wouldn't work at all in one room. The guys finally discovered an old splitter with an unused branch of coax in the crawl space under that room. (We used some existing wiring from a previous antenna system in the attic.)

Phil Nelson

[Cory]

I remember back in the 80's when cable ready receivers were making their debut and the cable company didn't take kindly to multiple in-house sets but I'm surprised to hear that mentality is still around today

I was doing some searching this morning before I stumbled upon this great thread and discovered "multi-channel" RF modulators capable of transmitting 2, 3, even 4 or 5 channels simultaneously over one coax, all from individual component inputs. The whole thing is digitally set up so you can configure the inputs to whatever channel you'd like, but it's a pricey affair at several hundred bucks.

Guess where I found it? None other than an audio/video security site, likely targetted so you can check multiple cameras over your in-house cable system. Just add digital converters (and maybe a dvd player for an in-house classics channel of your own) and you're set!

[MRX37]

Originally Posted by Phil Nelson

You can also buy kits. A Google search should turn them up.

I would not recommend the Ramsey kit. I built one a few years ago. The signal quality was abysmal, and the usable range was more like 3 feet than the claimed 300 feet.

The TV6C? Yeah I had one too. With a few modifications I averaged about 25 feet signal range... Fried the transistor on it. That transistor gets hot as hell. Thing needs a heatsink on it.

Also, I couldn't get the damn thing to tune to channels 5 or 6 despite the kits claims that it could.