PC monitor output to Composite vedeo??

[SparksPA]

Howdy! Brand spankin' newbie here.

I am in the process of planning the transition away from Comcast cable to Dish Network. As part of that process I will be upgrading and installing a structured wiring system in my home. There are two cable channels that I will miss when I switch to Dish. One is a local news crawler channel (channel 4)that has local breaking news, simple weather, community events, school weather related closings and the like. The other is the Weather Channel on the 8s. I understand that the Weather channel will no longer be local on Dish. The news crawler channel 4 has a web page that closely resembles the cable channel. My plan is to use an old PC and load that web page, then take the composite "video out" from some kind of video card and insert that in to a frequency agile modulator to create a new channel to be inserted along with my OTA channels to the OTA tuner input on the Dish OTA tuner. I would like to do the same thing for a second web page for the local Weather Channel web page.

My question is, is there an inexpensive(?) method of converting two separate web page feeds to two composite video feeds. Ideally I would like to use only one PC in order to reduce the bulk hardware footprint in my central wiring "closet". Is there a USB device (or two) that could do the PC video to composite video conversion? Can I load two browser pages and direct the output from each page to an independent output? If two proves to be too difficult or complex I can get local weather on my computer when necessary. It would just be nice to have it available on demand on the television(s) though. My knowledge of computer hardware is too out of date for me to even begin to know where to look.

 

[avg1joe]

Have you checked to see what you get OTA with an antenna to see if what you are looking for is there? There is a whole satelliteguys subforum about OTA that can help you get them if they are weak. Setting this up with an antenna would be simpler and suck less juice.

What inputs do you have on your tv? Let's say you have a vga and a set of rca jacks free on your tv. Keep your cable hooked where it is. Get a video card with a vga and s-video output. Hook the vga to the tv. Hook the s-video to the rca jack with a svideo to rca cable. Configure the computer to extend your desktop onto a monitor and a tv. Move the browser on one channel onto one screen and the browser from the other onto the other. Use your tv remotes input button to switch from cable to browser 1 to browser 2. You can get vga and s-video cables that run your sound to your tv as well. I think you would have to choose one to have sound and mute the other browser in this setup though. Here's a good source for cables. Pro S-Video to 3 RCA, 6 ft.

Personally I'd forget dish and cable, see what you can get OTA, hook your computer to your tv and watch everything else on free sites like hulu. I've been doing this for over a year.

 

[BuddyBoy]

Get a couple cheap PCI video cards with composite video out, and run your computer with three displays.

 

[Jared Twomey]

Get a couple cheap PCI video cards with composite video out, and run your computer with three displays.

+1... this is the easiest way to do it

 

[SparksPA]

Get a couple cheap PCI video cards with composite video out, and run your computer with three displays.

That is what I was hoping for. I haven't had the need to deal with PC hardware for quite a few years . My product knowledge is far enough out of date that I didn't realize that composite video out on a cheap PCI video card (or two) would be practical. Now I have reason to believe that I can actually make this happen. I will look for the card(s) and let you know how I make out with the project. It may take a while though.

avg1joe, the two channels that I will miss when I pull the plug on Comcast are cable only channels. The news crawler channel is hosted by a local radio station and distributed through the cable system only. They do have a very similar web page that I would like to view throughout my home (9 televisions) for convenience and consistency, similar to cable. The Weather Channel on the 8s is a local weather forecast that, as far as I know, is distributed on cable only. I want to leave the Weather Channel page up and distribute it in a similar fashion. I will have to check it to see if it will continually refresh itself though so that the content is current, not just when the web page was loaded. Thanks for the tips though.

Thanks for the info. You guys are great! :up