HDMI output to ye olde Coax non digital TV's

[madwayne]

What is the most cost effective way of converting HDMI signal into a signal for the old Tv's.

Basically i have an aerial splitter/booster in the loft that takes the signals to all the TV's in the house, done many moons ago.

The CCTV I am getting only has an hdmi output, so to make it available to all the TV's in the house I just need it connected to that splitter?

open to any ideas and ideally cost below £75 if unrealistic let me know.

 

[plugwash]

It seems you can get converters from HDMI to composite, you can than use a modulator to turn the composite signal into an analog RF signal for your TVs.

Quality will likely be pretty poor though.

 

[madwayne]

No one tried it?

I am looking at that route bought to split into composite and see what loss i get if any then i will try the rf modulator.

see if we can get anything reasonable out of it.

 

[Lucid]

There's a lack of responses because in general questions like this are difficult to answer. There are so many different interpretations of quality. I have installed CCTV where the client was just happy to have a moving image, and others where the client expected that magic CCTV you get in American cop shows where they zoom in to a numberplate from a half mile away and read it in perfect clarity.... ha ha ha.

"Cost effective" has an equally wide range of interpretations.

For example, I could buy a pasty for lunch for a quid, take one bite and find it is rank, then throw it away. My wallet says this was a "cost effective" lunch. My stomach would disagree.

If we are talking price vs picture quality performance, then the most cost effective way is to buy a CCTV recorder that includes a composite output. Connect that to an RF modulator and the signal won't have had to pass through an external downscaling and interlacing process which is where most of the losses will occur.

If you've bought one of the Chinese IP camera DVR Android boxes then you're just going to have to suck it and see. Spend £600+ on conversion then you'd be entitled to expect something fairly decent. Converters at £50 or less are built down to a price and they're all going to be of a similar quality, and that's adequate at best.

CCTV PVRs with camera connections on the push and twist BNCs connectors will generally have a video output in the same form. It's worth checking just in case you missed it. All that would then need is an adapter cable.

These are mock-ups showing the kind of picture change I've seen in higher resolution to interlaced video conversion.

Detail and text becomes difficult to make out. Diagonal lines become jagged with a staircasing due the the signal being interlaced. Forget about running the CCTV display in split screen mode. The resolution of the mini images will be terrible after conversion. Run as full screen with alarm recording. That way you'll get a half decent iage from the cameras that matter.

The final conversion to RF will add a little noise, but if you choose the output channel carefully then it can be quite close to video quality.

 

[ericmark]

I had at one time a scart to RF, a sky box and a VCR all adding to the standard 5 signals from the old analogue TV. But as freeview arrived it became harder and harder to find free channels where there was no interference.

Today just Sky and the scart to RF left and still not A1 oddly some of the TV's around the house work well others fail when sky and video is sent down the same cable. It is very hit and miss.

Much depends on where you live in the old days when I had an aerial on a rotator I could get Moel-y-parc, Winter Hill and Central today aerial is indoors mainly to exclude Winter Hill and Central.

Quality matters and the scart to RF unit I have is low quality with a higher quality likely it would be better but big problem is freeview just can't make up their mind and are forever swapping channels so what works today is likely rubbish tomorrow.

If re-doing it all I would not use RF. It's a real pain lost count of how many times I have needed to re-tune in fact so much of a problem with freeview both my mother and I both have near enough given up with freeview and only use Sky and Satellite to watch TV but still the freeview does cause problems with my home distribution system causing me to have to re-turn to avoid channels already in use.

This is likely to become worse as bands are sold off.

 

[Sam Gangee]

causing me to have to {retune} to avoid channels already in use.

This is likely to become worse as bands are sold off.

Simple solution: fit a 4G filter to the aerial drop lead. That will leave channels 62 upwards free for your use.
Example: http://www.satcure.co.uk/accs/page11c.htm#4G

 

[winston1]

What is the most cost effective way of converting HDMI signal into a signal for the old Tv's.

One of these:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/eSynic-Digi...R-Blak/dp/B00HLDGVZC/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

and one of these:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/RF-Modula...812?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item20f2aa6d2c

You will also need a 5v USB type power supply for the first item. It is unlikely your HDMI source will have enough power to supply it.