I've been struggling for a few months trying to get a TV signal to one of my Watchmans and haven't had any luck. I've got a nice little collection of Watchmans, Casios and some other tiny TV's but they all collect dust with the loss of the over the air signal. There's been a few solutions including using your VHS Deck, using older office building internal broadcasting equipment and Boombox Magazine's Method on YouTube. I went for the later method and went all in on a Zealous Sender on Ebay and an HDMI to Composite Splitter. Using HDMI out on a computer I was supposed to get a signal on my TVs. The first Zealous I received, while new in the box, had a rattle to it and when I applied power it would not turn on. The seller took it back and I ordered another unit, crossing my fingers. While everything seemed working now and hooked up right I still couldn't dial in a signal. I was recently playing with my General Electric Roadshow, the technology wonder of the early 80's. This one has it all, a large rechargeable battery pack, a color TV and a removable microcassette recorder, a box built for the busy Wall Street Executive. I changed the setup a little by getting rid of the splitter and buying a Roku with composite output, I got mine at Walmart for around $35.00. I think they target the older generation that still has CRT's. So now I have a Roku that gets a wireless signal, the composite outputs plug into the Zealous but it only has one audio channel. I set everything up and fired up the Roadshow. The nice thing about the Roadshow is that it has channel scanning instead of a rotary dial like the Watchmans have, this automatic feature dialed in Zealous Signal. The Roku is super cool, it has 100's of channels and I though it was fitting to play, yep, that's right, you got it, RUN DMC The King of Rock. I think the Roku automatically scales the screen to fit, old videos look perfect, new videos play in widescreen mode without any setting changes. Now I can't wait to pull the old TV's out and try them all.
@Mister X Congrats! I want this too! Wireless!! Did you manage to connect wireless to your other portable watchman devices? Wich Roku and Zealous model did you bought? I googled your Roadshow. Love it!
I'll post more when I get a chance, it's pretty cool and it goes through the antenna so it should work on all devices.
I got a couple more working to prove the proof of concept. I forgot about old CRT's needing a little warm up time but once the Sony Watchman warmed up it started playing fine. I used the Sony to initially try and find the broadcast signal and I'm still thinking that the HDMI to composite unit is defective. The Sharp 3P-40U TV Boombox on the other hand pulled the station right in but unfortunately my photography skills aren't good enough so you can see a clear screen.
I bought the Zealous Analog Sender off of Ebay https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/55-1190-...h=item211fc8ecec:g:n9AAAOSwA3dYlOD9:rk:1:pf:0 And the Roku Express + Wireless at Walmart, make sure it has the 3.5 mm jack to composite cord with it. I don't think Amazon USA has this model but you might be able to buy the cord and the Roku separately but it would be close to 2x the Walmart Price. As you can see the Roku is just a hair bigger than a Matchbox Car and like I mentioned before it seems to scale the broadcast so it fits the screen without having to do adjustments on the portables. https://www.walmart.com/ip/Roku-Exp...V-AND-30-DAY-FREE-TRIAL-OF-SHOWTIME/369278616 The range is about 30' and I'm not too excited about the sound quality. I feel like the sound signal being transmitted needs to be dialed back a little so the receivers can be turned up more but it may be an age issue. The Roku has stereo output but the Zealous only has one audio channel and one video input. Both units need to be plugged in but the Roku does use a USB jack so it might be portable. This at least gives me a starting point but I might still go for a more industrial route on the broadcast unit, I'm going to play with it and see what upgrades I need but it's pretty cool and I could see putting an art installation or tradeshow version together.
I jumped the shark with the Zealous Unit (hopefully) and moved onto a Blonder Tongue Agile Modulator Stock # 59414, Model # AM60-550A. I read about this on Phil's Old Radio Website https://antiqueradio.org/HomeTVTransmitter.htm I don't have it hooked up yet so I'm a little premature, the unit has a threaded cable coax video in so I had to order an adapter which should be here any day. This unit is much larger and rack mountable, the company is still in business and I think they sell these to companies that used to broadcast TV throughout buildings (just one channel). I haven't heard what the range is but there is a jack for an antenna and some internet sites say they can broadcast about a city block. Someone really creative could power this in a vehicle and then broadcast to a portable TV set without anyone else knowing, I'd love to walk into the local water-hole with a game on my Watchman.
The RCA to cable coax arrived and I hooked up the Blonder Tongue and it works great. At first I wasn't getting any signal but I found an old set of rabbit ears and hooked it up to the RF out coax connection. The nice thing about the Blonder Tongue is that you can put in any channel using the DIP switches, I choose channel 6, hopefully my neighbors aren't getting Cinderella Videos from YouTube on their TVs. While the picture is same quality as the Zealous, the sound is 10x better. There's some tuning screws on the front of the modulator for video and audio, by tuning these you can fine tune the signal. There's also a tuner for video to audio strength to help balance the sound. Now I just have to build a bigger antenna and see what this thing can do. Here's a link to the ebay auction, he only has one left but these tend to run from $45 USD to $65 USD. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Blonder-To...e=STRK:MEBIDX:IT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649 And more information on the Blonder Tongue Website if you want the specs or manual. The unit shown looks like an upgrade with digital tuning, mine is the older style but it does the exact same thing. Don't let the photo fool you, it's about 24" across and 1.5" high. https://www.blondertongue.com/am-60-550.html
I'm guessing you mean something like Baseball, but your comment made me think of a friend who back in about 1988 when the Gameboy was still on the drawing board, turned up at the Amateur Radio club with Pong being displayed on his 2" Citizen Pocket TV. I have seen quite a few ebay listings where the seller is using a Pong game to prove the functionality of an Analogue TV. As late as the PS1 game consoles had modulators available for connecting to TV aerial sockets. At around the same time the same friend used to video things like the Balloon fiesta using a home VCR running from an inverter in his car, and could grab and print (on a 9 pin dot matrix printer) video pictures using some hardware and software he had for his Sinclair QL.
I miss those old days of pushing your electronics to the edge with different ideas. Kids think there was a clear path to today but there was so much experimentation going on with all kinds of equipment and any of the entertainment could have gone in several different directions. I remember how cool I thought it was to add computer generated "credits" to video tape. I might even have done some illegal advertising on rental movies at the end credits, fun times.
I've been glued to My Mate Vince on YouTube, he loves to fix electronics and even though some of the videos are long, for me it's still interesting. His most popular video is his own TV on the boombox.
I've bought up few more Boomboxes with TV's, I might be putting up an exhibition, I just have to dial in the equipment a little more. I had asked about the Sony FX-414 in another thread, it doesn't seem to get a lot of love but looked like a substantial box. I found a deal I couldn't refuse and snapped one up. What a neat box, very square and substantially heavy, the only drawback is the TV is black and white. How can you go wrong with dual antenna's and vu meters, the color is very similar to Marantz Gold used on their later boomboxes. Treble, Bass and Mic Control are heavy duty sliders with a metal shield underneath and the balance, volume controls have a very nice feel to them when you slide them, very high end. The unit has some rubber bumpers on the handle and also pretty heavy duty rubber/metal legs on the bottom if you stand it up like a conventional box. The tuning dials are geared so you can really fine tune in stations, making it easy to grab a signal. The Blonder Tongue has been working flawlessly and we're watching some 70's AC/DC on YouTube through the Roku. The set did have to warm up for a while before the screen looked good, I take crappy photos of TV screens, I'll try to figure out how to do it better but my lighting is horrendous. It looks a little dirtier than it actually is, the metal speaker grills could use some painting but other than that its in great shape
I had this one in storage and I forgot about it, the Realistic Pocketvision 22, I'm not sure when it was made or who made it but it came from Japan. Sometimes Radio Shack had some neat stuff and this one has a higher build quality but I also think it's an earlier model. Tuning is done by the two up/down buttons and all I need to do is get it to find my Blonder Tongue Transmission, which was easy for this one. This portable TV is color, which is kind of rare with these early units and I don't know if it's CRT or LCD without doing some research, the lines are vertical but that doesn't matter when Eddie VH is cranking away on an 80's video. It's on a kickstand so the angle looks funny but it's not like an early LCD where you had to be directly in front of it, making me think it is CRT. There's a jack for power, one for headphones, and an antenna jack, something I don't remember seeing on one of these before.
Definitely an LCD if it is color. With color CRT the electron gun at the back of the tube has to be about 4" long even if the screen is only 2" like a Panasonic I have. Therefore you would need a big pocket for the smallest color CRT. I presume a bent tube like Sinclair and Sony used would be impractical with a color CRT. Some more info. http://www.guenthoer.de/e-history.htm Note that people were predicting flat screen TVs for many years before they became a reality. The information I would love to find is when the first large color LCDs were made, I remember going to an AV show in London, probably in the 1990s and Sharp were exhibiting a 20" LCD TV. They were so proud of it, it was displayed in it's own room with staff present all the time. It was many years before anything comparable appeared in the shops. Despite searching I can't find any information about it. Sharp probably had to make a few hundred to get a good one. In about 2000 my boss gave up on trying to buy an LCD monitor for his computer. He got three in a row which all had duff pixels. The manufacturers claimed this was normal but he argued that if he was paying £500 (three times the price of a CRT) for a monitor he expected it to be perfect. Something I can date is my purchase of a Citizen LCD pocket TV similar to the Realistic you show. That was 1990. I went to see Madonna's Blond Ambition tour at Wembley, and there was an electronics discount warehouse place (the sort that had big adverts in all the camcorder magazines and was actually a very small warehouse on an industrial estate) very close selling them for about £70. I had seen them in my local Carrefour Hypermarket a couple of years earlier but they were over £100 there so out of my price range.
You are right Longman, I just dug up this catalog listing. There's a few photos out there but no mention that it's LCD, not even on the box, it makes me wonder if LCD wasn't as popular. I've also got the PocketVision 3, I can't get it to power up so I'll have to crack it open before I post it. I'm pretty sure it's made by Citizen and they did a great job, it's also a really nicely built unit.
It's so great to see you have managed to make your old tv-devices work again: wireless!!! Tnx for all the detailed information on how to "cast" the old analog with the new digital tech. It proves that it is possible. There should be an integrated device for this Here in the Netherlands analog signal will be cut of this year - my region is the last -, so i need to prepare for keeping my devices working preventing to be obsolete...
When ours went out about 10 years ago I wanted to find a local bar and set up my Watchmans and TV boomboxes, have them turned on and watch the signal go out. I thought I could make a little event out of it and possibly get a beer or two. Unfortunately I had to work late that night and couldn't line it up. SantiOriginal, the Blonder Tongue is a nice commercial duty unit, the other equipment is ok but not nearly as nice. It is big, meant to be in a rack, so it's 19" across and about 1.5" high, that's ok for me, it sits on some stereo equipment and blends right in. You may have to dig to find one that broadcasts your signal but I have to believe you have these types of units over there.
@Mister X Yes,I was already looking at Blondertongue's website and on e-bay. Probably i'll have to be aware of different signal-frequencies, maybe it's different than in the USA, i don't know. Boy, import taxes are high! So hopefully i'll find a device "made in Europe", without the taxes...
SantiOriginal. Many old VCRs will give an RF output although not as high a power as the Blondertonge. They were also available for Games Consoles like the PS1. A lasting memory was a friend connecting a Pong Game to a Pocket LCD in the late 1980s before things like the Gameboy existed. At the time it seemed incredibly cool.
@Longman Of course! Thanks for the tip. Going to try it tomorrow and i'll let you know! (I have 2 vcr's)
