electronics question about "portavision" type boxes

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djetaine

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With the recent advent of digital OTA, I know that any box with a tv in it wont work. Some of these are selling relatively cheap now because of this. What I want to know is... is there ANY way possible to create some sort of input on the board itself? Or any add on boards that I might be able to purchase and modify.
I have as yet been unable to find any boxes with coax or rca inputs so the only option would be to rip apart a small DTV converter like the winegard rcdt09 and somehow wire it up.
Im rather electronically minded so if its possible, i think i could do it. Anyone have any ideas?
My idea ( no clue if this will work) is to find the trace to the antenna and break it, solder a new wire into the trace and then have that wire out to coax, coax to the dtv, then coax back from the dtv into the remainder of the trace and to the antenna.
I do have an old 7" portable tv i can try this one before i desecrate a nice boombox.

What do you guys think?
 

Fatdog

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I've often thought about buying an inexpensive, portable DVD player and somehow replacing the old TV in a box with the LCD screen. That would be so cool to be watching a movie on an LCD panel and have a classic boombox providing the sound. :yes: I'm sure it could be done, but dang, think of all the work involved.
 

djetaine

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Fatdog said:
I've often thought about buying an inexpensive, portable DVD player and somehow replacing the old TV in a box with the LCD screen. That would be so cool to be watching a movie on an LCD panel and have a classic boombox providing the sound. :yes: I'm sure it could be done, but dang, think of all the work involved.
Actually, that wouldnt me much work at all. I have installed an LCD in a 4U Rackmount server case before (ill try to find some pics online in a bit here) and there are MANY boards out there that are available for the task.

If you were to get a box with a TV and remove the old tube screen you would have a massive amount of room back there to work with. The only difficult part would be marrying it to the existing controls. Depending on the type of controls you were using (wouldnt recommend full solid state boxes) you might be able to just wire straight into them. Would be especially easy if you had a box with an line input. The big issue would be hiding the DVD unit itself in there. If it were me, id definitely want to keep the original feel of the box

And screw you for giving me an even more time consuming project idea, lol.
 

Fatdog

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djetaine said:
The big issue would be hiding the DVD unit itself in there. If it were me, id definitely want to keep the original feel of the box
I wouldn't even worry about the DVD part. I would just take the screen and have a video input from an iPod Nano or something. To me, that would be hella cool. I would love to find a JVC 3090 to experiment with.

djetaine said:
And screw you for giving me an even more time consuming project idea, lol.
We are always here to help. :lol: :lol:
 

djetaine

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Fatdog said:
djetaine said:
The big issue would be hiding the DVD unit itself in there. If it were me, id definitely want to keep the original feel of the box
I wouldn't even worry about the DVD part. I would just take the screen and have a video input from an iPod Nano or something. To me, that would be hella cool. I would love to find a JVC 3090 to experiment with.

djetaine said:
And screw you for giving me an even more time consuming project idea, lol.
We are always here to help. :lol: :lol:
I dont know about the 9030 but does it have line in and line out? If so, you could disable the RCA jacks and reroute them into the players input. Just use 3 of em for video and stereo audio. Of course you wouldnt have use of the line in and out anymore but if you ever felt the need you could hook em back up. If not, it wouldnt be much work to install 3 new RCA jacks in there but for me, I'd want it to look as original as possible.
Would be nice to have the dvd in there completely though to make it a 100 % AIO unit.

If I can get my hands on something good after the wedding I think I'll post up an epic DIY thread here.
 

Fatdog

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djetaine said:
Fatdog said:
djetaine said:
The big issue would be hiding the DVD unit itself in there. If it were me, id definitely want to keep the original feel of the box
I wouldn't even worry about the DVD part. I would just take the screen and have a video input from an iPod Nano or something. To me, that would be hella cool. I would love to find a JVC 3090 to experiment with.

djetaine said:
And screw you for giving me an even more time consuming project idea, lol.
We are always here to help. :lol: :lol:
I dont know about the 9030 but does it have line in and line out? If so, you could disable the RCA jacks and reroute them into the players input. Just use 3 of em for video and stereo audio. Of course you wouldnt have use of the line in and out anymore but if you ever felt the need you could hook em back up. If not, it wouldnt be much work to install 3 new RCA jacks in there but for me, I'd want it to look as original as possible.
Would be nice to have the dvd in there completely though to make it a 100 % AIO unit.

If I can get my hands on something good after the wedding I think I'll post up an epic DIY thread here.
That would be awesome! :yes:
 

Superduper

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NO sane person wishing to avoid a time consuming project would even begin to contemplate such a conversion!

BUT here is what I've been wanting to do -- remove that CRT entirely which is inefficient, extremely and dangerously high-voltage, the servicing of which has now become a lost art, and replace it with a new cheap LCD screen and you can pipe in RCA jacks all day long. Then with the space saved, you can include a HDD media player inside, if you like. Since it's a boombox, what could be better than jamming to music with a MTV clip playing?
 

djetaine

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Superduper said:
NO sane person wishing to avoid a time consuming project would even begin to contemplate such a conversion!

BUT here is what I've been wanting to do -- remove that CRT entirely which is inefficient, extremely and dangerously high-voltage, the servicing of which has now become a lost art, and replace it with a new cheap LCD screen and you can pipe in RCA jacks all day long. Then with the space saved, you can include a HDD media player inside, if you like. Since it's a boombox, what could be better than jamming to music with a MTV clip playing?
including a media player inside would be a task if you want to keep it original. I mean, you gotta access it somehow. Unless you get a touch screen....
but then we are looking at a complete PC mod instead of just putting a lcd in a box, heh.
Something like this (not a big fan of the way this was done though, seems kinda sloppy)
 

djetaine

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well, i just picked this up for a dry run on a cheap box.


Looked for a 3090.. there is one on ebay right now for 1300 dollars!!! Is that box seriously that rare? Would anyone honestly pay that much for it? That is some serious cracksmokin right there.
 

JVC Floyd

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djetaine said:
well, i just picked this up for a dry run on a cheap box.
[ Image ]

Looked for a 3090.. there is one on ebay right now for 1300 dollars!!! Is that box seriously that rare? Would anyone honestly pay that much for it? That is some serious cracksmokin right there.

i think the price is too high but its not like he has much competition these are rare boxes ! ,no way i would pay that much unless i had the money/was rich and it could be modified to recieve dtv .
 

djetaine

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Anyone know of any TV boxes that have a line in? It's going to be crazy difficult to get this Emerson working without it but I have some ideas.
After this test run on the emerson I'd like to pick one up with a line in so I can go all out.
 

djetaine

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ViennaSound said:
Not sure, must look if this PHILIPS owns a line in.
But it would be sure looking nice with LCD:

[ Image ]
If that has a line in, it would be absolutely perfect for what I have in mind.
Should have my emerson tomorrow to do a dry run.
 

Lasonic TRC-920

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Great Thread!

I to have been looking at my Sony Watchman thinking the same thing!

Of course the fear that opening this up and getting KILLED by the capacitor is always present. But I do think a cool LCD screen, a DTV converter and a WiFi connection would be a sweet way to stream video to this box.

All just pipe dreams.

BTW, great pic's of everyone's TV boomboxes!

 
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