Emily VelascoOct 2, 2024

Since there are no more analog TV stations on the air in this country, I have no way of testing sets I find it thrift stores anymore.

So, I finally decided to try the code that Charles Lohr developed for tricking an ESP8266 into transmitting analog TV signals over the air with its RX pin.

This is actually someone else's version of his code because he wrote his code to be compiled in the esp8266 SDK environment and I don't know how to use that. This code compiles in the Arduino IDE and it does work!

This is being transmitted over the air. This is not a composite video signal.

Show threaddragfyre

@MLE_online Since nobody cares about analog TV signals anymore, that means we can set up ad hoc analog TV stations anywhere we want and do what we want with them, right?

* BRB, getting ready to stream some Minecraft on VHF

Oct 2, 2024 at 1:52amWeb
Show threadvxoOct 2, 2024
@dragfyre in most areas of the CONUS the VHF TV channels aside from 6 are going to be vacant. 6 is an odd case thanks to the ATSC3 DTV+FM "franken-fm but more legit now and written into the standard" oddity. There's one of those here in Sacramento but I haven't viewed or listened yet because it's directional into a part of town I'm rarely in
@MLE_online
Show threadEmily VelascoOct 5, 2024
@vxo @dragfyre I thought the FCC finally shut the Frankenstations down. The one down here went off the air over a year ago
Show threadvxoOct 6, 2024
@MLE_online @dragfyre the original NTSC analog ones are gone but the new ATSC3 ones are here to stay. they're so dang weird. I wonder if the IF bandwidth on bog standard cheap market-dump FM receivers is narrow enough to avoid getting a bunch of hiss from the adjacent digital carrier
Show threadEmily VelascoOct 6, 2024
@vxo @dragfyre I guess I have no idea what an ATSC3 Frankenstation is
Show threadvxoOct 6, 2024
@MLE_online @dragfyre It's bizarre. So, normally an ATSC3 digital signal has a COFDM carrier that's 6 mhz wide. The special case reduces that to 5.5 Mhz with it shifted lower in the channel, leaving 500 Khz free at the top for the FM audio carrier to be run up there.
The description of this on Wikipedia suggests that maybe the licenses for it were a one-time thing? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATSC_3.0#Analog_audio_fallback
ATSC 3.0 - Wikipedia

Show threadEmily VelascoOct 6, 2024
@vxo @dragfyre So they are digital tv stations with analog audio?
Show threadvxoOct 6, 2024
@MLE_online @dragfyre Yeah! Theoretically, those cool old radios that had TV sound on the VHF channels should work with it too.
Show threadvxoOct 2, 2024
@dragfyre well I say that and there's a weird low power here on 3! It's watchable, oh, a whole four miles out of Walnut Grove, into mostly vineyards and orchards
@MLE_online