AV to UHF

PacMan

Hi there,
I recently purchased an AV to UHF thingy, the type you use to transmit a security camera around the house.....
My problem is this. I want to distribute HLN and CNN USA from telstar 15 degrees west, around the house using this method. However, as these channels brodcast in the american NTSC method, they only appear in Black and white on the other TV's..... (Which are set on auto format)
Is there any way around this, or can anyone recommend a system that will broadcast the pictures in colour.

Apogee

That transponder has been mostly encrypted in the past, so no idea how long it will remain FTA.

A standards converting VCR will do what you require. The Samsung SV5000 is good but expensive.

An Echostar satellite receiver might also be able to output an NTSC channel onto PAL RF - I will check at the weekend and get back.

watty

I don't think a Multistandard VHS or Multistandard Sat receiver will help.

A PC with video in and video out can do the standards conversion.

PacMan

Apogee wrote: »

That transponder has been mostly encrypted in the past, so no idea how long it will remain FTA.

It just been encrypted again

Apogee

I had a long test with the DAD-4 feed on 15W in NTSC on a bog standard Mikomi 14" colour portable this morning.

The RF out from the Echostar gives a B+W picture on the Mikomi with sound, so no good on that front. (A 21" Thomson does display the picture in colour, but it has a special NTSC capable tuner - the reason it was bought first day.)

I also tested the VCR solution by sending the AV out from the Echostar into the Samsung. When the "Straight-through" option is selected, the RF out from the VCR produces a B+W picture on the Mikomi as expected. But selecting the "Pal Output" option on the VCR, produces the picture in colour perfectly on the Mikomi.

This was kind of what I had anticipated, so I wanted to check if the Samsung VCR would work for lower end receivers too. Surprisingly (to me at least), when I fed AV out from a Vantage receiver to the VCR and then RF out to the TV, it gave a colour picture, eventhough the "Straight-through" option was selected i.e. the VCR wasn't doing any conversion. I then tried the same thing on a cheapo Black Diamond VCR, with AV from the Vantage into the VCR and RF out to the Mikomi, and the picture was again in colour. The Vantage receiver has an RF modulator itself, so I fed that straight into the TV, and again the picture was in colour.

And then I tried the same thing on a Technomate receiver, and it too gave a colour picture, both over AV or directly from RF out.

So it seems that both the Vantage and Technomate receivers will actually convert the NTSC signal internally to PAL and output the converted signal both from AV or via RF out. By contrast, the Echostar doesn't do any signal conversion, and in that case you need either an NTSC capable TV or else use a multi-standard VCR to convert the signal from NTSC to PAL.

watty

Since those solutions leave the lines at 480, the crawl due to non-ideal colour frequency must be bad.

No matter if you using PAL, SECAM or NTSC, in theory the colour subcarrier frequency is chosen as a frequency that is between harmonic multiple of lines x frames (525 x30 or 625 x25). That's why a frame rate converter that converts from 480 line 30fps to 576line 25fps is using PC is best. The VCR only converts the colour frequecy & mode, not the lines.

Still, better than nothing.

Apogee

watty wrote: »

Since those solutions leave the lines at 480, the crawl due to non-ideal colour frequency must be bad.

It isn't.