Sony Watchman conversion for ATV reception

[Solidus]

Hey all,

To keep this sweet & to the point, I've recently come upon a Sony FD-525 Watchman, which if you're not familiar with them, is an old, 4.5" B&W portable TV. It is purely analog TV, which now in the age of no-more-analog and all-digital TV transmission, makes it useless.

The reason I picked it up, however was so I could see what I could do in terms of converting it to work on the amateur TV bands. These bands are higher and I figured it'd be an interesting project to take on - the TV has an external antenna input, so it can be fed coaxial cable.

Is this project ideally just as simple as down-mixing the higher frequencies into the broadcast range of the TV tuner?

TIA,
Solidus

 

[sideburn]

You can mod it to take composite video.

 

[davenn]

The reason I picked it up, however was so I could see what I could do in terms of converting it to work on the amateur TV bands. These bands are higher and I figured it'd be an interesting project to take on - the TV has an external antenna input, so it can be fed coaxial cable.

you never said what band you want to do ATV on ??

you also never said if the receiver is VHF only or VHF/UHF

You can mod it to take composite video.

This is probably the best option as ATV uses FM for both video and audio and analog VHF TV used AM for video and FM for audio
I cant remember if it is the same for analog UHF TV (450 - 850MHz) or it used FM for both ... it's been a while since I have done ATV
If it is FM for both, then the receiver can be used as is as long as it covers the amateur ATV portion of the band


Dave

 

[Externet]

Get one of these NTSC to ATSC converters, sometimes can be found at pawn shops also:

----> https://duckduckgo.com/?q=atsc+tv+converter&t=canonical&ia=images&iax=images

Edited -- Sorry... totally goofed, misread ATV as ATSC. Would you have a
'cable box' behind your spider webs ?

 

[kellys_eye]

There was also no mention of whether the set is a multi-standard device either. The TV signals can vary in all ways - video/audio offset to name but one. The signal standard isn't really 'standard' at all. There are many!

Finding the place to input composite video is about the only useful way to utilise that device but even then you'll be missing out on the colour capabilities of some amateur transmissions. Far easier to get a small colour-capable LCD with direct video input.

Has anyone come across an SDR-based video decoding package like this?:

https://www.rtl-sdr.com/watching-atsc-tv-with-an-sdrplay-sdr-and-gnu-radio/