TV question...

[Psychopomp]

Ok, so I know this is possible, I'm just having trouble thinking it through and finding parts.

We like to watch a little TV before bed, but I have a problem if I get sleepy and then get up to go to bed I'm wide awake. So I thought I'd take advantage of my nice 24 inch wide screen monitor and run the satellite into the bedroom.

I have an extra stereo amp and speakers so sound isn't an issue, but I don't want to buy another satellite receiver.

I don't think I'll need a splitter because there's coax in and coax out on the receiver (I'm using S-video from the receiver to the TV in the living room).

So what I'm thinking will work is: coax into the satellite receiver (of course), s-video out to the TV in the living room and coax out to the bedroom. But I'm going to need something to convert that coax into A/V so I can plug it into the monitor and stereo.

Is my logic correct? The remote I have will work through walls, so changing channels won't be a problem.

So what out there, and I don't want to spend more than $10, will convert coax to A/V? Or should we just watch TV in the living room and not worry about it?

Thanks.

 

[Psychopomp]

Well, I figured it out with an old VCR. But I'd still like something smaller than that. Still pretty spiffy though... I can watch TV, have side by side computer and TV or picture in picture.

So I'm sitting here looking at BFC and watching the Twins and Brewers in a little window in the corner...

 

[Lucky Bob]

Well, they're entirely different beasts, so I doubt you're going to find anything explicitly for the purpose of converting coax to RCA (which usually is higher quality, so people would just run RCA all the way through.) What I would do is get two of these, one for each audio channel. Then you can plug each of your existing audio channels into the appropriate splitter, and just run a standard RCA cable with video and two channels of audio into the bedroom. That way, higher quality, no VCR, but you will have to turn up the volume (I'm not sure if the volume will go down all the time or just when both are actively in use, but c'est la idiote.)

 

[Psychopomp]

I'm working on some audio splitters so I can dump the amp and just use the computer speakers. But I'd really like to be able to get rid of the VCR. I don't have a lot ot space for the VCR and amp, so getting rid of one of them would be great.

No AC, two of us in the bed, summer... I'd like to have as few things generating extra heat as possible. But the way it is for now, I'm happy, she's happy. We'll see how it goes.

 

[b.c.molin]

Sorry I have no helpful ideas to add but I am very impressed with your ingenuity. :thumbup:

 

[Psychopomp]

Sorry I have no helpful ideas to add but I am very impressed with your ingenuity. :thumbup:

I am too, actually. For a while I was over complicating things and getting confused. But when I realized that there were multiple outputs on the satellite receiver things clicked into place.

After playing with it for a while, I discovered there the monitor has options for the size of the picture in picture window, so I could actually see what was going on in the baseball game, and still have more than enough monitor space left over for browsing BFC.

Baseball and knives, I'm a happy boy (and my girlfriend is happy that she can watch Sponge Bob in bed now).

 

[Gollnick]

I assume since you also have web browsing on this screen that there is a PC in the bedroom with this monitor. You can get TV Tuner cards for PCs. But, it's not a ten-buck item, more like fifty.

You certainly can buy devices that will take the coax in and give composite video baseband signal (the yellow RCA jack) out, or S-video, or even VESA (the 15-pin blue computer video connector), these devices are called "tuners" but they are also not ten bucks. Using a VCR to act as a tuner is probably your best and cheapest solution.

 

[Psychopomp]

I assume since you also have web browsing on this screen that there is a PC in the bedroom with this monitor. You can get TV Tuner cards for PCs. But, it's not a ten-buck item, more like fifty.

You certainly can buy devices that will take the coax in and give composite video baseband signal (the yellow RCA jack) out, or S-video, or even VESA (the 15-pin blue computer video connector), these devices are called "tuners" but they are also not ten bucks. Using a VCR to act as a tuner is probably your best and cheapest solution.

That's what I figured.

And yes there is a PC on the floor. One of my old computers had a TV tuner built into the video card, but I never tried it out and my current GeForce 8600GTS doesn't.

I'm pretty pleased with the quality of the signal through the VCR and I hid it under the bed so we're not tripping over or looking at it all the time. And while the 24 inch monitor is too small to be the only television, the bedroom is small enough that the size is perfect.