Do you want to watch some old movie on VHS or beta? Do you want to relive your childhood playing a game on the Nintendo 64? It is in these cases when you realize that your Smart TV does not have the appropriate inputs. Don’t worry.
Many modern televisions have, at best, an analog input. They often don’t have any. Fortunately, there are plenty of analog RCA to HDMI converters on the market and they are extremely cheap. One of the most expensive, which includes the S-Video connection of the 90s, does not even cost 50 euros.
The transition from analog to digital
These adapters are solely for connecting and playing older analog video sources on a modern TV, ie to be able to plug into the typical yellow, red and white RCA (VCR) connectors. The Nintendo Wii, older consoles like the GameCube, LaserDisc, and many camcorders were set up for this type of connection, which disappeared when technology moved toward memory cards.
These devices convert these analog signals to HDMI, the ubiquitous connection on all modern televisions. These converters will not allow you to record those signals, only view them on your screen. Even if your laptop has an HDMI connection, that port is output only. You cannot record video or audio (there are converters that do, but they are very expensive and rare).
These are not component video converters, the red, green, and blue connections are mostly found on DVD players and early Blu-ray players. However, there are not many products that need to convert the signal to HDMI. DVDs, for example, can be played on Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray.
All of these adapters will convert standard definition signals to HD, but don’t get your hopes up, either. Your TV will do this automatically, and old video equipment will never look as good as any modern video source. VHS, for example, has a resolution that is about 320×480 at best. Your 4K TV is 3840 x 2160, which is almost 54 times the resolution of VHS.
RCA to HDMI Converters
Neither of these devices does a particularly good job of rendering, removing jagged, black lines, but that’s the least of your problems with older video formats, as they’ll never look as good as today’s HD.
There are countless options available in online stores. One of the most popular is the Tixilinbi converter, which comes with a removable HDMI cable and non-removable male RCA cables (the one with the bump). This makes it generally one of the most consumed options for most users, since it comes with analog cables. It is powered via Micro-USB although it does not include the wall adapter. That’s pretty common on these devices, though you can probably plug it into your TV’s USB.
Despite the fact that the quality of the image will never be as good as that of any recording that you can make today with your mobile, this type of converter will manage to relieve you a bit of nostalgia if one day you feel like watching your favorite movie from when you were little boy.
