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I wonder what's needed to transmit analog TV using a computer.

The requirements would be:

  • Using a computer as source.
  • Ability to share the full screen.
  • Any PAL or NTSC Tuner.

Multi-channel transmission would also be nice, maybe using multiple desktops for different channels and multiple virtual audio cards for each channels audio.

Preferably a PCI-E Card one could just connect to an antenna cable but an SDI Graphics Card with some external "converter" would also be an acceptable solution.

I've found very little information on this on the web but while working at a computer store I once got my hands on a PCI card I think did just this for hotels

Mikael Dúi Bolinder
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  • Does it need to be analog? Are you thinking of NTSC or one of the other analog standards out there? Does it need to be on a frequency received by a regular off-the-shelf TV tuner? Do you have any licenses needed by your jurisdiction for TV transmission on those frequencies? –  Aug 19 '19 at 15:01
  • Of the shelf TV tuner required. PAL or NTSC. No license required if using cables. – Mikael Dúi Bolinder Aug 20 '19 at 06:23
  • Ah, when you said "transmit" I thought you meant wirelessly. So you're just looking for something like an RF modulator like old VCRs and 1980's computers used to have, but that you could hook up to a modern computer (perhaps via VGA or DisplayPort or the like). –  Aug 20 '19 at 13:29

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I think what you're looking for is an RF Modulator that works on typical computer video outputs (such as VGA, HDMI, or DisplayPort). I did a little looking and found some on Amazon, so I know that it's possible, though I don't have any experience with any of them to actually recommend one over another. I don't know if it might be easier to find a HDMI-to-RCA adapter that you then connect to a more "normal" (or at least easier to find) RCA RF Modulator. (All those links are just for examples; there are plenty of products from plenty of brands and plenty of retailers out there.)

Note that in order to share "the full screen", you'll need to use a pretty low resolution on the computer, just because NTSC and PAL don't have that many lines of video available compared to what people are used to nowadays.