How To Watch Free HD TV On A Regular Computer Monitor For Less Than $40

hello everyone Richard here again in the previous video I showed everyone how they could watch HDTV over-the-air broadcasts using just a paper clip if you haven't seen that video I'm gonna put a card for that up here and you can watch that again now that video has over 1.9 million views in this video what I'm gonna do is dust off my mad scientist cap again and show you how you can watch HDTV on just about any computer monitor for under $40 and the TV can be over-the-air broadcast TV or cable TV I will also show you a few other tricks along the way so here's the monitor I'm going to be using it's an old monitor that I've had hanging around for a while it's an HP W 2 2 sorry 2 3 3 8 H it's a 23 inch 1080p monitor and it's pretty standard I got it on Craigslist for 20 bucks and that's a pretty standard price for this size of monitor on there so go look around and see what you can find if you don't have one I'm assuming you do have a monitor to get this done under 40 bucks now this monitor is great because it does have an HDMI input into it and it is 1080p so that's really cool and if you look at at the inputs I'll show them to you right here I have HDMI it has built-in speakers and has VGA as well as an optional input and audio in here so as long as you have an HDMI input to your to your monitor it's pretty well good to go on this system outside of that if you only have VGA or you only have DVI then you're going to need a little bit more extra but I'll get into that next but in a second what I want to show you is the next component that you're going to need and that is the media Sonic home works you put this over here this is the HW 8 180 St b3 and it's re s DB and I'll put links for all this stuff in the video descriptions below for everybody so that you can get it from the people I got it from and this is the second component you need and this is the basically the cable box or the TV tuner that takes the digital signal and puts it into your monitor this will do both cable and over-the-air broadcast TV so it's a good great option plus it has the ability to record the programs you need to have an extra USB stick or Drive plugged into it but it can do it so it's pretty neat see it says recording media player so it's pretty cool at $27.99 and like I said I'll put links for the stuff in the description below next thing you're gonna need basically is a a single HDMI cable to go from that media Sonic box to your monitor and again very cheap and last but not least you're gonna need an antenna now you could use something like the paperclip by antenna I use it here I can use it here but I only get three channels and with this antenna because I live in a bowl I live in a in a divot in the earth so basically I'm surrounded by hills and and you know radio signals are hard to get into this spot I don't know what it is it's like the radio signal black hole nothing comes out nothing comes in and my cell phone is also real bare to use when I'm here I got to stand in the right place in my hand my place to get it to work so I have a problem with radio signals so this but even even with that this paperclip still gets me three channels so I don't you know like I said try it see how it works for you I've had people tell me they get like 40 50 channels with the paperclip so pretty amazing so it must be a better place where they're at next thing you're gonna need it you know and again here's the antenna if you need a better antenna something like this is what I use it's about 1099 and you can get them cheap other places too but you know a dual antenna rabbit-ear like this will work or one of the flat what do you call it antennas will work as well I have one of those as well I'll see which one works best and I'll plug that in and let's see what's next okay next after that so what do we got we got the monitor which I assume you have with HDMI port we've got the Box the TV box we've got cable to connect the TV box to the monitor an antenna basic one being the paperclip don't believe me go look at the video it works and then if you don't have a sorry beach outside HDMI port on your on your monitor you only have VGA you can get these little converters that will convert VGA to HDMI so that gives you an option as well make sure that you look to see whether it has audio out especially on VGA because you never know you might need audio a lot of that as well so take a look around I don't use these I'm just showing them to you and here's a DVI to HDMI port so if I only have an input to DVI on your monitor this does it for you as well now the last optional thing I like to use is this is one of my favorite things that I have on my desk and that's the fuss Fossum on five port 4k HDMI switch splitter but the big plus on it is the infrared remote okay basically what this allows you to do is plug multiple HDMI cables into it and have one output as you can see here there's one output from it so that output goes to your monitor all the rest of the inputs go into this box and then you can switch with either using the button on the box or this remote no problem and the nice thing about this is that I have three cameras and two laptops that's five inputs and I can switch between all of them and I can take one of one of the laptops off and make the TV one of the inputs now say you want to do this at your office and you want to have your monitor be the TV that your your computer monitor be the TV with the switch you can just plug it plug the cable box into this into this little box and plug your computer into this little box your monitor into this little box and then you can switch to the TV anytime you want with the remote it's sweet it really works well and I'll show you how that works as well so that's all the gear you need basic the basic gear will be the monitor the TV box and HDMI cable as well as some sort of antenna so the other the other parts are all optional so let's get together and put that let's get all that equipment together and make it work oh one more thing I won't be able to show you any of the content that comes across from the TV signal I'll blur it out and I'll mute the sound on it but basically because of copyright laws I can't show you that the this is the signal but I'll blur it out and I'll show you that it's moving and you can see that it's working let's take a look at the homeworks Media sonic digital converter box which is the heart of this deal that's this is it right here this little box and again I'll put links of this stuff in the video description below I get the infrared sensor here channel while plus channel - pretty self-explanatory power button of course nothing really special there on the back is what really counts we've actually have left and right audio and video which would be these would be analog outputs we're not using those at all we're going to be using the HDMI port this USB is for storage so this is a media recording box so you can record your TV shows as well if you plug in you a USB device in here or hard drive or thumb drive you can record on this box pretty cool we've got RF out and RF in well radio frequencies what RF is for and the RF in is what we're going to be plugging the antenna into RF out is a pass-through if you were going to another TV so we're not doing that we're just going to use the RF in for the antenna so let's start putting this all together plug in my antenna in first into the RF in and it's just basic righty-tighty lefty-loosey or clockwise counterclockwise clockwise tightens so there we go antenna is in next thing we're going to do is plug in the HDMI cord it's only going to go one way into that port there's the HDMI plugs in here alright so at this point that box is ready to go it's got antennae in HDMI out power here on the end so that's ready to go there's a it comes with a with a remote which is really handy and nice and we've got to put batteries in it so if you're looking at it this is the top this is the bottom and all you need to do to get the batteries in is the positive end of the battery which is this end goes away from the springs same with the other side put them in put the cover on and that's ready to go out of the box so the next thing we need to do is plug the HDMI into the HDMI port of the monitor which is right here see if I can get that at an angle where you can see it there it is there it is so I'm gonna plug it in and then after that we'll power everything up and I'll show it to you working there we go and it's plugged in so we're going from the media box to the monitor I will show you the five port switcher later on but right now this is the way we're going straight in from the from the media Sonic home works to the thirty dollar monitor using the HDMI cable oh I'm sure somebody's gonna ask me what kind of antenna I was using I was using one of these flat things and it's okay I've got I've got a home-built antenna that's better but you know just for the sake of this video I may make a video on the home built antenna I made but this is what I'm using on this to get all the channels I get alright so i've powered up the box i'm going to show you how to quickly reset the box to the factory defaults so that you know how to do that and usually it's set to the factory defaults right out of the box so let's go do that i'm going to hit the menu button on the remote and we're gonna skip over using the arrow keys on the remote over to the gears on the right here and then you've got the parental guide guidance set password restore factor defaults well you want to go down to scroll down so again the arrow buttons on the remote down and restore factory defaults and then hit OK on the center and here it's gonna ask you for a password the default password for the media sonic homeworks is zero zero zero zero zero so let's do that zero zero zero zero zero zero so six zeros and then it says okay or exit to quit so we want to we want to start we're going to do the factory restore or defaults so I'm going to do that and I'm doing that so that you know a how to do it and B what it's going to look like when you take it out of the box and when you take it out of the box this is what's going to show up first it's gonna ask you what language of course we want English I'm in the USA so I'm gonna leave it there if you want to use something else other than then USA scroll through and find it and then the next thing that's going to do is channel search so here I'm just gonna sit okay and it will do a channel search I'll let this scan through and when it's done I'll show you the results and we'll go from there alright you saw that I got 10 D TV channels or more go through them here they look pretty good to me and yeah real crystal clear of course I'm gonna blur these out so you won't be able to see what's on the actual screen but they look great and it is on my monitor and my monitor looks awesome with this I'm very happy with that result I'll go through these channels here yeah it looks like I got about 10 or 11 free channels off what do you call it over the air digital TV so I'm pretty happy with that you'll probably get much better results if you live somewhere less like a radio frequency black hole like I live in but you know I've gone through all these I've got a couple of weather channels I've got some Spanish channels and you know like I said it's working perfectly so that's how you hook up the media sonic to a standard HDMI monitor if you have anything other than that like VGA or DVI you will need it murders kind of you know assembly or or you know wire and this is working just great next thing I'm going to show you is how to connect that five HDMI to one box to it all and show you that working too so here's the last part of this setup that you know is optional but in my case it's just a got to have I think it's just such a great thing to have anyway this is the faust Mun five into one HDMI switch and you can see the picture here but here's the actual switch itself and I think it's just absolutely necessary for me anyway because I switch between the TV box and my computer all the time and you know it's and I got like said I have three cameras so I plug them in as well and I can switch between all of them easily so let's take a look at the actual box itself alright so we have the little switching box it's not very big as you can see it's got five actually six ports in it one of them is an output so this goes up to your monitor all the rest are inputs and then it has a switch on it so you can switch between all all of them manually if you wish okay and it does switch automatically to the left to the last device turned on I noticed that too that's which is really cool on top of that on the side has power and an infrared port for the remote and that's this little unit here it plugs into the side and it does come with a power supply but I don't need it every time when you plug an HDMI device into it it powers it up anyway so I'm not sure what the point of the power supply is I haven't seen any problem running it without the power supply so I run it without the power supply and I'll show you that in a minute and then it has the course or remote control which is the handy handy dandy unit to have I put the velcro on it there to stick it on to something so it doesn't go anywhere keep it handy but again it just it you can pick any input you want just with one single switch or switch up and down through them which is awesome I think it's a great unit to have beautiful option leave it's under 15 bucks on Amazon and I'll put links to this stuff in the video description below for everybody so yeah yeah let's go back here you can see all this stuff like I said infrared port plugs to the side it's very simple like so same with the power plug plugs in the side here and you know very basic but works great so I'll show you how this all goes together what you do is you put the output pour it in there all labeled nicely that goes out to your monitor then you pick your switches so I'll put port 4 here and port 2 for the TV box it's hard to do this one you can't see it there we go and you see once the TV box comes plugged in because it's powered up right it powers up the box so you know I don't have anything else running right now here let me turn my computer on quickly there we go and once they do that now I have the option between port 2 and port 4 and you do it that way or again look power supply is not plugged in it's still working so HDMI is powering that up I plug the infrared port into into the side of it and then you can use the up and down if you wish to switch it and that nice or you can just use you just hit 2 or 4 right and it'll go between 2 and 4 just like that so yeah really handy again it's pretty basic and it's for me an essential part of this whole TV box interface but if you want to go simple and just have a TV on your monitor you you know you don't need this and just so I don't get any grief here it is actually on the monitor itself you can see it filming a monitor with a video camera it's not a lot of fun but here it is and you can see that it's a real monitor I put this in front the program screen so I don't have to blur it out it's a lot of work on video to blur out the screen and you can see it working here on my monitor that's it for my video on how to watch HDTV regular computer monitor if you liked this video and it helped you out in some way do me a huge favor click on the like button in the bottom right hand corner and give me a big thumbs up that helps my channel it helps my video and I greatly appreciate it also I'll put links for the hardware that I used in this video in the video description below as well you can comment in the comment section below and give me suggestions questions or you know just say thanks I appreciate all those comments and I moderate them regularly also up here you'll see a picture of me that is the subscription 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Channel: Richard Lloyd

Views: 16,812

Keywords: How To Watch Free HD TV On A Regular Computer Monitor For Less Than $40, free tv, how to make antenna for tv, paper clip antenna, tv antennas for free television, how to make a tv antenna, paperclip antenna, free cable tv, how to make a antenna for tv, hd antenna for tv, how to make an antenna for tv, paper clip tv antenna, free hd tv, antenna tv, homemade tv antenna, tv fox antenna, how to make tv antenna at home, how to make tv antenna, how to get free tv, Free TV, Antenna

Id: L3YgHIgo2Tw

Length: 18min 27sec (1107 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 15 2019