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.

Am I Coming In Clear?*

I wanted to watch the Olympics in our basement this summer, but we cut the cable cord last January. Our Rokus are handling streaming duties, and the TV antennas upstairs bring in local channels, but the TV reception in the basement stinks.

Small antennas like this one do not work well down there. I could get channel 8-1, the HSN, and four different channels showing the same televangelist. Channel 13-1 (our Olympic channel) might come in if I stood in one spot with my arms raised like I was in a Mr. Bean skit.

While moving into our house, I discovered that the previous owner left behind a large TV antenna in the garage attic. It's the size of what you would have seen attached to a house in the 1970s. I suspect he placed it up there when the house was being built. There's no way that antenna could have fit through the access hole in the ceiling. 

I would have never ditched cable TV eight years ago. Back then I thought that worthless antenna was taking up valuable storage space. I was going to dismantle it with a bolt cutter and throw out the pieces, but I forgot. I'm glad I did. Now that attena is like finding buried treasure.

The previous owners also left behind a satellite TV dish on our roof and a nest of cables in the garage wall. I pulled the wires out and found the cable for the attic antenna with Daphne's help.

I connected the antenna to the cable that ran around the house and into the basement. Then I ran downstairs and did a channel search on my TV. Nothing happened because I forgot to connect a cable to the TV (in my defense, I was pretty excited.) I ran the channel search again, and I was watching Olympic volleyball in no time flat.

Looks "good!"

Alright! Go USA!

I began watching other channels when the Olympics were over. I had forgotten how much I like the programs on PBS and MeTV. A lot of those shows air when I'm either alseep or at work. I wondered if there was a way to record them without having a cable service's DVR. 

One affordable option is the Mediasonic ATSC Digital Converter Box. I didn't expect too much for $30, and I was pleasantly surprised. The Homeworx is a bit clunky, but it works. I can record and watch shows without any kind of a subscription. That's cool. I like it.

You have to provide your own external hard drive to store the programs that you record. I went with a Seagate 1TB drive. The Twilight Zone airs at 11:30 PM, but now I can watch it when I want. 

The Mediasonic instructions really are terrible, so thank goodness for the people on Amazon who answer questions and leave ratings. This converter box would be a converter brick without their help.

Svengoolie was airing The Beast Must Die (1974) on Saturday evening. I recorded that while we were watching Lego Masters upstairs. I watched the movie last night (spoiler alert: Dumbledore is the werewolf) and had a lot of fun. I enjoyed being able to fast forward through the commercials and rewind when needed. 

MeTV airs shows I haven't seen before, like Mannix and Cannon, and programs that I haven't even heard of before, like The Time Tunnel and The Invaders. All of these programs run after midnight, so recording them is the only way for me to see them on my "big screen." 

I've also been absorbing America's Test Kitchen, Cook's Country, and Milk Street on Iowa PBS. Food Flirts is a hoot. There are gems to be found on the Laff, Comet, and Mystery channels as well.

Is any of this necessary? Not really. I can find most of this stuff online through one streaming platform or another. 

Am I having fun? Absolutely. How else am I'm going to record Svengoolie? 

*Did you ever notice in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory that the American actor playing Mike Teevee sounds a bit odd when he says, after being sent through the TV, "Am I coming in clear?" That's because he was hanging out with the British actress who played Veruca Salt, and her accent had crept into his own inflection.