OT Analog UHF TV transmissions.

[Clive Arthur]

I have a couple of old portable LCD TVs from a relative's estate, but they're UHF analog PAL UK etc so no use here. Is there anywhere in the world where they'd still work?

Cheers

[tabbypurr]

There's always the UK, with a set top box.

NT

[Graham.]

Wouldn't they be OK for a bedroom TV with a satellite box or Freeview box/PVR? Either that, or dump them.

Are you really going to ship them aboard?

[Dave Plowman (News)]

There is more than one standard for UHF in the world, I think.

But very unlikely to be worth the shipping cost anyway.

Have they got a line input? SCART, etc? If so they could be used with a FreeView box - lots used on Ebay for not a lot.

[Brian Gaff]

No cos the UK had a unique soung/vision separation of 6Mhz most of the rest of the world used 5.5 or 6.5 mhz and many used Secam not pal. However if they have a scart input you can still use them with the correct convvertors as monitors ignoring the tuners. Also if you can get hold of one, you can still use an old style video sender via analogue. I know this is true as there is a person down the road with one and I cen get it on an analogue set here, though he seems to mainly be watching Polish films. Brian

[Brian Gaff]

Assuming it has a modulator and the set has a compatible socket, say scart or audio and video sockets. Don't expect mega quality though. brian

[philipuk]

They might just be of use for retro-gamers if it has composite in.

There were many variants of PAL worldwide. System I as used in the UK was one on the rarer ones. The differences being in channel spacing and how the audio signal is broadcast. Your TV will probably support many of the others though.

It's not really worth trying to take it abroad. Analog TV is being consigned to its rightful place, the history books.

Philip

[John Rumm]

Plug in a suitable DTV box or stick like Amazon Fire / Google Chromecast etc and you can use them anywhere.

[spuorgelgoog]

Yes, nobody wants pictures without conversion delays, compression artifacts and DOGs these days. Analogue TV really was awful.

Owain

[NY]

At its best, analogue TV was pretty good. But it was rarely seen at its best.

Both analogue and digital have their drawbacks. For digital, conversion delays, compression artefacts and DOGs. For analogue, PAL artefacts such as flickering coloured fringes around contrasty edges, the need to avoid fine detail which causes cross-colour, snowy/ghosted pictures if reception is poor.

I'm sure if we could see studio-quality PAL and studio-quality digital, before transmission, and compared them with what the viewer sees at home, we'd weep at the loss of quality along the way.

[Simon T]

I have an old analogue CRT set in my bedroom, I watch TV on it from a freesat/sky box connected via the scart.

[Clive Arthur]

OK, thanks all, it's the bin then. These are Casio ~2" screen things with no I/O. I did wonder if our analog stuff had perhaps ended up in some third world place and that there might have been a charity who'd have them.

Cheers

[Graham.]

One recently changed hands on a Web forum for £0.00

[Theo]

Depending on what they are, some can be quite collectable:

Many pocket TVs, even early Sinclair ones, were multistandard. You might not get SECAM or NTSC, but they should work for many places that do PAL. Obviously you'd have to look up what your specific model can do. There's lots of countries still with analogue TV:

Theo

[tabbypurr]

It was, it only allowed 5 channels.

NT

[Steve Walker]

Typically the manufacturers want to save costs, so they use a universal chipset that can receive them all - not to mention, often NTSC, etc.

SteveW

[Dave Liquorice]

PAL was PAL, a good signal, receiver and tube could produce a high quality and watchable picture in the home, within the limits of PAL and SD.

SD DTTV produces, at best, pictures that are barely watchable then it just gets worse. With very little (tending to zero) that you can do in the way of improving picture quality by improving signal, reciever or display.

Digits at orgination, even in SD(*1), are very good and way superior to PAL. Pity they get so badly mangled by the time they arrive in the home via DTTV(*2).

(*1) Pretty much everything is orginated in HD or 4k these days. (*2) DSAT is much better but still shows some artifacts over orgination.

[NY]

I find that I am much more aware of PAL artefacts (shimmering coloured edges on captions or other areas of high contrast) than I am of digital artefacts. Yes, if you analyse a still frame of some movement with DVB-T, there's blockiness and compression artefacts which you would not tolerate in a still photograph, but I don't *usually* notice it in a moving sequence.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Main thing I object to is jerking on movement.

[Dave Liquorice]

coloured

PAL just looks soft to me.

sequence.

Evryones pereception is different, I find the, changing artifacts that surround a static caption on a static background terrible. Then you have the loss of detail in panning shots and the snap back to detail when the pan stops. Or when the compression gets silly, the talking static head when the only bits moving are the lips and eyes (when the person blinks or adjusts their gaze).

Yep, rollers that don't smoothly roll and lose detail so you can't read 'em.