I have a 1986 RCA Color Trak that I recently acquired. It has a good picture and was from my office and only used a handful of times in all these years.
I noticed that it has what I can only describe as a Coax-style output jack at the back that is labeled as Stereo Output. It’s actually embossed into the body of the TV itself, not a sticky label.
I’ve tried ataching a Coax connector into which I plugged a Y connector to separate the channels and connect that to a surround-sound system.
No luck & no sound.
Has anyone seen this type of setup before? Any ideas on how to get this connected?
Since I can’t see the back of your TV, may I offer a WAG that this output may have been a specialized connector for an outboard stereo decoder? I believe that this is how stereo TV audio was first brought into homes - well, after they stopped simulcasting on an FM station. The decoder would pick up the stereo signal from the incoming coax feed, strip off the video, decode the audio to stereo and output it to your stereo system via RCA patch cords. If this is the case, you probably are not going to find a stereo TV decoder lying around anywhere!
**fishbicycle ** has it. Eighteen years ago, stereo TV sound was something of a novelty and often required external gear to hear.
Joe K - no. The FM band is tucked neatly between channels 6 and 7, so pretty much the only expense in making a TV act as a radio is in labeling the controls. Well, not quite, but it’s technically trivial. It’s uncommon now as most folks either have the TV connected to a home theatre system that includes an AM/FM receiver, or just aren’t interested in having the TV act as a radio.
I don’t think so. IIRC the old TV/AM/FM combos predated experiments with FM stereo by quite a few years. This was merely the first stab at a home entertainment center, so that if you didn’t want to watch TV you could listen to the radio without having to have two big expensive boxes in your living room.
That sounds to me as though it’s simply a confusingly-labelled antenna pass-through.
Cable providers typically carry FM radio programming.
You could hook your cable up like so: Wall --> TV --> Stereo antenna in. (You may need a balun to connect the cable to your stereo. You know, those little thingies that were ubiquitous in the eighties – you screw the coaxial cable in one end and there are two leads coming off it that you can attach to the typical “two screws” antenna connection.)
And I believe the device was called an MTS Decoder (MTS meaning Multi-channel Television Sound). The device is still there in newer televisions, it’s just incorporated into the other circuitry instead of being an external and optional box.
Ah yes, that’s the acronym that eluded me. I used to have a stand-alone stereo tuner - it was a breadbox-sized unit with the usual two big knobs and only put out stereo sound - no video. Did a fine job on the sound, and was very good for confusing friends when they changed channels on the TV and the sound didn’t change.
And yes, TVs not only incorporate MTS decoders witn absolutely no fanfare now, but some go even farther and include Dolby 5.1 decoders.
