Hi, I have purchased an old vintage tube operated TV made in the analogue age. My modern TV reception comes over from the local cable company.

1) (I know I need a 75ohm to 300 Ohm coupler), but what else do I need to buy (if anything) to hook the cable up to the old TV?

2) I do have an older VCR with demodulator output. Is that going to be useful in hooking up the cable to the old vintage TV?

Sorry to bother with such elementary questions

A 75 to 300 ohm Balun is all you'll need to interface the cable to the two VHF screw contacts on the back of the TV set.

Also depends upon what cable company you have in central California. Comcast in central California, where I am, is warning that they are dropping analog on the cable altogether shortly, although at the moment they still supply something like 2-13.

If your cable company drops NTSC (analog) signals, you would need either an off the air digital converter box if you can still find one, or an RF modulator which you can feed from the RCA jacks on the back of the Motorola cable boxes that most companies use. The off the air box needs to be connected to an antenna as the cable companies don't seem to use the same digital channels as what comes over the air.

Yes, I'm using Comcast. With a cable set top box with an RF coax video output, component RCA (Y,Pb,Pr) output , and composite video output (RCA video yellow, Right audio and Left audio red and white) and an HDMI output.

So, if I understand correctly, after Comcast drops NTSC then I would need a RF modulator connected to the Comcast box's composite video out put (yellow, red, white)?

After Comcast drops NTSC could I use the RF modulator on a VCR instead of buying a separate RF modulator? In other words run the comcast video cable to the comcast set top box, and then out the comcast set top box RF coax jack, into the VCR coax input, and then out the VCR composite RCA (yellow, red, white) out to the old TV?

Assuming the RF output on your cable box isn't just a pass through, then you won't need an external RF modulator. Newer cable boxes are dropping the RF modulator, but older ones usually have them.

Yep just feed the composite video from the converter box to VCR and out to TV on either Ch 3 or 4...

ok great. Looks like I'm all set.
wish I could afford an older tube tv instead of the 1960's, someday maybe...

I forgot to mention that the reason I mentioned a modulator coming from the Comcast box is that they are supposed to be phasing out the boxes with the F connector output (that have NTSC modulator output .) Mine still has one and most of the boxes in service do, but new hookups in the future may not get a box with a built-in modulator.

Thanks. So far it is working well. The TV is a Panasonic from the sixties, uses tubes instead of solid state. Works well from the cable box RF out. Hopefully comcast still will provide NTSC analogue for years to come. And hopefully analogue AM radio remains. I have an local 24 hour station that plays all 1950's music every day.

Frequency and call letters please?

I may be able to pick it up at night.

KVIN 920 Ceres, California

Thx.

You might try for KYAA, 1200 KC, in the bay area. '50's - '60's stuff.