"gaffo" wrote in message
. com...
I'd love to playback a ****load of DiVx video through a 120 Gig harddrive.

obscure stuff - like

chef, prisoner,

Now where would you have gotten those??

gaffo wrote:

Lenny wrote:

"gaffo" wrote in message
om...


Pirate TV- I'd like to do it on a limited basis- send the signal just
through my apartment building. If the signal goes any farther then
that,
no problem, but it's not a priority.


I found this:

Supercircuits
13552 Research Blvd
Austin TX 78750

This company sells a low-power TV transmitter for channels 3 thru 6
which
appears to be of high quality ($49.95 plus $4.50 S&H). For licensed
radio
amateurs, they also sell some ham TV transmitter kits with 1 to 2 watts
peak output power that can be adapted for use on UHF channels 14
thru 19,
and a linear amp for boosting the output of these transmitters.

Make it interesting and get a digital TV set up. Amateur HDTV.





I heard about an unlicensed TV station in Nashville. Last time I was
down there I make an attempt to find the signal and was
successful. Although the video was not the greatest, the programming
was pretty good. A good dose of political opinion stuff, mixed
with entertainment. At times amateurish, other times professional.

Lenny
Detroit





kewl...............what was their power/range?

when I lived in Austin, we had the UT TV station (out of the
Communications Building) - its range was literally about 1/2 mile. My
friend lived about 10-city blocks from that building, and with rabbit
ears it was "watchable", but not with some video noise.

where I live now we have a 200 watt church station - seems its range
is about the same (1/2 mile).

I'd Imagine that pirate TV was probably less than 200 watts, so we'd
be talking of a range of literally 4-5 city blocks?

Back in 1977 someone put together a pirate TV station in Syracuse NY on
channel 7.
The story actually made it into the New York Times, though not front page.
The Syracuse student paper mentioned that they heard that it was built using
parts from an old gautar amp (actually reasonable if it was a tube rig,
the power
supply is already there, and the output tube could operate on VHF). It was
on for one weekend only. The nearest FCC field office was 150 miles
away, and
when Monday rolled around the pirates were gone. Syracuse was a town so
small
they had only 3 VHF and 1 UHF TV channel, all as conservitive as
anything you'd
find in the Bible Belt. 1977 was the dawn of the VCR, and they played
stuff like
porno and Star Trek episodes.

TV TX power is not cheap.

It's all in the antenna and HAAT.

Back in the 70's a London AM pirate station dabbled with TV and played
with a couple of watts and a simple colour bar generator to feed it.
Using a simple yagi antenna atop a local hill they were received around
15 miles away albeit line of sight.

Good quality antennas such as panels are not cheap and in fact for a low
power station, say up to 10 watts the antenna system costs more than the
transmitter.

However, for an economical vertically polarised antenna at low power one
can get away with a wideband co-linear which is only a few hundred
dollars.

You do need good bandwidth.
--
Philip de Cadenet
Transmitters 'R' Us
http://www.transmittersrus.com

Philip de Cadenet wrote:

TV TX power is not cheap.

It's all in the antenna and HAAT.

Back in the 70's a London AM pirate station dabbled with TV and played
with a couple of watts and a simple colour bar generator to feed it.
Using a simple yagi antenna atop a local hill they were received around
15 miles away albeit line of sight.

You've forgotten the early 80s "Thameside TV" broadcasts over one Christmas.
They were at quite high power (erp of a few kilowatts) from Crystal Palace.
CP was chosen because it's very high, and there are already other TV
transmitters up there - so all the rooftop yagis point at that area! It
was possible to get a P5 picture over much of west London!

--
BIAS COMMS

Everything gets easier with practice, except getting up in the morning!

Robert Casey wrote:

Make it interesting and get a digital TV set up. Amateur HDTV.

That would be cool...unfortunately, it would also be a price buster, as
I'm not aware of anything remotely inexpensive that would let you
transmit ATSC digital television in SD -- let alone in high definition.

Still, the nice thing is that it would take very little power since low
powered digital signals can travel pretty well.

"Tom Desmond" wrote in message
...
Robert Casey wrote:

Make it interesting and get a digital TV set up. Amateur HDTV.

That would be cool...unfortunately, it would also be a price buster, as
I'm not aware of anything remotely inexpensive that would let you
transmit ATSC digital television in SD -- let alone in high definition.

Still, the nice thing is that it would take very little power since low
powered digital signals can travel pretty well.

Actually, they don't travel as well as an analog signal.. In areas where
there is at least a viewable (albeit snowy and/or ghosty) analog signal,
there is no receivable digital signal at all. This is practical experience
in Portland, Oregon, where the analog and digital signals are coming from
~2000' HAAT..

Tom Desmond wrote:

Robert Casey wrote:



Make it interesting and get a digital TV set up. Amateur HDTV.



That would be cool...unfortunately, it would also be a price buster, as
I'm not aware of anything remotely inexpensive that would let you
transmit ATSC digital television in SD -- let alone in high definition.

Still, the nice thing is that it would take very little power since low
powered digital signals can travel pretty well.


In the trade mag _TV Technology_ page 29 Dr Kraus has a few DTV
transmitters for ham
radio operators. Email is krausue at uni-wuppertal dot de hoping to
avoid spambots
Use them in the 70cm and 23 cm bands. Don't know what price, though.

Brenda Ann wrote:

Actually, they don't travel as well as an analog signal.. In areas where
there is at least a viewable (albeit snowy and/or ghosty) analog signal,
there is no receivable digital signal at all. This is practical experience
in Portland, Oregon, where the analog and digital signals are coming from
~2000' HAAT..

My experience here in Dallas is just the opposite -- very low powered
digital signals from a 1500' HAAT transmitter site come in perfectly at
my home 35 miles away, while analog signals at remotely similar power
levels are extremely snowy.

"Tom Desmond" wrote in message
...
Brenda Ann wrote:

Actually, they don't travel as well as an analog signal.. In areas
where
there is at least a viewable (albeit snowy and/or ghosty) analog signal,
there is no receivable digital signal at all. This is practical
experience
in Portland, Oregon, where the analog and digital signals are coming
from
~2000' HAAT..

My experience here in Dallas is just the opposite -- very low powered
digital signals from a 1500' HAAT transmitter site come in perfectly at
my home 35 miles away, while analog signals at remotely similar power
levels are extremely snowy.

Tom,

The problem is, with digital, it's either there or it's not. There is no
fringe area. In Oregon, and other mountainous states, it's much different
than Texas, Oklahoma or Kansas, where it's mostly flat. Even within the city
of Portland, there are large numbers of places that are not line-of-sight,
even from antennas at 2000' HAAT.. and the digital signals are not there at
all in the shadows of any of the hills, nor are they available out on the
coast, whereas analog signals, although relatively poor, are..