CRT Media Server Pt 1

Growing up, I used to go visit my grandmother pretty frequently. She lived in a small apartment ~20 minutes away from me. Upon getting to her place Her building was very old, and had one of those door buzzers on the front. We would buzz the hell out of that thing After sufficient buzzing, the door would unlock, and we would make out way up the stair to the first door on the left.

Her apartment was exactly as you might expect, Old furniture, box of hard candy next to the couch, the television from the guest bedroom was always playing some game show. But what I remember most was the kitchen. It was this narrow corridor about 5 feet wide and 12 feet long. The fridge was covered in magnets & postcards from the families various travels, and photos of all the grandkids throughout the years. There was not an inch of free space on that fridge. My favorite feature though, was this 12 inch white CRT television, which hung from underneath the cabinets. I used to hang in the kitchen as my grandmother cooked and would watch television on that tiny black and white screen.

Fast forward to the present, and I recently I was on Facebook Marketplace recently, and saw a listing for a CRT television that looked eerily familiar. Now it is not the exact television that my grandmother had, but it was close enough to make me feel that I needed it. I have had the idea for a television inside my kitchen for quite some time now, as I miss having background noise. Well that's not entirely true, I miss having background noise that I didn't need to pick. I long for the days when I was able to turn the television on and it was just in the middle of some random show that I had not seen before. The Bourne Supremacy or some shit. Long gone are the days of cable, and well, I truly miss it.

So instead of moping about, lets do something about it! I have recently been getting into homelabbing and have been accruing physical media for one specific purpose... To recreate Cable television! In order to do so, I needed a ton of things

I am now realizing that there may be too much to talk about here, so this will be a multi part-er. Let me focus and talk about getting HDMI output to show up on the CRT television. This particular television has a RF Coaxial cable input, which is not as common anymore, even among CRT’s. So what we need to do is convert a Digital out to a Radio Frequency in using one of these bad boys: HD AV to RF Modulator 1080P Support PAL/NTSC VHF UHF Driver-Free Coaxial TV.

Now this is a load of nonsense that doesn’t mean anything to the average person, so lets break it down. This converter takes HD Audio Visual to a RF Modulator. The key here is that this device supports PAL/NTSC, which is what our CRT uses. You will have to do some research on your own CRT to figure out if yours uses NTSC or ATSC, as there is a meaningful difference which I will not let Claude explain:

• Analog NTSC modulator — outputs an old-school analog signal on VHF channel 3 or 4, exactly like a VCR. Your CRT's tuner can lock onto this. ✅ If your HDMI box is this type, you're done — one box, no RCA step needed.

• Digital ATSC/QAM modulator — outputs a modern digital broadcast signal over coax (for feeding HD signals to newer TVs around a house). Your analog CRT has no digital tuner, so it simply won't find the channel. ❌ These are the more common type on Amazon, which is why I'm flagging it.

Thanks Claude.

Now with this converter, all you need to do is daisy-chain everything together: TV → RF Coax Cable → Converter → HDMI → Computer / Console.

Now in my case I have hooked it up to my Nintendo Switch to test it out, but you should be able to use anything that outputs to an HDMI.

Now with this I am one step closer to having a television in my Kitchen!

In the next part, we will be covering ripping digital media and setting up a headless PC to run ErsatzTV, which will allow us to set up channels with our newly owned media!

Until next time!