Introduction
Our house is a house where there's at least two televions are on all the time. It's not that we watch them all the time, but we put them on as soon as we get up in the morning.
We have an account with Dish Satellite and are also packrats in that we have a variety of receivers, televisons, DVDs, VCRs, rabbit ear antennae, Roku sticks, and other audio visual equipment of different ages lying around.
In September 2025, one of the satellite receivers stopped working. The new replacement involved changingthe way some of the older equipment was set up and this page was written to demonstrate what I did.
The Equipment
There is a plethora of audio visual connector types and sub-types around. Luckily most domestic anudio equipment uses just a few types: HDMI, RCA RGB component, 4-pin Mini DIN S-Video, RCA composite, and F-type coaxial antenna. Those connections are listed in the order that should give the best picture quality, HDMI being best and the F-type coaxial antenna being worst.
The table is sortable by clicking on the column headers.
Adapters
At home we have a variety of TV, VCR, DVD, and Blue-ray devices, some of which were made over 20 years apart. What do you do if your VCR only has RCA composite outputs but your TV only has HDMI inputs or your Roku stick only has HDMI outputs but your TV only has RCA composite inputs?
Over the years I have a accumulated all sorts of cables, connectors, splitters, i/o switches, adapters, cable tidies and other bits and pieces.
Some of my AV bits and pieces
Some of this is old, but it still occasionally comes in useful
Rabbit Ears Antenna
In 2009, over the air (OTA) transmission of television programs changed from analog to digital signals. This meant that you either get a good picture or none at all. Having bought both types, I much prefer the rabbit ears type of indoor antenna such as this, over the flat panel ones, mostly because they are more easily moved.
Rabbit ears antenna
How useful they are depends on their situation. In some rooms in my house I can get about a dozen channels, in others, only about four.
RCA Composite to and from HDMI
Just because you cnverted a signal from RCA composite to HDMI using a converter does not mean you will magically get HDMI quality. In order to do that an upscaler is needed and to do that properly those cost around 30x more than the $10 converters I use.
RCA Composite to and from HDMI converters
I like the Mini brand of devices such as this HDMI to RCA composite converter and this RCA composite to HDMi converter. There are other types of converters such as this HDMI to RCA composite one.
RCA Composite to 3.5mm AV
An unusual type of converter is the RCA Composite to 3.5mm AV one. I've only seen my LG TV hve one of these sockets but there must be others.
RCA Composite to 3.5mm AV
When buying these adapters be aware that there is no standard for these 3.5mm AV plugs. From the end point they could be right audio, left audio, ground, video or they could be left audio, video, ground, right audio or they could be video, left audio, right audio, ground, or any other combination.
The back of the living room TV
In the above photo the connections are (left to right): RCA Composite leads from the Magnavox DV220MW9 VHS/DVD player to the TV's 3.5mm AV Connector. The rabbit ears antenna cable. HDMI cable from the Dish Hopper 3 and the Roku HDMI stick and its power lead.
These type of connectors are usually either TRS (3 connector sections) or TRRS (4 connector sections), where t=tip, r=ring and s=sleeve. From the Wikipedia article on Phone connectors, it seems that there are at least 4 different wiring methods used for this type of connector when used for video signals.
Cable Tidies
Sometimes you can't just stuff all the cable behind a piece of furniture and sometimes you have to coil it instead of simply cutting it. A quick solution are velcro cable ties.
If there are several cables to be made tidy then I think braided cable sleeves are brilliant. They are easy to use and getting the cables back out of them if needed is easy.
Braided cable sleeves
In the above photo there is a power cable and two signal cables going to the TV.
2010
In 2010, we decided to make Dish our satellite TV provider. Their technician came and installed the dish and two VIP722K receivers. This machine was absolutely great. The machine had all the outputs I wanted.
The back panel of the VIP722K satellite receiver
Shortly after getting it I bought the OTA tuner module for it and the signal for that was provided by a rabbit ears antenna. The module was easy to install, just remove the back panel cover for it, then screw it into the slot.
OTA tuner module for the VIP722K
The unit came with two remotes, one is infrared for working with a TV in the room the unit is in, and the other is wireless and so works with a TV in another room than where the receiver is. I realized that by running coax cable from the unit to other TVs, then those TVs could also use it. They had to watch whatever either the original TVs it was attached to was watching, but both signals could be carried to other TVs on separate channels.
The signals from the receiver were strong enough that I could just use coax splitters with no amplification of the signal needed.
2025
By 2025, most of the TVs all had Roku, either by being downloaded to them or through a USB stick. Even our older TVs that do not have HDMI inputs worked with a HDMI to RCA composite converter. This includes our 24 year old Curtis-Mathes Tronics CM 190223 TV that is in a room that cannot get any channels using a rabbit ears antenna.
HDMI Roku using an HDMI to RCA composite converter
Then in early September, the VIP722K satellite receiver started acting oddly. It would get part way through its boot process and then restart. I was hoping Dish would replace it with another of the same type, but they said they had stopped using them and had no more available.
They also said it might be over heating, it could have been a corrupt software update or that one or more of the components had failed. A technician they sent couldn't tell what was wrong with it. to tell the truth, I don't think he particularly cared, and we ended up with their Hopper 3 and two Joey 3s.
The back of the Hopper 3
The TVs we have now are all smart. Apart from the channels given to us with them, they all have Roku and rabbit ears.