LCD TV's with Home computers

[Chris Sullivan]

On Oct 22, 2006, at 4:39 AM, roger pugh wrote:

> Does anyone have any experience running home computers, Commodores,  
> Sinclair's, Apple II's and the like on one of these modern LCD  
> TV's.  Can they lock on to the cheap modulator signals or work with  
> the composite or RGB.
> I'm thinking of getting rid of a bulky tv set and various rgb and  
> black and white monitors and use a modern solution.

For the most part, if you purchase a TV that has a "composite" video  
input (you can identify this by the one [yellow] plug for video and  
the two plugs [white and red] for audio), you should have no problem  
using a composite video cable from a Commodore 64.. that is, a cable  
that plugs in to the multi-pin DIN connector (if I remember right,  
the 64 used an 8-pin connector that was similar to the VIC-20 and  
Atari 800 5-pin connector, with extra signals [if memory serves, some  
kind of pre-SVideo Y/C kind of thing that only Commodore's monitors  
supported]).

On the Apple ][ series, you should be able to take the 40-column  
video out and run it directly to the same yellow composite video  
connector.

As far as RF modulated video goes, if it'll tune Channel 3 analog, it  
should have no problems.  My HDTV set's built in analog tuner can  
handle just about everything I've ever plugged into it just fine.   
Note that I've casually observed that a lot of older hardware has  
varying quality of the RF output... I have an Atari Video Music box  
where the RF out appears to be soft, and I had to purchase an analog  
video amplifier.  Note that this even breaks on a $80 Toshiba 13"  
NTSC glass tube set as well, so it's not just a "modern set problem."

RGB video, like the kind used on the Apple //gs and the Commodore  
128, is another issue entirely.  You're not going to get it working  
on any TV without some work (I know the C128's RGB port would be  
particularly nasty).  You're not going to get rid of the dedicated  
monitors for these machines.  I keep a CBM 1084S monitor around just  
for this purpose.

It is also worth noting that a lot of stuff out there uses old  
"analog" composite video.  Check the toy department.. there's lots of  
emulated (and in the case of the Atari 2600, hackable to even run the  
original cartridges) classic and 16-bit era console game hardware  
that uses the same connectors.