I was looking at the back of my TV yesterday. It’s an old CRT-type TV and I noticed there are RCA output jacks back there. And I started wondering: output to where? I suppose the audio could be sent on to external speakers, but to where would the TV be outputting the video?
For stereo audio output, they would use two RCA jacks: white for the left channel and red for the right channel.
And now going from memory…
For video output, there was one or more of the following:
Composite output. Single RCA jack. A yellow jack, if I recall correctly.
Component output. Three RCA jacks (one for each primary color).
S-video. Not an RCA jack.
On edit: yes, I guess it’s kind of strange that a TV would be outputting a video signal.
Maybe a VCR? Though those would usually be hooked up to receive the video signal first, and pass through to the TV. Right?
I suppose the TV could be used as a signal splitter of sorts. As an example, a cable or satellite box would be connected to the input of the TV. And then a video output on the TV would connect to the input on a VCR, thereby allowing you to record anything that is displayed on the TV (including programs coming in through the TVs tuner).
See, there used to be these things called “antennae,” and people would get their TV shows from them. They were attached to the TV set (in fact, they used to come with them pre-installed), and hardware in the TV set would translate the signals they received into something the TV would then display on screen. The video output jacks on the back of your TV set would allow you to record a TV show onto a video cassette tape.
You also sometimes see a single RCA jack with various labels (“Audio” “Stereo” “Subcarrier” “455 MHz”) that was a direct tap to the downconverted audio signal. An external box could tap this signal and generate stereo audio - so the TV could be sold, with very little extra cost, as “Stereo Ready.”
I had one of those, and finally acquired the converter, which I never used, but then sold at a substantial profit to someone who desperately needed it.
Yeah, that’s what I thought, too, but then I remember my VCR having an antenna jack, so it was routed antenna > VCR > TV, IIRC, but that was ages ago. I do seem to remember using the video out to edit stuff together using two VCRs, so it’d go VCR1 > TV > VCR2. We’d cue up the footage on VCR1 using the TV as a monitor, and then hit record on VCR2 to record what we needed. I suspect that isn’t the main use of the video out, but that’s what we used it for, from what I remember.
Those external audio output RCA jacks seemed to show up on most CRT TVs of a certain vintage. Enough to where it almost had to be either a competitive feature between manufacturers, or perhaps they were mandated in a country where the set was sold.
In any case, they were VERY useful for connecting amplified external speakers for elderly people that couldn’t hear very well anymore. My father-in-law was almost deaf towards the end of his life, and putting a big external speaker right next to his chair helped immensely.
You still have functions like this through HDMI, where you can push audio “backwards” over HDMI from your TV back into a receiver. This is particularly useful if you use the apps on a smart TV (Netflix, Amazon) and need to get the audio back to your main receiver.
video output for something like a VCR is not totally dumb.
if you wanted to record a show you could hook an antenna to the VCR and use its tuner.
if the tv had a better tuner than the VCR then using the tv tuner would be better. if splitting an antenna signal between a tv and a VCR gave a worse picture then then you could use a full strength signal.
it also could have value if you wanted another screen to be fed from that tv’s source and could output to a monitor or tv.
Some tvs were set up so you could easily daisy chain them like say in a commercial setting where you’d like to run the same av on 4 different tvs. Saves having to use splitters.
We have a small TV in our bedroom that has RCA output jacks. When somethings plugged in to it the screen blanks.
I have a video headset that I plug into the output of the TV. This allows me to watch/listen to television while lying in bed without disturbing my wife.
No sound or flicker of the tv screen to keep her awake. It works well. The video headset gives the image like watching an 80 inch screen.
I have an old stereo with multiple AV inputs that can be selected in various ways. The user manual includes diagrams showing configurations taking output from a TV so that the audio can be played on the stereo and the AV signal forwarded to other devices like VCRs. (They actually show two VCRs hooked up in some of the diagrams.)
In the early 80s most VCRs were stand-alone. If you wanted to record TV you had to purchase a separate tuner that connected with RCA Cables - one to carry mono audio and one for video.
Long before home video recorders were widely available, there were tape recorders for recording the audio. Radios and TV’s and phonograph players, etc., commonly had RCA-style output jacks which you could connect to your tape recorder. Amplifiers for public address systems had them too.
When I was a teenager, I had a little “business” of recording kids’ bar mitzvahs at our temple. I could set up my tape recorder in the back room where the PA system amplifier was, and hook the output from the amplifier directly to my tape recorder that way. Thus, I didn’t have to fiddle with setting up my own microphone on the bimah (altar). The regular one that was already there was enough.
Also saves on the “control” issue… multiple remote controls, going around every room, every angle…
Of course the output can go to anything that accepts an RCA …
Maybe a projector ? So that means you control the projector from the TV.
All sorts of big screens didn’t even have a tuner,as they expected central control.
My TV, a Panasonic from around 2001, has two output jacks for stereo audio. I have it connected to my sound bar and have the TV speakers set to off.
RCA phono jacks most certainly are line-level outputs or inputs. (There are some exceptions for speaker hookups.)
Line-level signals are intended to be the common denominator for analog audio and video purposes, and before S-video and HDMI came along, were indeed that. They are still useful in many cases.
Yes, the (well, my) video output went to the VCR before we had cable. We had a rooftop antenna which had a wire literally hanging down the front of the house and coming in through a window to plug into the back of the TV, because we were classy like that. It never occurred to me to try plugging it into the VCR.
Once we got cable, it took an act of Congress to convince my mother that I wasn’t wiring everything “backwards” when the Video Out didn’t have to go to the VCR anymore. She was sure I was “going to break it.”
Good times.
Back in the day, you could actually get basic cable and run it straight into the TV via the coax input as long as you didn’t need premium channel decoding. Or, you could use the built-in antenna as the tuner.
Either way, the RCA outs were to run to a VCR.
And while I never saw a VCR without its own built-in tuner, they often got pretty chintsy ones. I frequently was able to tune in a station on my TV that I couldn’t tune in with my VCR. A video output jack on the TV would allow you to use the TV’s tuner for recording, with the above mentioned problem that you couldn’t tape one thing and watch another.
I never saw a TV that had one of those, so I’d agree it seems weird.