Snow & fuzzy screen

[stebai]

Hi,

 

Can anyone point me in the best direction to eliminate some of the snow and fuzzy graphics that my Inty has developed? It is an original production console, and although it tunes to the signal its is outputting a pretty dire signal. I have tried boosting, using a VHF/UHF box and that helps - but the image still is nowhere near as clean as it should be. Are there any internal pots that I can adjust? As this is my secondary INTV I am open to an AV upgrade - experiences and best kit to tackle this would also be appreciated. Thanks for reading and all the best.

Edited January 20, 2022 by stebai

[crade]

If you have another console you could test the same setup with it to see if there is actually any trouble with your intellivision or not.

TVs these days often use the cheapest possible components to support coax, and when I got a massive amount of snow on my intellivisions (all of them)

the way I solved it (mostly) was to find a decent direct to rca to coax adapter (those switch boxes that come with the consoles are crap)

and then plux the intellivision into the adapter and the adapter into something old like a VCR or DVD player that has proper analog components then plug that into the TV using the component output or whatever the best output is that your TV will accept as input.

[mr_me]

15 hours ago, stebai said:

Hi,

 

Can anyone point me in the best direction to eliminate some of the snow and fuzzy graphics that my Inty has developed? It is an original production console, and although it tunes to the signal its is outputting a pretty dire signal. I have tried boosting, using a VHF/UHF box and that helps - but the image still is nowhere near as clean as it should be. Are there any internal pots that I can adjust? As this is my secondary INTV I am open to an AV upgrade - experiences and best kit to tackle this would also be appreciated. Thanks for reading and all the best.

When was the last time it was working properly.  Has anything changed since then e.g. cable, connector, TV?

[walldog1]

6 hours ago, crade said:

TVs these days often use the cheapest possible components to support coax

I sure hope this isn't the case, as more and more people watch over the air antenna like myself. Maybe some of the cheaper brands do. My current Panasonic Plasma HDTV will support up to 1080p through the Coax connection.

 

I know this is a little off the topic, I was just wondering if your statement is true in case I ever need to buy a new TV someday.

 

6 hours ago, crade said:

the way I solved it (mostly) was to find a decent direct to rca to coax adapter

Back to the topic, are you running your console thru a CRT TV? This would be the recommended TV type for an original Intellivision console. Then try a NEW RCA cable and use a male Coax to female RCA adapter would be the first steps for a snowy picture problem. That eliminates the connecting hardware as source of the problem. You can also try switching the Channel switch on the bottom of console (and TV channel) and see if this changes anything.

[walldog1]

Here is a picture of the adapter we are talking about.

[crade]

21 minutes ago, walldog1 said:

I sure hope this isn't the case, as more and more people watch over the air antenna like myself. Maybe some of the cheaper brands do. My current Panasonic Plasma HDTV will support up to 1080p through the Coax connection.

 

I know this is a little off the topic, I was just wondering if your statement is true in case I ever need to buy a new TV someday.

 

 

Sorry I am oversimplifying, it's not coax itself that is the problem, I *believe* from what I it's the analog tv tuner and (rf DE modularization perhaps?) I'm sure someone here can correct my vague hand waving haha

 

From both my experience and understanding is that it is not just cheap new tvs, but basically all of them..  I had the same behavior with all of mine anyway, including my current one which is a panasonic tc-p50ut50 T-2

 

The result is always the same for me on all flatscreens for the past 10 years at least, plug intellivision straight into the TV, get a ton of snow, plug it into my old dvd or a VCR player and pass through to the TV, get a decent picture.

 

Current over the air and anything else modern you connect to your coax is certainly a digital signal which will work just fine.

[walldog1]

15 hours ago, crade said:

I *believe* from what I it's the analog tv tuner

That makes more sense to me now. My Panasonic HDTV Coax input (or Antenna) option gives me the choice to chose analog or digital in it's channel search. I wonder if I chose analog with the Coax adapter hooked up to the intellivision, turned on with a game in it, if it would find it then and have a decent picture. I never thought about that before. I am just happy with my CRT TV and Intellivision downstairs. Plus, I get a break from the wife, and she can watch whatever she wants on the TV then upstairs.

 

I'll give it a try soon and report if that works or not.

[crade]

Here is the difference on my current TV..  The signal is so bad with direct that I need to take the picture quick before the tv decides there is no signal

 

Edit:  passthrough going through a pioneer DVR-543H

Edited January 21, 2022 by crade

[IMBerzerk]

Do you have another cable... even an 3 color RGB (white/red/yellow) to try?

 

That could be just a bad cable.  The original cables are very easy to break internally.

[mthompson]

You really want to use a cable that has good shielding. It makes a big difference.

[nick3092]

I wouldn't classify all new TVs as having poor RF demodulators. I have a 2 year old Samsung where the demodulator actually works surprisingly well with just about any old system I throw at it. Intellivision is the exception though. While the image is very clear, the top maybe 1/3 of the screen tends to be a little wavy/jumpy horizontally. It happens on 4 different Intellivisions (2 original, 2 Intv2).