#Cable TV > Toaster
11 messages in this thread
Please excuse us two novice vidoe mavens who don't even know the
correct terminology to ASK this question, but….
We're trying to use a cable TV signal as a video source for the
Toaster. BNC cables and connectors are a complete mystery to us. Starting
from the coaxial cable coming into our house, what ELSE do we need to
attach to end up at the Input 1 jack on back of the Toaster?
We figure Radio Shack MUST have what we need…whatever it is. All we
need to know is what to buy (and, of course, the money to pay for it…we
have about $21.34 between us….)
Please don't hesitate to use words of one syllable or less; we won't
be insulted. The depth of our ignorance is not a pretty thing to
contemplate.
Thanks!
-Don & Thomas
Radio Shack part number 278-302 F male to BNC connector should do the trick
$4.99. Watch out, your cable system's output may not be stable enough to
meet Toaster's requirements, but for only $4.99 I guess it's worth a shot.
Frank
Hi Frank –
So what's been shakin' with your studio recently?? I've been up to the
usual: commercials…
If I may butt in here..in answer to Don's question, he'll need more than a
BNC/F adapter….
The cable signal coming into his house is RF with SEVERAL channels. He'll
need a TUNER (or VCR with a tuner) to select a channel, THEN a cable to
connect the video output of the tuner (VCR) to the BNC input of the
Toaster. Probably an RCA to BNC cable.
Later
Bob
Hi Bob, doin the same ole things out here as well. BTW, I assumed that Don
was going to use the output of his converter as opposed to trying to use
the Toaster as a tuner.
Frank
What? He needs to convert "cable" not "composite." Low-band cable RF is in
the same range as regular TV radiation.
John, he obviously wants to take the output of his converter into toaster.
This signal would be composite.
Frank
I've never heard of a cable system that uses composite, and very few cable
converters output composite. Are we talking about the same thing?
You are right John thanks for the reality check, I really ment that he
would take the composite video output from a VTR used as a converter.
Frank
Well the converter would output to RF Ch 3 or 4, then if you had a video
out from your TV or VCR (composite at this point) then you could feed this
to your toaster.
I local "fun" user (toaster hobbist – bought the thing just to play with)
has a series of FS that he has added his own persona. ex: his face, Data's
body (Star Trek TNG).
– Joe Maulucci
There's a store in mall in Dallas which does only this one thing: Lines up
people on camera with a still from a movie and prints it out. They have a
wall with like 80 stills, with the faces missing (blacked out with soft
edge), you pick one, like conan, or super blonde CA beach couple (for 2!).
They will put the image on a big print out, then maybe on gs and tshirts…
someone should be doing this with a Toaster and travelling from Mall to
Mall across this great land.
I do this all the time! I watch TV through my Toaster. I feed my cable
wire into my VCR. (You can't use the cable direct to the Toaster. The
Toaster wants composite video, not RF video.) Whoops, I lied. I feed my
cable wire into a decoder/converter box that gives me access to all 36
cable channels. That feeds another RF (cable TV-like) wire to my VCR. The
VCR outputs composite video on an RCA jack, which I feed to the Toaster.
Not all cable channels are stable enough to use with the Toaster. I find
that the QVC shopper channel is stable almost always, while CNN is stable
only until the local or regional commercial breaks. The local Amiga-driven
PSA channel is *not* stable.
If your VCR tunes all the cable channels you want, then you don't need the
decoder step I mentioned. In short, you need to convert cable to composite.