Another Unnecessary, but Kinda Cool Project

My dad had all kinds of supervision duties when he was an elementary principal. We were always going back to school. We'd go back on Tuesday nights for JV basketball games. We'd go back on Friday nights for varsity football games. On Saturdays we'd go back for volleyball games.

I swear Dad would yell that it was time to go anytime I was watching a favorite TV show. I hated that; whatever I was watching would become an eternal mystery. VCRs were not available yet, and so I would never know how the show ended. I remember wishing for an endless power cord so we could take the TV with us in the car. 

I think that's what drew me to this Casio portable TV at Goodwill. This would have been a game changer for nine-year-old me.

Since it was manufactored in 1998, I knew that the Casio TV-770 couldn't receive modern digital TV signals. As is, it was useless as a TV. I didn't care. I thought it was cool, and I had a suspicion that I could do something with it.

A Google search turned up YouTube videos of people wirelessly playing movies on their tiny, portable TVs. How were they doing that?

They were using an antenna signal booster. 

An antenna booster takes the signal that an antenna receives, strengthens it, and sends the stronger signal on to your TV. In theory, you should receive a cleaner (less pixelated) image. 

Apparently, if you connect an antenna signal booster in reverse from a VCR and send the signal to a passive "rabbit ear" antenna, the rabbit ears become a VHF signal transmitter, like a very weak TV station. You can pick up whatever is playing on the VCR (or a DVD/ VCR combo player) with the portable TV's antenna.

Here's a very scientific diagram: 

This is exactly the kind of unnecessary thing that I wanted to try! 

I use to have a DVD/VCR combo player that I kept at school. That player was mistakenly barcoded as UHS property by the I.T. team and then later discarded because they deeemed it obsolete. I didn't care back then, but now I wished I had it. I'd need a combo player with a cable out connection to play a DVD on my little TV.

A GE antenna and a Philco player followed me home from Goodwill. 

I bought an antenna booster from Amazon, and used a female to female F-Type connector to join the antenna to the booster. 

A VHS copy of Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island was the test movie. Are you kidding me? This works? (The picture looks better in person.) 

So, I'm in my basement with a large screen TV across from me, but instead of using it, I'm watching a DVD of Freejack on a 2.3 inch screen. 

Does that make any sense? No.

Is it fun? Yes.

I'm going to count this as a win.