Reviving a Vintage TV with a Raspberry Pi

Use of PAL and SECAM in the XXI Century

Portable TV made in the 90s, Image by author

The popularity of TV has inevitably declined over the years, and already today, the idea of receiving radiowaves from the air with a fixed broadcast timetable (like news at 9 p.m. and the movie at 10 p.m.) looks archaic and outdated. However, vintage TV sets remain an important part of our history and the daily lives of our parents or grandparents. It turned out that nowadays, not only kids but also many adults have never used a black-and-white TV before. It may be nice to give people this experience in the museum or another form of technical exhibition, but in most countries, the analog TV broadcast was switched off many years ago. Thus, even if we turn on the vintage TV today, we will see only noise on a black screen.

However, there is a solution for this. In this article, I will show several ways to revive the old TV set and bring it back to life again.

Motivation

Why on Earth would we like to do this? Naturally, there is no universal answer to that, but I can see at least three ways of using an old TV today.

• CRT gaming. A TV set was a standard way to connect game consoles and computers in the 80s and early 90s; a monitor was often a sort of luxury. Often, people played video games or made their…