this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2025
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I have this. It's been on my wishlist ever since I was little and now that i have some disposable income I bought it. Unfortunately the analog signal has been disabled for years, but there's a jack on the tuner that allows you to connect composite video (with a special cable to go from the yellow, red and white to a single 3.5mm jack).
I played some Xbox on it, for the novelty. The screen is small, the resolution is low, the lcd isn't very clear in some cases, ... I love it.
There are special kits to replace the screen with a modern crisp led screen, but they are not compatible with the tuner, something to keep in mind.
You know the devices that take audio and convert it to a radio signal for your car?
We need the same thing but for old analog tv signals.
It exists but you need to have an amateur radio license to do it legally. https://www.hamtv.com/ Long story short, some of the frequencies from analog television are now allocated for amateur radio use, so you can use that with little extra equipment.
Plenty of those exist. They were given out like mad when the analog to digital switch was happening. Little boxes that would convert digital TV signals to analog for viewing on old TV's.
Digital converter boxes output their signal over cable (coax or HDMI, etc) NOT air. - some old (small) tv devices were antenna only.
I mean, the old devices could be modified, but you don't always wanna do that.
That coax output you mention contains the OTA signal, but yes, you'd likely need to amplify it within the limits of your local laws to broadcast it any usable distance.
Do you happen to remember any of the brands/types?
They were referred to as DTA's - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_television_adapter
You'll still require a means of amplifying and broadcasting the converted signal if you need true OTA but this gets you an analog RF signal (NTSC in the US) from a DTV broadcast.
I wouldn't be surprised if you could take the output of the DTA and feed it to signal booster/amplifier with an antenna on the output and get short range OTA broadcast. Just know your laws on allowed output power.
You can find YouTube videos of people doing this for the GG TV Tuner. Usually involves a VCR iirc.