Behind our apartment are other rentals from which an old tube-TV was being removed. This got my wife and I wondering if a TV of that vintage would actually work with today’s cable technology. Or would some computer guru/engineer have to make some sort of conversion module?
It all depends on what inputs the set has, which is largely dependent on its age. A really old TV might only have a receiver with no direct video inputs or only an RF antenna jack. A newer set would have an analog standard-def video input with a yellow RCA jack, possibly an S-video jack, or some form of computer input.
If you have a signal source with any of those outputs, you could connect it right up with the right kind of cable. Otherwise you simply buy an adapter that converts your output signal to the TV’s input signal. They exist for any possible combination.
When the U.S. went from analog to digital TV in the early 2000s the government subsidized millions of adapter boxes. The subsidies are long gone, but you can still get boxes like this.
You can even get adapters for Roku and other streaming sticks.
Of course your cable company might be scrambling their signal, so you’d have to get their own proprietary adapter, but they exist, too.
If you have a legit cable box that is relaying OTA channels you are getting secondary channels of your local station in good old fashioned SD TV.
The question is what type of outputs does your cable box have? If it has RCA then you need a $10 RCA to VHF (set to channel 3 or 4) box. (A modernish cable box is unlikely to have VHF out.) If it’s only HDMI or other digital only then a slightly more expensive box is needed.
So if the local channel is “channel 7” then it’s main signal is on 7.1/7.2 in HD with other stuff on channels 7.3, 7.4 etc. in SD. Usually the main channel is HD only. So you get something like Gunsmoke reruns but not Ghosts without going thru a digital-to-analog box (non-tuner) route.
The people on YouTube who repair old electronics like CRT TV sets use one of the aforementioned digital-to-analog tuner boxes or possibly an old VCR with a tape in it.