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The picture is clear, bright, stable and all the adjustments work well. Like most old TV’s, you have to sometimes adjust the vertical hold or sync and you definitely have to let the set warm up. Our plan was to use the Predicta to watch old classic movies and shows like the Twilight Zone or Outer Limits on a Saturday night. To do so, I purchased a second VCR just for this TV. Even watching an old movie through the VCR is beneficial because you can flip through stations using the remote thus reducing wear on the channel selector on your vintage TV. Upon playing movies we witnessed dashed lines appearing through the middle and upper part of the screen. I soon realized what we were seeing was the Macrovision copy protection signal that are put on tapes to keep people from copying them. All relatively new TVs scrub the signal out so you don’t see it. On these old TVs the signal appears on the screen as white dashed lines that kind of wander up and down and can sometimes cause dark shadows. After a little research, I learned that I could purchase a Macrovision signal remover designed to be put between two VCRs for copying from one tape to another. These devices are referred to as video stabilizers and designed so that you feed the video output of one VCR into the stabilizer and run the scrubbed video output from the stabilizer into the other VCR's video input. The audio output is connected directly from VCR to VCR. This does not help me much because my goal was not to copy tapes but to watch old movies and shows. Old TVs cannot use video signals. They need RF (Radio Frequency) signals. I would have to convert the scrubbed video signal back to an RF signal for TV. I had the answer! I would re-modulate the video back into an RF signal with a video modulator. To build the Macrovision Scrubber/RF Modulator, I purchased a video stabilizer (Macrovision Scrubber) from Futureshop for $40.00 and a Video RF Modulator from this company I found on the Internet for US$20.00 delivered. The Video RF Modulator has 4 inputs;
The output is an RF signal with a selectable switch for channels 3 or 4. I was able to fit the Video RF Modulator in the Video Stabilizers’ enclosure and run it off a 9VDC adapter after adding a filter capacitor. In the first test using a VCR tape, the picture was super but the audio was low. There was only one adjustment on the modulator and a small tweak brought the audio to full. The system works perfectly, the dashed lines are gone!
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The video modulator is compact in size.
The completed Macrovision Scrubber/RF Modulator.
Shown are the VCR on it's side with a remote and on the carpet sits the Macrovision Scrubber/RF Modulator. |
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Summary of Costs Predicta (un-restored) $450.00 (US$303.00) |
The finished Predicta completes a theme room. |
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Below are some pictures of the Predicta before and after restoration. The first six pictures on the right are the original pictures as shown on Ebay. The pictures on the left are the results of the restoration. The framed picture is a vintage ad I found in a 1958 Life Magazine. I bought an unpainted hobby frame and sprayed it with the same paint used on my Predicta. I had it professionally matted. Lastly is a picture of the Predicta in our theme room. I guess it's not really a theme room considering there are things from several different decades. What's in the theme room? To the right is a restored 1926 Splitdorf radio and horn speaker. I built a battery eliminator to power it. It is tucked under the bottom shelf of the side table. Also shown is an antique pump organ stool. Lastly, the coffee table and side table were other projects I completed a few years ago. I actually bought a twelve foot long, thirty inch wide birch log for the project. That's another story! With the Predicta, the room is complete.
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| Before | After |
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| Other Pictures (Not my Predicta) | |
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