strange question - video signal frequency range?

[housepig]

bear with me...

if I wanted to take an oscillator or signal generator, hook it up to a TV and see a signal, what frequency range would my signal gen need?

and what would I expect to see if the signal was a sine wave as opposed to a square wave, for instance?

any info / links / tips appreciated.

[Doramius]

You're looking for VHF and UHF frequencies on a regular TV. Are you looking for or trying to send to a specific channel?

[gshelley61]

Analog video has various signal components ranging from near 0 Hz to over 6 Mhz (which is also the bandwidth of analog video).

[MOVIEGEEK]

You will see a sawtooth wave for the CRT and a square wave for the components:
www.cs.tcd.ie/courses/baict/bac/jf/labs/scope/oscilloscope.html
*use the links at the bottom of page for more info.

[housepig]

basically, what I'd like to do is hook 1-3 frequency generators to a coax cable and run it into a tv, see what I get.

ideally I'd get some wack visual that I can manipulate in real time by fiddling with the controls on the sig gens.

does that narrow the ranges any?

[ViRaL1]

I tried that once, during a storm. Then the voices started

[redwudz]

TV signals are pretty complex. You would be wasting a lot of time with just a RF signal generator.

This site has a good explanation. http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/tv.htm

Take a look at the page titled 'Video Signal'. That is one line of composite video with no video information.

Your computer would do a much better job with generating video. A good example is when Windows Media Player generates a random pattern for sound files with no video.

[housepig]

This site has a good explanation. http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/tv.htm

Your computer would do a much better job with generating video.

true... but I was hoping for something a) real time and b) hands on... not sure how I could rock that with the computer...

thanks for the link!