Why Is Your NES A TV Station? (That's Weird)

[@AdminBlitz_Shaiya_Exile]

I managed a Radio Shack in the 90's. I got tired of constantly hooking up and moving video equipment and television displays, so we connected a single output (F connector) 25db antenna amp and connected a circular UHF wire antenna directly to an antenna to F adapter and plugged it into the amp output. It would broadcast the signal about 50 ft very clearly. Then I connected then input to a laserdisc player (at the time, produced the highest quality of output of any video device at the time) and every TV in the store would be tuned in to that channel and would clearly display the hi res demo disc being broadcast. Adjoining stores would also tune in as well to provide a pleasing display for their customers. I would also connect this amp sometimes to a PC that I had installed a TV card in, and every TV in the store could display the demo running on the PC.This really helped and saved a lot of time and also helped sell a lot of video and tv equipment.

[@metaleggman18]

I'm somewhat surprised there wasn't an FCC snitch to try to get you in trouble lol! I always wonder if I started playing around with broadcasting analog video around the home, if I might get a very stern letter in the mail 😂

[@TheWeirdAlley]

@@metaleggman18 yeah, it seems very unlikely

[@MajorOutage]

​@@TheWeirdAlley yeah dude's not making a lot of sense. he says he plugged it into a laserdisc but he doesnt even mention the requisite RF conversion that would still hold back the image quality. also a tv card for a pc is usually an input not an output.

[@samicrusader]

@@MajorOutage afaik many gpus of the time had tv out on them, you could theoretically plug it into a vcr composite input, set the input then connect the vcr's rf out to an amp then to your antenna

[@hoarhound9]

@@halcyonoutlander2105 sadly it is not or ever be the its store it was then you would have better luck at wally world

[@DIY-valvular]

I am in my mid 50's, I was a tv technician from mid 80's to 2005, so I give for settled the analog tv tech but I am watching this with a prety big smile on my face... The memories of happy analog years... It causes me vertigo that the concept of analog tv has to be explained to the new generations. As I understand it, the anagogic TV was deactivated some years ago in your country, Here in Argentina analog tv (both paid cable and free air broadcast) coexist chaotically with digital systems. Here it was very popular among the DIYer community to attach a VHS player with some signal booster to the roof receiving aerial in order to transmit rented movies to the neighborhood ( xxx ones often). Of course it was as illegal here in Argentina as in USA, but those where toe wild 80's. Best regards from Buenos Aires

[@insomniac7540]

That's proper public broadcasting!

[@Misack8]

I still remember the interference on the late 90's. My neighbor had a HAM Radio that interfered with our TV signal until the day he found out his wife was using the radio to date a trucker from another state and burned the whole thing in the backyard, since then no more interference. Some years ago I built a magnetic microphone and I just went to the living room, where a CRT TV was still being used, and the interference could easily be heard across the room.

[@effexon]

twitch/youtube of the day?

[@effexon]

@@Misack8 oh man, so social media is meh, people had this "problem" from beginning of time, be it paper, radio signal, whatnot. give people some tool, they'll figure out how to use it.

[@DIY-valvular]

@Astropathix XIII 😂😂😂

[@luismurag]

I live in Costa Rica, and back in the late 90's/early 2000's, I was given a black chinese NES knock off that came with a keyboard and it had the convenience of coming with a built-in RCA input and RF and RCA output (guess for convenience?), with some educational games in cartridges. We did not have cable TV here back then, only OTA. My mom was surfing through local OTA tv and noticed that my console was broadcasting on Channel 3, 5, 8 and 10 (VHF) in the other room and other channels were having interference without any antenna at all connected to the RF output. One day I connected the VCR to the RCA input and I recall that once it detected a signal, it'd override the console output. Little did I know that the thing was also broadcasting whatever I had connected to the RCA input (VCR or camera) and that's how I made my own little "TV station" as kid. The signal on Channel 3 and 5 was stronger, and 8 and 10 was weaker (most of the time without color). It interfered the signal of local stations (channels 2, 4, 6) but not enough to override the signal completely. Once I realized I could just add a rabbit ear antenna outside of my bedroom, I spent like an entire year playing that I had a TV station, recording tv shows and broadcasting live with my cousins using an old Hi8 camera I still own. I still have some tapes where I played as a Channel 3 host (in my imagination as a child Channel 3 was the main station and the other ones were basically broadcast relay stations so that's why they looked funny). You have no idea how much fun I had doing this, and also it was incredibly useful for me to have this "TV station" because sometimes I wanted to watch a movie with the VCR in my bedroom on a portable TV outside, or in the kitchen or living room, and the quality wasn't bad. I was around 7 or 8 by then and never really thought that I was doing anything illegal, and I never got in trouble. Guess it was just luck because back in the day the area was rural and there weren't many houses close to mine. One day I connected the wrong power supply brick to the NES, a plastic smell covered the room and that's how my "TV station" died forever. Fast forward 15 years later, I ended up working on national broadcast TV for quite a few years as designer and motion graphics animator. I'm no longer involved with TV broadcasting but I do believe that it was that NES knockoff that directly influenced my professional career later in time.

[@imacg4]

nice

[@orphan-account2023]

that's pretty cool

[@bourasabdennour8369]

Yeah... I live in Algeria and nes clones were so popular, the first time I have unboxed my nes clone with my big brother a we found little whip antenna ,we didn't know it was for rf output. One day, we do a usual scanning TV channels (Analog that time) and surprisingly we get a video brodcast from nes clone of my neighbor it was super mario bros and Tanks 😂 We didn't tell my neighbor about it so no doubts arise in his mind that we are doing some eavesdropping or something. When I grow up I made some search and I found that the type of old rf coax that we got was unshielded so maybe there where a rf signal leakage from rf cable of the neighbor picked by our unshielded rf tv cable. I finally figured out what was for the whip inside nes clone accessories 🙂.

[@naikigutierrez4279]

QEPD tu NES de imitación.

[@SLICK8116]

Email the rest of😂 this essay bruh

[@Tranzisto]

I remember playing "dendy" (taiwanese NES knock-off that was produced for russian market in the '90s) back in the day and my neighbour used to come to my house to complain every so often that he wasn't able to watch some channels on his TV cause he saw the game that I was playing. I suppose there were no regulations for that thing in 1990's Russia and so the manufacturer deemed it unnecessary to shield the RF modulator for. Guess now I know how in earth that happened back then :)

[@IsmaelIszlonn]

I came to the comments yo say just this. But in this case a friend of mine was the neighbour receiving the NES knockoff broadcast. We never complained though, we would just watch them play! We were like 8 yo at the time, in 2001

[@TheNethIafin]

can confirm. Same happened to me in 2004. We had a channel with someone playing all the games

[@chrisd6287]

That is so fascinating to me!

[@scramblesthedeathdealer]

I'm in the US and I would love a Dendy "Famiclone."

[@TheNethIafin]

@@scramblesthedeathdealer you dont. It's a boring system on a chip, where you have just one black blob on the board and that's it

[@brianhaygood183]

So good of you to create this entire set miles out at sea so you wouldn't be breaking any FCC rules. That's dedication.

[@ailivac]

maybe he built a room with copper-lined walls to keep fields from radiating to the outside

[@philmikehunt7479]

@@ailivac wouldn’t a copper mesh work too with small enough gaps or would it still let rf out

[@ailivac]

@@philmikehunt7479 pobably, depending on the size of the gaps and frequency.

[@boxwithahat]

@Stephen Cavilia So, a Faraday cage

[@brianhaygood183]

@@philmikehunt7479 pretty sure that wouldn't make it legal, just undetectable. You are still operating illegal equipment. ...not that anyone cares.

[@hdushdhsh3488]

I'd always wondered how my stepfather did this, he told us to gather in the front room one day in the early nineties while we watched him play Mario from another room, we thought it was the coolest thing ever. Makes sense as he was a radio tech and worked for ch 10 Australia for some years, he probably had a good amp because the nes and the tv were at least 40ft apart.

[@Catheidan]

Ha. Your grandpa was an OG streamer

[@Tacospaceman]

@@Catheidan maybe the first gaming streamer with an audience ever. That’s crazy.

[@sheilaolfieway1885]

And you were al the antenna :P

[@rich1051414]

If you had a high gain antenna on your house, that is why you had such range. It wouldn't take much to get a strong signal up to the antennae, which is connected to the other TVs in the house.

[@Crytkee]

yes@@Tacospaceman

[@KylesDigitalLab]

"What are you in for?" "Making a TV transmitter so I could play Mario wirelessly"

[@RadioNul]

hahaha

[@ctrlaltdestroy91]

"First time?"

[@Homeskillet-mk6bj]

to the Group W bench with ya!

[@RAMChYLD]

They made famiclones that can do that. Look up Micro Genius.

[@scramblesthedeathdealer]

Everyone in the holding cell slides away down the bench...

[@kg4gav]

As a broadcast engineer I am impressed with your level of digging into how this tech works. If you want a job as a broadcast engineer in television, let me know. We need people that think like you!

[@donibritts2911]

Thanks to the FCC (thank god) all TV stations in the US are digital now (I'm assuming the final phase has already taken place). They took all the fun out of it, but damn...it's so much more reliable. Less power consumption. Smaller transmitters. NO MORE Klystron tubes!! But, your right...this guy knows some stuff. We are always looking for engineers too. Except, now it's more about computer knowledge than radio signals.

[@HOWLWOLF]

@@donibritts2911 what specifically are you guys looking for? Computer knowledge wise. TV always interested me both software and hardware wise.

[@jhonwask]

@@HOWLWOLF Me too!

[@jhonwask]

Where do I apply?

[@kg4gav]

@@HOWLWOLF The amount of computer knowledge required varies by station. Some have their own IT department that does the heavy lifting. You definitely need to know how to run and terminate network cables, know how to do basic desktop support, replace fans, image hard drives, connect network printers, set network configurations, etc. I'd recommend the CompTIA A+ certification, or at least knowledge of that material.

[@MeaTLoTioN]

Back in around 1992(?), I managed to get a broken RF modulator for an old amiga 500, and I turned it into a transmitter and hooked up a pinhole camera to it, and attached it to an RC car I had at the time, so I could record my car races in "first person" on a vcr =) I had totally forgotten about this until seeing this video. Thank you so much for bringing the lost memories back!

[@thienbaongo7997]

Wow, that's badass, you pulled a Home Alone 3 lmao

[@EpicFurbynerd76YO]

thats really cool

[@Top-Code]

@@thienbaongo7997 we all thought it was unrealistic, but nope

[@FlyingLampshade]

Dude that's amazing!

[@der.Schtefan]

Here from 2024. Do you recall these times? The animation for the TV signal is and was just great! :)

[@joelfromportland]

In the 1980s there was a black market device called "TV GENIE" that would in fact broadcast a signal to all televisions in your house and maybe even your neighbors house as well.

[@BG101UK]

We had something similar in the UK. Problem is, these video senders had harmonics all over the place and were made illegal .. didn't stop electronics stores from selling them though, with the comment "it's legal for us to sell it to you, but not legal to actually use it!"

[@mdgraller]

@@BG101UK "It's a waterpipe/vase and spice grinder. Don't call it anything other than a waterpipe/vase and spice grinder or I'll have to ask you to leave the store"

[@onometre]

I have one hooked up and in use right now lol. They're not black market, they're totally legal as they fall under the FCC's power guidelines

[@MrStabby19812]

I could pick up faintly my neighbours ps1 trough the wall

[@technophant]

I think it was available for a while before being banned.

[@R4DI4LR4CER]

Like a cross between Anthony from LTT and Technology Connections (who sent me here). Subbed

[@miigon9117]

thats exactly what I thought of!!!

[@gabrielfair724]

I came here from technology connections

[@R4DI4LR4CER]

@@forbiddenera Why would you feel bad? They're all amazing.

[@nicholasvlamis5603]

That's actually a fair assessment, i knew he reminded me of someone but I couldn't put it to words. You've done just that

[@Kafj302]

Hmm that would make for an interesting collab.

[@arthurvin2937]

In Russia of the 90s, we had Chinese Famicom knockoffs which didn't have any RF modulator shielding whatsoever, and no "FCC'kinda" regulations either. In big apartment buildings it quickly became unbearable to watch TV broadcasts because of it. Some of those Famiclones even had built-in antenna and beefed up RF modulator that could broadcast SMB to the entire building. However, in Japan, there was even semi-official Famicom addon - "Hori Multi-Box" which was specifically designed to broadcast Famicom into the space. Go figure.

[@RaysGamingChannel2003]

It was the Famiclone Dendy? Right? I have a micro Genius famiclone

[@arthurvin2937]

@@RaysGamingChannel2003 right, Dendy Junior and Dendy Classic. They were actually not that bad compared to cheaper rubish - Lifa, Subr, Simba etc...

[@RaysGamingChannel2003]

@@arthurvin2937 yeah

[@diagtula]

u have such regulations but u never comply them. and even didn know about. CRD also not break any law because forbiden transmittion power must exceed 10 watt and its alot of power And FCC rules talk about interference not transmitting power

[@arostwocents]

Great story thanks for sharing

[@mstcrow5429]

He's clearly planning on replicating the Max Headroom Incident.

[@confusedkemono]

catch the wave

[@thecianinator]

I think Cathode Ray Dude is better than Chuck Swirsky

[@JustJaidenism]

i doubt someone's nes could overpower Windows To The World PBS.

[@fuhwurd]

amateur television, something that ham radio operators do on the UHF band

[@JustJaidenism]

@@fuhwurd Yep. I Almost Did This, Not Knowing Operating A Channel On 4 Analog Is Illegal.

[@cheplays2482]

My goodness, this would totally explain how I was able to watch my neighbor one floor below play Resident Evil and Tekken back in the day! My TV was on channel 3, the signal was black and white and there was no sound. I always wondered how, and this is it!

[@cheplays2482]

@Gomam0n that was most likely the case, seeing as I live in the Caribbean.

[@imark7777777]

Sounds like you might have been in an apartment they could have tied into the shared antenna or cable in one room to feed into the other room and well you just happen to be upstairs on the same cable or the other option....

[@cheplays2482]

@@imark7777777 yeah, definitely the other option. Didn't have cable until we got our own home in '99

[@joshbeekman5474]

Or every time a semi truck went by you get static and hear what they are chirping in the 90's

[@effexon]

magic of analog world. then it became lame when people started stealing money via unprotected wifi by neighbor.

[@cogspace]

I remember picking up an RF adapter at RadioShack as a kid so I could hook the SNES up to a little portable TV my grandparents had in their RV. I later discovered I could record gameplay onto VHS tapes. I miss that messy, hacktastic analog world sometimes. The fuzzy edges of '90s tech really helped feed the imagination. Anything seemed possible if you could find the right set of connectors to daisy chain together.

[@StevenWernerCS]

the og let's play

[@AlmirAlvesPereira]

Back in the day, when I tuned in to channel 3 I was able to watch someone playing Super Mario Bros. For decades I wondered how that was possible. Mystery solved!

[@CaptainX2012]

lmao your neighbour

[@iLginFamily]

This happened to me too, and after 25 years today i have just remembered it and asked myself how it could happen then. So i did a research and came across to this video..

[@SeltsamerAttraktor]

Same here

[@fabiospzn]

Heppened to me also lol.

[@claudiodiaz9752]

Same :p

[@donibritts2911]

I am a television engineer (have been for 20 years) and I enjoyed your video very much. You are correct, analog was way more fun than digital. I used to have all kinds of fun doing things like you did here. And scanners (Tapping the discriminator). You could pick up all kinds things (unintended by the people transmitting it) on just regular TV's (UHF usually). It was not unheard of to pick up early cell phone calls on your TV. That being said, I would NEVER want to go back to analog. Digital is far more reliable and effective at a fraction of the bandwidth...and power consumption...and transmitter size. Klystron tube television transmitters SUCK in comparison.

[@redins6232]

I had TV that had VHF and UHF capabilities with very sensitive knobs for dialing in on a signal and my friends and I would spend hours turning the knobs to pick up early cell phones, CBs and wireless house phones! It was so much fun lol

[@AdhamOhm]

I had a police scanner as a teen in the mid 90s and it was able to pick up cordless phones and baby monitors (46-50 MHz band I believe). I remember my mom freaking out and telling me not to spy on the neighbors. But analog cordless phones were well on their way out anyway and being replaced with 900Mhz digital stuff, so it wasn't long before 46Mhz band went mostly silent.

[@Mrrubbaduck]

My grandma had an old floor model tv and I kid you not if you turned the channel up to one of the higher channels you could pick up CB radio signals.

[@Mrrubbaduck]

@@AdhamOhm I remember doing the same thing with kid's walkie talkies.

[@vikingvisigoth4384]

Funny, me and my buds would walk around the neighborhood with a radshack police scanner to pick up the wireless landline phone calls in the 80's and 90's. ;)

[@channel4ferrets]

I sometimes used the RF-out from an old, defective "Pong" videogame clone to blank the TV-screen when the news was on. That way my father would lose interest and go on with his business and I could watch the program I wanted to watch on another channel. Our TV-antenna was on the attic so that was easy to accomplish.

mean

[@PANTHERA369]

No it is smart because the news is garbage anyways he was saving him @

[@whatcher8151]

Like "They Live" or the Direct TV hackers

[@ericwilliamofficial]

That's fucking genius

[@sundhaug92]

If someone were boosting the transmission-power on the antenna enough to be received by other TVs, they'd be one of the first streamers wouldn't they?

[@term-827]

And get a hefty fine from the FCC to boot!

[@vasili1207]

But I am black

[@JustJaidenism]

@@term-827 The FCC Doesn't Stand For "Federal Communications Commissions". It Stands For "F*ck Clear Channels".

[@JustJaidenism]

@@vasili1207 What Does That Have To Do With This Comment Though?

[@vasili1207]

@@JustJaidenism cant fine black people ..its racist . i didnt make up the rules bro

[@sanches2]

I did broadcsat in 1995, but on purpose, we even filmed ourselves and made music videos with the neighbour kids ... it took the police 3 months to figure out and come :)

[@sanches2]

@@aaronbrandenburg2441 They waited for my father to come home and warned us that if yhis happens again there will be a penalty. But i still feel proud of the video signal mixer i made to put signage from my old 16b pc on the broadcasted camera video. :) now 2tyrs later I design electronics that control self driving cars for living :) so some of my first steps in electronics were a bit shady;)

[@skilz8098]

@@sanches2 People are better at experimenting and inventing when there are fewer regulations to contend with!

[@thaddeusmcgrath]

I had the cops called on me too from transmitting on my CB bas station coming in on my neighbor's TV and phone in the 90's. My mother was friends with her and would also help her with being older so their was no reason for the cops to be called. The cop had to tell us there would be a big fine and I was scared being young but my dad was more pissed at the neighbor for not talking with him or my mom. He said screw her carry on. The 16 foot base antenna on the side of the house was the giveaway.

[@donaldroberson7659]

​@@skilz8098See, that's the thing. People are. Companies aren't.

[@skilz8098]

@@donaldroberson7659 Oh, so there's a realization here. People aren't the direct problem, but companies are ...

[@chrisbalfour466]

I've never been in trouble with the FCC, but I've annoyed phone companies sometimes by accident or out of curiosity. The speaker and mic handset of some phones could be plugged directly into a wall jack, without any dial/keypad/etc. An operator after a short while would start speaking to you through the zombie handset, basically saying, "What you're using isn't a proper phone.". I did this decades ago, when I was about ten years old. I remember the phone company operator saying it was illegal, but I think that was a bluff in hindsight. If a house has two phone lines and their wiring gets partially crisscrossed it doesn't stop working, exactly. When picking up the handset there was a tone, but sometimes very muffled phone conversations could be heard. After dialing, there were multiple dial tones and the call(s) would connect to multiple people, but one or more couldn't hear anything you said. Some voices were loud, some were very faint and sometimes they had strange reverb. Hanging up didn't end all the calls. IT WAS NUTS. This happened because most rooms in my family's house were wired for one phone line, not two. So to move the computer and modem to a different room you either had to run another phone cable through the walls, or rewire the single phone cable to the second line. Doing the latter seemed like it'd be easier, but I messed it up (I was young).

[@haruhisuzumiya6650]

Wire tapping You: nah it's legal 😂

[@parknich081]

lmao @@haruhisuzumiya6650

[@Aaron-zu3xn]

you could also use the toy whistle out of a box of cap'n crunch to mimic the carrier signal and make it think you put in coins on a payphone for free long distance calling. or on older payphones you could just drop the coins in and record the tone it makes and play it back on a handheld tape recorder

[@Aaron-zu3xn]

we call those service handsets and yeah it's illegal to use them lmfao you can also listen in and talk on other ppl's calls if you plug in @ the right place

[@agrecascinogameplaym]

i've actually told people this as like a party trick type thing: for those at home i guess, take a cable drop-amp or cheap lna with F connectors from ebay or something, take a metal coat hanger apart, and somehow wedge it in so what one half of the disassembled coathanger is touching the inside and the other the outside on the amplifier. then take a piece of coax and run that into your c64/nes/etc and boom, wireless nintendo. extra notes: impedance matching is very important, and it's likely the nicer amps you didn't consider using are very sensitive to it. not having the correct impedance is basically just a recipe to cook your amp. also antennas are hugely important, as if your antenna is not properly sized it will return most of the power to the transmitter. see the point above. it's also not hugely hard to find decent power amplifiers for the TV frequency range. i recently got a $100 ebay pick for a 400-900mhz UHF TV amplifier with an output of about +55dbm. that's more than enough power to generate a signal you could pick up locally for a few miles, if not something in the low tens(though this depends on antennas majorly).

[@givolettorulez]

goo.gl/maps/RJ8tEHtQtzVSQqRQ8 This is a legal TV repeater. And is in the middle of the mountains, and transmits with a very low power, like 5W to some houses that have a mountain between the main repeater. Now there's a digital k-SFN repeater, but in the analogue day the repeater was made using a TV tuner, a TV modulator and a big single channel TV amplifier. And the transmitting antennas were matchet for that specific transmitter frequency. The main difference between the cheap TV modulator in VCRs and the professional one is the filtering. The transmission of broadcast television was made normally with two separate stages for video and audio, mixed at the end and a filter that cut off part of the lower sideband of the tv signal, and that was called VSB. On the cheap modulator the audio signal is modulated at 5.5 MHz, added to the baseband and this AM modulates the RF. This is why on VCR that have a transmitter on channel say 36, the channel 35 with the VCR switched on has interference.

[@datadavis]

@@givolettorulez lots of work to watch shitty tv

[@BG101UK]

@@givolettorulez Exactly. I've been searching (without luck so far) for proper VSB modulators for my in-house analogue distribution setup.Or at least tuned filters to add to my existing ones. ☺

[@Nathriel]

@@givolettorulez That might explain why my commercial VHS player (Panasonic AG-6200) I rescued from a dumpster dive years ago has a very high quality image over coaxial out connection; I'm using it as an intermediary to give output to a TV that only accepts coaxial. A composite video switch with signals from my various devices feeds into it, and the VCR pushes it out to the TV via coaxial.

[@koobs4549]

I love the idea that some kid in the 80’s was actually the 1st Twitch streamer 😂

[@cooloutcoexist]

😂 and with a chat via pager 📟

[@Kalvinjj]

@@cooloutcoexist Or the not-really-instant-messaging of meeting up in school to talk about it

[@reyestorresjr.5124]

😂

[@reyestorresjr.5124]

Bahaha. 😂😅😁

[@belstar1128]

Maybe even in the 1970s.

[@TheNightCamera]

When I was in college, someone told me about an incident that happened there a few years before I arrived. Apparently, a lot of the houses near the campus still used antennas instead of cable for their television. One guy in the dorms figured out that if you connected the right kind of antenna to the out jack on a VCR, he could broadcast the signal to all the TVs in the area. From what I was told, there was a bit of an uproar when people in the area turned to channel 3 one afternoon and there was porn playing.

[@TheGuruStud]

Mad lad 😂

[@edwardchamberlain7858]

From the moment I got here I knew where you were going, and I was smiling the whole time. Back in the 80's I lived in a small town in Texas in a trailer park. I discovered that HBO was being transmitted on a microwave link, and I intercepted it with a coffee can antenna. But wait it gets better. I wanted to watch HBO down by the pool, so I took the signal and ran it into a modulator which I set to output on UHF channel 20. One day at the pool somebody asked me about it. Soon after that I discovered it was common knowledge and the entire trailer park was watching HBO on my bootleg modulator. I was only there for ten months, but when I backed the moving truck in and the signal went off the air, word traveled like wildfire. So many people dropped by to tell me how much they were going to miss me. I'm sure they were just sorry to see channel 20 go off the air. Back then I was affectionately known as Mr Wizard. Always making something from nothing.

[@tyreechiejackstone7379]

As a kid, my Grandparents both lived in the sticks, similar to your story. They had a very old TV; one with both VHF and UHF channel dials. On certain nights, I was able to adjust the UHF fine tuner until I was able to get HBO. Always wondered how; maybe the NES plugged in that night?

[@PersonALANty]

Ex Nihilo, it's Latin for "Something from nothing"

[@mgabrysSF]

The worst signal leak I had was in the 70s playing on Pong units from Magnavox. We (like other commenters here) had a very tall antenna for line of sight in hilly terrain with the nearest hi-power stations being 60 miles away in St. Louis Missouri. The signal spray on channel 3 (without amplification - just a crappy RF box of the era) put pong tv on (at least) a 10 mile area (there was no real channel 3 broadcasting so no harm no foul. There was an increasing number of odd questions on the school-bus such as 'who was playing on the left - oh, man he was kicking your ASS!'. That's when we powered on the console and rode at least 5 miles away and saw it clear as the TV it was hooked up to. Always wondered what our ratings were because 70s TV programming was terrible. I'm new to the channel btw - was that a cat or a ferret?

[@qmacaulay69]

It’s a cat

[@Electrolux219]

Sounds like you where a very early streamer

[@EpicFurbynerd76YO]

Bro became neighborhood famous

[@sonyericssoner]

As a kid i was watching neihghbours NES clone gameplay on grandmas Television. The picture was so clear as if it would be connected right in to it. I loved it because i had only a ZX spectrum at home and these graphics were next level!

[@jackal27]

This is such a cool story haha

[@townnet]

You know what? Back in the day, I can received my neighbor Nes signal while he is playing, picture quality is bad but still can see. I phone call him and tell him: " you are playing Contra right?" He get shock how the hell I know what games he play. Lol

[@MrJest2]

His consoles shielding wasn't grounded, probably. Or a cheap cable he used that was just the right length.

[@quattro4468]

Ah yes back when neighbors actually talked to each other.

[@evenfunnierguy]

Omg thank you so much for this video! It just gave me the explanation for a dear core memory of my childhood. Literally 30 years ago, I used to share a room with my older brother and we had an NES. My parents probably figured if they gave us their old tv without an antenna, we wouldn't be able to binge watch and all was good (we had lots of late night Mario Kart battles instead, though). The tv signal without an antenna was so crap that you couldn't watch anything on it. However, the NES was plugged into the antenna of the tv and I remember one night we discovered that we had perfectly clear tv reception when we switched the NES on. So there I was on the bunk bed with my older brother some time around 1990, watching the Batman movie with Michael Keaton which happened to air that night. We never understood what made the powered NES act like an amplifier for an actual tv signal, but now I know.

[@wishusknight3009]

All powering up the nintendo would do, was switch the little grey box to block its F connector input and rout the wire from the nintendo. The wire itself could still be an antenna for other channels. It didn't filter them out at all. If you took the box apart and bridged one of its wires, it would stay permanently switched to that without the Nintendo being plugged into it.

[@quattro4468]

The wire itself was the antenna as in the rf wire that screws to the tv. I used to use that piece as a radio antena for my stereo once I moved on to the newer consoles.

[@StevenSmyth]

Back in the 80s a company called Rabbit Systems made a product called the Rabbit VCR Multiplier. It would broadcast your VCR signal to other TVs in the house wirelessly over RF. Unfortunately, it didn’t comply with Part 15 so it was pulled. Later, Rabbit were sold to Recoton and they then made a version that did the broadcasting over the equivalent of 16 gauge speaker wire. Neither were great. I sold a few when I worked at Circuit City and even Radio Shack sold them under their Archer house brand. Oddity Archive shows us how to use it in one of his videos.

[@benwinter6049]

I remember, as a kid, probably 1994-ish, one of the 'untuned' preset channels on my TV was showing Super Mario World. At first I thought 'it's a bit late for kids shows to be on', knocked on my bedroom wall to my neighbour, shouted to them out of our bedroom windows. Apparently my TV was picking up their RF signal through our shared wall! In the days before twitch, this was very exciting lol

[@mayhair]

you didn't know it was a video game at first?

[@benwinter6049]

@@mayhair I thought it was a clip of the game on a TV show or advert. Which is why I thought 'it's a bit late for kids shows to be on'. Because, in those days before Playstation 1, video games were essentially a kids thing.

[@mayhair]

@@benwinter6049 oh, got it

[@mwbgaming28]

Damn, 80s livestreaming was hardcore

[@crying2emoji5]

This is the best comment

[@itsyeeoledskoolfurry3208]

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYY back before it was EVEN a THING!!!!!!!!!!!! LoL. SIC!!!!!

[@rodrigodavet7512]

Meanwhile, in Brazil, Tectoy (Sega's official distributor over here) released the Master System "Super Compact", a handheld version of the Master System, with no screen, but with a RF antenna to transmit the signal to your TV. (And, sometimes, to the neighbors' TV's as well).

[@xtokumaru]

I still have mine, but I unfortunately lost the antenna... I used it with the antenna almost exclusively back in the day, though!

[@xtokumaru]

Found the antenna!

[@ErtugrulK]

@@xtokumaru awesome mate does it work and can you upload a video of it to KZbin?

[@xtokumaru]

@@ErtugrulK It probably works, but it's been in storage for a while. I can try to dig it out, but seeing as it's not particularly rare here in Brazil, there probably are videos of it already (search for "Master System Super Compact").

[@victorwelkin9136]

The poor CIA spooks, listening to some important intel, then the Mario tune starts playing!

[@stevebez8284]

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[@jvyden4]

@@stevebez8284 what

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@@stevebez8284 based

[@ጭስዋሪማና]

@@jvyden4 dat boi spittin str8 faxxx

[@TB-eb3vm]

@@stevebez8284 Yes, I understand, please tell me more

[@superchromat]

Wow. I was that kid!! I never had a NES, but I did have a VIC-20 with RF output. My mother started a company making educational videos, so I had weird video amplifiers and did this. It also meant that I had the coolest collection of educational videos. Awesome video. Great production.

[@CathodeRayDude]

thank you!! wow!! i hoped I'd get replies from people who'd done this but TWO, within 30 minutes of posting the video - what are the chances? A childhood full of weird gadgets you aren't supposed to have is how I ended up the way I am and I'm glad we both had them!

[@superchromat]

Cathode Ray Dude thank foone for tweeting out a link to this.

[@weirdsciencetv4999]

Man this is so well done and explained/visualized. We grew up on the poor side. Our first NES was from a pawn shop in 1990. We also used the RF out instead of baseband, as none of our equipment supported composite.

[@daveperry3186]

Back in the 90’s I would turn my antenna tv to channel 3. And pick up my upstairs neighbors cable tv!

[@nathanlewis5682]

In the 80s my parents had this old cable tuner box that had something or was missing something inside that apparently was throwing out whatever tv signal the cable box channel was on. In my bedroom that was about 50 feet from the den where the family's tv was with that cable box. I had an old 1977 era RCA 13 inch black and white tv. With simple metal coat hanger wire as an antenna I was getting what was tuned on the cable box. I never removed the tv back cover so I don't know what the tuner looked like, if there was some sort of metal shielding around the tuner.

[@Nanoxin]

This video really hits home for me. As a child I’d plug my nes into a powered set of rabbit ears to send its signal a few feet across the room, this allowed me to game while lying in bed. The image was exactly as shown here, but I loved the leisure . It’s awesome to think other people were doing this as well, love the video big thumbs up.

[@thumbwarriordx]

This dot walk footage is gorgeous bro. Totally the number one nostalgic effect. I did a crt shader in Blender as a project, got to dot walk dead last and was like "wow okay it's done." That was the lynchpin holding the entire effect together.

[@thumbwarriordx]

I had done more raw CRT shaders before during that week, but when I got to breaking up the channels to mangle them in NTSC fashion, that was when I made something truly dope.

[@ChakkyCharizard]

that's REALLY cool.

[@anticat900]

Well presented, particularly how TV information is added to a carrier wave. Even being a little rushed to fit everything in, it was better demonstrated than anywhere I've seen before.

[@effexon]

whats cool about analog tv is, it is basically same as radio signal, so any trick with radio works there. in digital world nothing works like that.

[@Joel-ew1zm]

This is an extremely well made visual / graphic representation of the science of what is happening. Demystifying the "magic" that is analog transmission

[@alphaforce6998]

The likely cause of the quality degradation when using the coax connector is that what was included with the NES wasn't a proper coax cable. Impedance matching, in simplest terms, can be thought of as an echo. The larger the discrepancy between connector impedance and the cable's impedance, the more of these echoing, or signal reflections, you would get. The reflections would blend with the normal signal, and in some instance it would cancel out the normal signal due to being 180 degrees out of phase. These reflections would quickly degrade the signal and that's why you would get such poor results. Impedance matching is particular to RF cable, or coax, where the coax cable itself is specially constructed to optimize for a given impedance. Usually for consumer stuff it's going to be RG5 or RG6 impedance matched to 75 ohms. If you look at your NES you will see that the RF out is not actually a coax, but an RCA connector. The actual channel modulation was handled by a little gray box that plugged into that port. The NES video output didn't modulate the signal internally, that was done by the external gray box. The RF out of the NES was audio and video signals combined, while the RCA outs were video and audio separately.

[@gearcheck101]

"I can't show you because doing it is illegal, but here is my full confession."

[@ianirwin9480]

Willing to put his youtube channel before his freedom... he's got his priorities right !

[@Robdeltonie]

Is there a statute of limitations for violating FCC regulations? I'd also argue it's not morally justifiable to strip someone of their liberty for a past unauthorized analog TV broadcast that likely almost no one noticed.

[@KlausDieFuchs]

@@Robdeltonie AFAIK FCC violations are usually punished by fine. Although in this situation, their response may simply be "well there' s your warning."

[@Bankable2790]

Has to do with intent too. He expressed he did not intend to do that

[@mastafull]

@@Bankable2790 Intent, and he'd have to repeat this enough to actually interfere with the spectrum and cause problems. A ten minute experiment that doesn't bother his neighbors isn't going to be a concern for the FCC... generally.

[@AndonutsJeff]

the visuals on this are so good. great freaking job very informative. 'we had a beautiful messy world for a while before everything got all digital and reliable and boring' i feel this in my soul

[@Roanfire]

Actually, when I was a kid, I played with a cousin's NES (Clone probably) and then my Uncle told me that his TV was picking up what I was playing at a certain channel. I couldn't believe it till I saw it myself. Literally the NES was broadcasting the signal to nearby TVs...

[@SpaceOddity87]

Nice video! This clears up a nearly 30 year mystery. When I was a kid in the 90s, we had an NES in our basement, and we discovered that the NES was broadcasting to a TV upstairs in our parent's bedroom. We would use it just like you said in the video, so that whoever was spectating could watch while the player could be more focused on the game. The quality was just fine. We did have a huge antenna on top of our house. No other TV in our house received the broadcast, and when we moved the NES to a different TV, the broadcast stopped. I've never heard anyone acknowledge this feature before other than my family, and I was beginning to wonder if I just imagined it. Thanks for the clear explanation.

[@AlRoderick]

My suspicion is that they designed a perfectly good RF modulator that would deliver a perfect signal on channel 3 or 4, but in operation it was putting out slightly too much RF to make the FCC compliance limit, so they had to make it less powerful, which caused the quality to drop. Do we know how good the RF out was on the Famicom? If that one is fine it suggests that Nintendo may have very slightly reduced the power of the US unit to come in under the limit.

[@TheWeirdAlley]

I had an idea of hooking up the TV antenna to the signal booster (which I've seen in few places by then) and broadcasting television back when I was like the 1st grade. Never knew it was actually possible

[@jochenstacker7448]

Me: "Well, I'm 50 years old and grew up with analogue television, of course I know how it works!" 5 minutes later: "I KNOW NOTHING!!!"

[@SuperHamsterGaming]

Right? "I was hooking this stuff up when I was 10." "wait, now I want to go break the law." He got my sub.

[@DGinNC]

Yep ,45 and an electronics nerd... damn it I learned something.

[@PlutonianPenguin]

Ah, yes, the point of realization when you finally reach the Dunning-Kruger Valley of Despair. Don't worry, it's all uphill from here.

[@SaberTail]

The intersection of (video gamers), (ham radio licensees), and (millennial or older nerds) contains less than one person, but if it did, they could transmit their NES on channels 57-60 legally. Normally, a TV would only tune those channels when they're coming over coax, but their frequencies do lie within the amateur band. So, with the right antenna, a TV can watch ham transmissions on those channels. I don't have any good theories as to why the NES RF modulator doesn't do a good job. Speculating, it might have to do with radiated power limits.

[@CathodeRayDude]

Wait, really? Ham licensees can transmit real analog TV?

[@CathodeRayDude]

huh - it appears it's *cable* channels 57-60 and wikipedia says the frequencies are mostly overloaded with repeaters nowadays.

[@mushroomwaltz]

@@CathodeRayDude even if they weren't overloaded with repeaters hams aren't allowed to do broadcast transmissions like that

[@agrecascinogameplaym]

i meet all the requirements and i am up for the challenge

[@PaupersSerenade]

I just recently found your channel and have been making my way through the back catalog (so many cool things!). I gotta say your humor just lands so we'll for me. The multiple 'two of them' references just make me happier and happier, but your transition to CSB actually made me tear up. Your studio has gotten an upgrade, but you're always golden!

[@mattelder1971]

Years ago, you COULD buy devices that could broadcast TV signals from one room to another, and they could be used exactly in the way that you were using the amplifier.

[@CathodeRayDude]

Yeah I've since learned about this and I can't believe I never knew about it, but a bunch of people tell me they had devices that did this on purpose! Remarkable!

[@NJRoadfan]

The Gemini Rabbit. I remember it well. Gemini was known for their line of amplified splitters and antennas available at the local Caldor.

[@mattelder1971]

@@NJRoadfan Yeah, I think a few different companies rebranded the Rabbit technology. I had one from (I think) Radio Shack.

[@danieldaniels7571]

@@aaronbrandenburg2441 a quality of set of rabbit ears will outperform most “digital antennas” for modern digital TV. I have a really nice Channel Master one with a UHF loop on it and get great reception with it and it just sits hidden behind my TV on the stand which is in front of a big window.

[@danieldaniels7571]

@@aaronbrandenburg2441 personally I’d just like to see wider adoption of 3DTV. I love that shit.

[@amateurprogrammer25]

Since I happen to take a special interest in pre-2000s game consoles and how they work internally, I already knew most of the information in this video, but the way you presented it and the way you explained it so that just anybody could understand is just... *chef's kiss*. I _love_ to see content like this. I will definitely be pointing people to this video if they ever ask me about this because you explained it far better than I ever could. The ability to explain random tidbits about how the devices they use every day work under the hood in a way that makes them go "huh, that's neat" instead of "BOOOORIIIIING" is a rare skill, and it is one I do not possess. I am so happy to find there are people like you on KZbin who have this skill putting it to good use. Normally I watch at least two of a channel's videos before deciding whether or not to subscribe, but in this case, I think I've seen enough with just the one. Congrats on your newest subscriber!

[@WigWoo1]

I thought the reason RF looked worse is because since Video and Audio were being transmitted over 1 cable, that's the reason it looked worse

[@martinda7446]

RF looks worse because you take your composite signal and modulate it adding distortion noise and lowering bandwidth and stick that into a TV tuner to demodulate that signal adding more noise etc to get back that signal you started with. The audio is totally separate and is FM encoded while the video signal is AM encoded. All those extra stages mess with the signal. The little modulators were poor performers too, as were many TV tuners to make things even worse.

[@LRM12o8]

Tbh I think the NES graphics look better with the noise in the image. Yes, you can get a perfectly sharp HDMI signal out of a modded NES, but it looks bland with all the untextured, single color spaces you get in many NES games, such as super Mario Bros. I always thought that game designers relied on noise to texture large parts of the background while saving storage space by using single colors rather than textures where possible. Anyway, I definitely prefer using the RF output to connect to my modern OLED TV, rather than putting the composite video into a blocky upscaler and going HDMI from there.

[@cloudwind23]

Sooo this might explain why as a kid in the early 90s I suddenly could see someone playing Sonic, while I was zapping through channels on the television..

[@belstar1128]

I am not sure if this was a thing in the early 90s but in the late 90s in my region a tv channel would just broadcast people playing video games in the early morning before normal tv shows started.

[@mrowlsss]

​@@belstar1128lmao live streaming let's plays before live streaming was invented

[@jeremygalloway1348]

​@@belstar1128pirate channels

[@concr3t3]

You're a good teacher - you keep it interesting and fun

[@CathodeRayDude]

thank you!

[@geoffparnell8514]

These comments are fantastic. CB radios transmit at the same frequency as UHF Ch27(IIRC) and I definitely remember trying to exploit this almost completely without success. It took years before I learned the difference between modulation and frequency. I must have explained to others over a hundred times in my life, "You need an RF modulator!" to solve their AV connection woes. This video & comments take me back to a lovely place in my memory. Thanks, everyone!

[@jeffp3495]

This video is incredible. Amazing production value, highly entertaining and informative. I've wondered how TV signals worked for like 30 years and you explained it succinctly. You deserve far more subs than you have, I have no doubt your channel is going to blow up

[@Huanchee]

You just earned a sub. Out of all the videos and radio sites I visit, you managed to explain amplitude modulation in probably the simplest easiest to understand way possible. On top of that you showed me something I never knew about the rf jack on my nes and snes. Not that I’d ever attempt it cuz...like you said it’s illegal, and I definitely don’t wanna piss off the fcc...

[@charles_xcx]

I did this circa 2015 with some consumer equipment and realized I could have the vcr on one side of the room and the tv on the other thought without color. I did this so I could watch all of the movies in black and white. I was a weird kid.

[@kkygeek]

Fun stuff! Being a cable operator, that reminds me when I had to make sure to terminate those amplifier properly to prevent interferences! Still the same today but with much smaller devices!

[@tommibjork]

Aaaah! Thanks for this. Analog was way more fun than digital. I used to edit skateboard videos with 2 VHS recorders, play > rec > pause > search for the next trick > rewind... Mess it up and start from scratch.

[@imark7777777]

I realized a year ago that I'm really good at nonlinear editing I don't know why I have an eye for editing oh wait I didn't linear editing on VCRs, analog was so fun. Now we're going to have digital FM digital a.m. ETC.

[@josephr3102]

He is 100% incorrect. I worked for radio shack and we sold devices that transmitted from one room to another video and audio feeds. What is illegal is much much more stronger. The 2nd device he showed may have been used in tv studios but was also used retail stores it was a distribution amplifier used to broadcast inside stores. We used them at Radio shack, how we were able to broadcast to all tvs at once.

[@turbojoe2]

When I was younger I used a homemade FM transmitter that could go about 300ft in my car and would hijack popular FM stations. Was pretty fun watching drivers go by.

[@doramilitiakatiemelody1875]

I used to do that with a am radio but not anymore

[@namesurname4666]

@@doramilitiakatiemelody1875 actually fm is easier to transmit than am (Not really sure but i think am requires more power because it has long distance

[@doramilitiakatiemelody1875]

@@namesurname4666 true

[@retro_stuff1817]

How do you do that

[@Klopford]

So when I was a kid we were visiting grandma and playing N64 with an RF adapter to connect to a VERY old TV. We also had received little portable TVs that Christmas and noticed that if we placed one close enough to the console, we could ALMOST see the game on the portable TV! So thanks for this video, because it basically explains what was happening!

[@Goldlack65]

Never experienced anything like it, but back in Kasachstan my older brothers neighbor had a bootleg NES, a dendi, and he transmitted the gameplay of contra to every room in the building. He told me it was like magic to see the neighbor boy's gameplay in another room

[@BBC600]

16:00 why am I finding it so funny imagining senile senior citzens being intrigued by an illegal broadcast of Super Mario Brothers thinking it was a real TV program.

[@nayyarrashid4661]

Where I lived we broadcasted Mario Bros all the time and in turn watched our neighbors kid play battle city and laughed out at his gameplay. We all had clone famicom and one even came with wireless RF antennas.

[@MrEscanaba]

In the movie The Iron Giant. The Giant was having a nightmare to had enough power to transmit his dream to Dean McCoppin Tv set. It would been another panic like the first time War Of The World came on the radio, this time it should get peoples stay underground for eternity because they saw giant robot destroying city on the pictures, to been no more of an illusion but of the past recorded memory Iron Giant role was. And the only witness is a middle age man selling junks as arts.

[@emotionz3]

What's so interesting about your video is it explains why various game consoles had better RF than one another. For example, the TurboGrafx16 and Sega Genesis are considered to have among the best RF output of all game consoles that had RF out, from the Atari 2600 through the SNES Jr. Admittedly there were AV-to-RF modulator adapters for the Sega CD, Saturn, N64, and probably some later consoles, I've seen the TurboGrafx16 and Genesis are considered the gold standard of RF modulation quality. After watching your video, it appears this could come down to nothing more than amplification and impedance tweaks that were implemented into NTSC game consoles as time went on, as at the beginning (Atari\Intellivision\Nintendo) RF was objectively terrible while toward the end (Late 80's NEC and Sega consoles, 90's model Nintendo products) were objectively better.

[@AndreiNeacsu]

Well, well, well... My Romanian Sinclair ZX Spectrum clone (greatly expanded and improved) was used to broadcast wireless using an apartment building amplifier (like, for 15 apartments). The thing is that in my country we never talked in terms of "Channel x, y, z". but in the actual frequency of the carrier signal. Having very few TV stations (one national and a few Yugoslavian, Hungarian and Bulgarian ones) and combined with the fact that my clone was at the end of one of the TV bands, meant that I did not overlap with any used signal. The purpose was to send the image and sound from games and demos to the living room TV at the same time as using my monochrome (green phosphorus) monitor (composite) in my room. Due to the amount of iron and steel in the concrete walls, there was very little chance of sending the signal to any neighbors and close to zero for exiting the building. Those were good times for home experiments; very good times.

[@storminmormin14]

So I can use an NES to start a pirate tv station?

[@subtledemisefox]

No, you would need one of those big signal amplifiers at the least.

[@jamesslick4790]

Forget the NES. Just get an old Radio Shack RF modulator, An amplifier designed for the correct frequency output and frequency response for the old NTSC TV Channel 3 or 4 and an antenna. The Radio Shack RF Modulator will accept composite video (and audio) from any composite source (VCR,DVD player, vintage "home" computer,vintage camcorder, vintage game console.) Then.... ANYTHING GOES!😲 (Please note, This is also ILLEGAL as HELL), 😜

[@taterthepenguin]

@Gomam0n God, we had the technology to do Lets Plays since the 80's...

[@skepticfucker280]

Better to get an old camcorder with rf output..........

[@yestfmf]

If there are any analog tv viewers left to watch it.

[@isaiahconstante2206]

Amazing! Finally explains an incident that happened when I was a kid. My brother was playing NES upstairs and the video was coming in on the TV downstairs. We as kids were all amazed. Now, 30 years later, I finally get an understanding of how that was possible. Thanks

[@dukesvhs9062]

When I was a kid in the early 2000s Eastern Europe, chinese knockoffs of the NES were quite common (the one with the yellow famicom type carts). And I remember being able to pick up other people playing stuff like Super Mario on my TV. I guess that some of those weren't built with any precautions against interfering with regular TV signals. Possible reason why nobody got in trouble cause of it was that we only had like 9-10 TV channels, so nobody would notice it unless you go to some weird channel that's usually just empty, and i remember that the signal off of it was pretty unstable and would be very hard to pick up, so it was probably very local.

[@gua_s]

Back in the 90s an uncle of mine “read the documentation” and build himself a tv station powerful enough for covering his neighborhood and the surrounding areas he attach a camera to it and show his son how to use it, my cousin began playing with the field of vision from the attic window where the machine was after a while he focus on a park’s volleyball field and in a joke type of way began narrating the matches, weeks later my cousin (8-9years old) was getting sponsorship from local shops that were watching the matches from their TVs, the thing got so popular that it reach the police they shut it down with a warning of never doing it again to my uncle..

[@Garbaz]

My guess for the culprit for the poor image quality via RF jack would be the cable. Given the low power of the signal, it probably doesn't transmit well enough and isn't shielded well enough.

[@givolettorulez]

This is a problem with a Commodore 64, it thransmit to channel 36, where there is used by a 30 kW TV transmitter, so I had to make a short cable with full metallic connectors and using a good satellite TV grade cable to shield the interference. Now after the switch off on low vhf there aren't TV transmitters, but there are surely other signals.

[@markjames8664]

Yes, the TV and the NES might both have a 75 ohm impedance, but that cheap shielded cable almost certainly doesn’t - this means a lot of the signal is not making it to the other end of the wire, and is instead getting radiated to the neighbors, or being turned into heat.

[@butre.]

I've been thinking of doing short range pirate television but rf amplification has been a huge barrier. thanks for pointing me in the right direction

[@bennyhill5173]

It was very common for Soviet apartment buildings to watch your neighbor playing NES clone on selected TV channels. I saw this myself many times, maybe it's because of one common antenna branch for each flat.

[@eduardoseitz5125]

Here in Brazil this also happened sometimes

[@nw7696]

I had an fm modulator for transmitting usb/sd card music years back. I "accidentally" increased the input voltage to around 16vdc and played rock and roll over radios in the shop that were tuned to a local country station! ☺

[@jerryspann8713]

Speaking of FM transmitters, our local drive in theater's audio can be picked up a mile away.

[@JoelSinn-sd5fn]

there were several consoles released that broadcast directly to channel 3/4 without needing wires. In Japan, there were even first party antennas released for some SEGA systems to do this.

[@winstonsmith430]

My NES actually broadcast across the house when I was a kid without any crazy shenanigans you can barely see it but it was appearing on an old black-and-white TV one of the portable type.

[@Thepiecat]

Neat! You were on the nail and just didn't know it. The illegal amplifier had more quality because it /was/ more powerful. Quality has everything to do with SNR - signal to noise ratio. If the signal is weak, like composite or RF might be when you're trying to be compliant, the signal is very weak. Therefore, you get a low SNR, since the noise is always there.

[@raposonanquim7987]

Wait... isn't that What TECTOY did with the Master System Super Compact in 1993? It was a portable Master System in Brazil that could send the video signal to the TV wirelessly. You could even choose between a RF cable and a little antenna.

[@SilverAura]

I absolutely love when KZbin recommends me channels that I actually love the content of. I seriously hope you're gaining a lot of subscribers from the almighty black box algorithm because you deserve it.

[@CJRussell]

My dad actually did this in rural Arizona. He had an NES, one of the home television extenders, and a bunch of tin foil. He even managed to tune into it a block away from his house. Definitely an FCC regulations violation but cool nonetheless

[@crapasanya]

16:09 There were a lot more of them than you think. In Russia in the 90s, Chinese NES clones called Dendy were massively sold, and many of them had built-in antennas for broadcasting pictures over the air. I can't find specific examples right now, but I've seen a lot of comments where some were nostalgic about how their neighborhood kids watched their "let's plays", while others were nostalgic about how they themselves watched such broadcasts, since they didn't have their own Dendy. And there were most of them, because when under your windows the bandits are fighting for the remains of the factory of the collapsed country where you always worked, and now you have no job and money for food, you don’t care about buying an expensive toy

[@meau2049]

My question is: Why was there an RF modulator buried in your friend's backyard?

[@ax14pz107]

Things get into weird places. I found an NES controller in a creek once. I let it dry and tested and the thing still worked. This was when I was about twelve so like 1997ish.

[@felixecho]

Someone's dad was real pissed at someone's grades.

[@blackredonyx]

@@felixecho i feel like that is probably exactly what happened 😂

[@Cline3911]

His friend might have been responsible for the 'Max Headroom' signal piracy incident of the 1980's. kzbin.info/www/bejne/qojHmHSDjs-MidU kzbin.info/www/bejne/bqO1oGh5faurd6s

[@namesurname4666]

@@Cline3911 i don't think you can do that with just a modulator 😂 "they" transmitted "over" the channel so you couldn't watch the channel in any place 7

[@ryanorr4626]

I think your superpower is that you know exactly how to effectively explain things visually with your CG edits.

[@bairfamilyfarm1336]

Impedance mismatch, I never read up much on it while studying for my ham radio tests. But my guess is an impedance mismatch results in gain loss. It's like when building a crystal radio, if you play around with the number of turns on the coil, you'll notice to a point more windings results in stronger audio.

[@collinp56]

THIS TOTALY, impedance matters when you are talking about low output powers!!

[@mapleleaf4ever]

I love the fact that the video progressed exactly the way I was hoping. As a licensed Ham SINCE 1996, I knew if you put an antenna on it with an amp it would work... Was cool to see it done though! Get your Ham license then you can play around a bit more and not worry as much about the FCC. lol (I want to see how far that big amp will broadcast the NES! haha)

[@flapjack9495]

Not to mention that ATV (amateur TV) is still a thing, and is almost exactly like analog TV, as opposed to SSTV, which was mentioned in the video. Is anyone doing digital ATV with 8VSB or DVB-T? That must be a thing by now.

[@Channel5thirds]

I really appreciated the CSB video joke, I too watch those for fun

[@Huntestry]

i thought i was alone in this world

[@BushidoBrownSama]

CSB?

[@Simon-xi7lb]

@@BushidoBrownSama the US chemical safety and hazard investigation board. they investigate major industrial chemical disasters and make reports and recommendations for regulations meant to prevent similar disasters from happening in the future. sounds kinda boring, sure, but their youtube channel is definitely worth a look. their videos are very well-made and informative.

[@joshuamiller8027]

That's some niche humor but I love the CSB channel too. Now I know how to appropriately dispose of fireworks and just never to hot weld anything ever.

[@tycoinreno]

6:25 likely reason it's a 3.5mm jack: these jacks can have an inherent built-in switch. The built-in antenna is likely routed through this switch. Thus, if you plug in an external antenna, it would disconnect the built-in antenna, instead of there being effectively two antennas in parallel. This would be more difficult to achieve with screw terminals.

[@msys3367]

It would probably make more sense to use a proper 75ohm RF cable instead of an RCA audio cable. Great video!

[@johndododoe1411]

Indeed, that is the impedance matching he didn't understand. Whenever an electrical signal crosses a change in cable impedance, or even a sharp bend in a cable, part of the wave is reflected back along the same cable where it can interfere with later nanoseconds of the same wave still traveling towards the discontinuity. The interfering waves are actually added (modulation is actually multiplication), so there is a risk of signals being canceled out by their own reflection. Cable impedance is the combination of the cable being both a weak capacitor (two pieces of metal with isolation between them) and a two weak inductors (a piece of wire with electricity running through it), and each of those things will act as a kind of frequency dependent resistor (an inductor acts like frequency times inductance times 2π, a capacitor acts like 1 divided by frequency and by capacity and by 2π). Doing the math on typical signal cable treated as an electronic circuit results in an impedance that is the same number of ohms for most frequencies, and that number is the "cable impedance" . Antenna connections and connectors are designed for a specific impedance that all attached components assume. TV antenna signal circuits are designed around 75ohm coaxial cables and connectors, while much lab and professional signals uses the 50 ohm types also used for 1980s computer network cables. RCA connectors are often designed for Audio line level signals with impedance of 1000 ohms or more and frequencies so low that the cable impedance math doesn't really apply.

[@robrocco5420]

@@johndododoe1411 but they were regular cables not a true coax cable

[@johndododoe1411]

@@robrocco5420 Regular audio cables are usually coax with unknown RF characteristic impedance.

[@danieldaniels7571]

@@johndododoe1411 that explains why composite video run over 75 Ohm coax with RCA adaptors looks so much better over long runs than normal RCA cables. That’s how I did my karaoke hosting video in bars before I upgraded to actively distributed HDMI in 2011.

[@bborkzilla]

You used to be able to buy a device called a "Rabbit" which was actually a TV transmitter. Ostensibly it allowed you to broadcast a VCR output to multiple TV's around the house, but when connected to an outdoor antenna made a rather illegal broadcast station. They still show up on eBay from time to time.

[@whatcher8151]

i got them for pp quite often for ppl's satellite systems so they would not have to run wires

[@n6h6]

Anyone who's read the Ellimist Chronicles knows that transmitting your video games out into space might not be the best idea

[@lordeilluminati]

16:14 my case. I didnt knew but after some years, my neighbor did told me that he could see me playing in the channel 3.

[@ericaskari]

When i was a kid I remember searching for channels and i found a channel where someone was playing super mario and sometimes bomb game 🥺 as a kid whos family could not afford any gaming devices, I was a happy kid who sat and watched the game for a while and I remember when nobody was playing it was just stuck. Memories came up and after a search I found this video.

[@CardboardSliver]

Imagine finding who that person is now

[@nullvoid564]

@@CardboardSliver Probably Felix Kjellberg

[@Tree_Drinker]

You were watching gameplays before KZbin

[@jasonleeholm]

A similar thing happened with my Commodore 64 back in the day as well. The computer plugged into a regular television to use as a monitor, and sometimes the images on the screen could be seen on another television in the same room.

[@MiguelDuboisSwarm]

You have no idea how much I loved this. I was smiling throughout and I wish I could go back in time to be the kid with the nintendo broadcasting antenna without anyone knowing. The funniest part is, channel 3 is one of the national channels, so if a neighbour was trying to watch public TV, they would see my game.

[@eDoc2020]

And that's why there's a switch on the back to select between channels three and four. You're supposed to select the one which isn't broadcasting in your area in order to prevent interference. Technically because consumer modulators output amplitude modulation instead of vestigal sideband modulation you can get a distorted picture if you tune one channel below.

[@lowercasehandle]

@@eDoc2020oh theyre not VLSB? didnt know that

[@PK1312]

You're really improving your presentation every video and also this is really neat!!!! never thought about this but it makes sense

[@Skittlespillygog]

that intro was prime. the awkward silence before "oh I didn't notice you there" was so well timed. you've earned my view fair and square.

[@Skittlespillygog]

"clearly labeled RF switch" youre actually hilarious dude.

[@HolbrookStark]

Welcome to my Best Videos On KZbin playlist for teaching and demonstrating the basics of my childhood dream of running a bootleg tv station