At times the shed can be a tad boring. Yes, I can make stuff and the array of rego plates and a fridge stocked with our favourite beers it is otherwise it's boring and I just need something to pass the time if you will. Since I have a collection of TVs, albeit small but it's growing, I decided to utilise them for their main purpose; entertainment. As it probably is no surprise, all my TVs are analogue only and with analogue broadcasts in Australia having ceased in late 2013 they are useless you may think. Well, you are wrong, very wrong. If you possess a bit of technical knowledge and how these analogue TVs work like me then you will find a work-around the situation.
"Now, how did you do all this?" You wonder; well, it is easy I used an array of modulators, combiners, converters and video sources. I go through greater detail on how you can still use vintage televisions on another page to make this one smaller. See here:Analogue TV in 2020?. I started by getting the sources of video that I wanted to use. They are none other than older raspberry PIs used to play videos on the PAL video output. In addition to the RPIs, I utilised some DVB-T converter boxes too. The video outputs were fed to a transmitter that is to transmit the content, some video signals were split amongst several transmitters to have the same picture on different channels. I did simulcast several DVB-T channels to their original analogue channels. The transmitter outputs were all combined using passive combiners matching all of the RF output levels was necessary to ensure the channels would not be washed out. The output of the combined signals was then amplified then sent into the shed's TV wiring. This was combined with the wiring from the aerial and then went into the DVB-T converters to decode the channels I wanted to watch. The aerials I used were: a homebuilt VHF aerial, the design was from RTH, I go in detail of my construction Here: Homemade VHF aerial; Hills TSF2851, UHF yagi for fringe areas. The aerials were combined with a masthead amplifier. The amplification is necessary because I live in the fringe area of both TV transmitter towers in metropolitan Melbourne.
| My channels | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | TTV-0 | Technical TV 0 | 48.5MHz | |
| 2 | ABV-2 | ABC Simulcast | 66.5MHz | |
| 4 | GVV-4 | General Videos | 96.5MHz | |
| 5A | SCV-5A | Security Cameras | 140.5MHz | |
| 7 | HSV-7 | Channel 7 Simulcast | 184.5MHz | |
| 8 | MTV-8 | Music Videos | 191.5MHz | |
| 9 | GTV-9 | Channel 9 Simulcast | 198.5MHz | |
| 10 | ATV-10 | Channel 10 Simulcast | 211.5 MHz | |
| S15 | SHV-S15 | Security Cameras Hyperband | 261.5MHz | |
| 30 | SUV-30 | Security Cameras UHF | 543.5MHz | |
| 45 | SMV-45 | 7Mate Simulcast | 648.5MHz | |
| 53 | GUV-53 | Other videos | 704.5MHz | |
| 60 | TVV-60 | TTV-0 UHF | 753.5MHz | |
| 69 | MUV-69 | MTV-8 UHF | 618.5MHz | |
