Roku setup

[Michelle3]

I haven’t seen any posts on the Roku Forums showing a Roku connected to an old CRT through a VCR, a composite switcher or both, so I decided to post pictures of my setup.  ~ Jordan

This is what the Roku looks like on an old analog CRT TV with a VCR and a switcher attached to it. The VCR used; a Sharp VC-H870C 4-head HiFi stereo VHS VCR (mfd. June 1991), features an orange-text VFD display with a bar-graphing audio output level VU-meter and supports MTS audio on RF input channels.

Front view of the Roku and the switcher used; an Archer/Radio Shack 15-1956 4-input switcher (ver. B/Made in China, mfd. April 1993). As you can tell, the Roku device is much smaller and 25 years newer than the switcher.

Back view of the Roku and the switcher. The Roku is connected to the switcher via input 2. Other devices connected to the switcher (as of this posting) are my Sony DVP-SR210P DVD player (mfd. November 2018) (via input 3) and my MT-Viki 8-input switcher (mfd. circa mid/late 2010s) (via input 4).

I converted the video signal from the switcher to the VCR through a Sima CT1 Digital Video Copymaster (mfd. circa 2003) to eliminate distortion from the copy-protection signals. The little teeny tiny control knob on the top view labeled “Video Output Level Adjust” is set to Normal (FYI, there are two other levels on this model; Darker and Enhanced), the little switch on the back view labeled “Color/B&W” is set to Color, and there is a video input level meter with four LED dots; the first three are green and the fourth one is red. The red dot only lights up steady on S-video connections; on Composite connections, it will either look dimmer while a device connected to the unit turns on or not light up at all.Back view of the VCR. The RF output from the VCR is set to ch. 3 via the little switch labeled “OUTPUT CHANNEL.”

Back view of the TV used; a Magnavox/Philips TS2756C102 (27”, mfd. September 1994). Noticeably, the label for the right-audio input looks like a registered trade-mark symbol.

[Michelle3]

The Roku is set to 4:3 in the display setting for this TV set.

Disney+ navigation on the Roku. Some apps on the device have their navigations stretched vertically from the 16:9 aspect ratio to fullscreen, noticeably resulting in some edges of the screen being cut-off and/or some of the text looking tall and skinny; this particular app appears to be one of them.

A 1990 TaleSpin episode at 4:3 aspect ratio on Disney+. This one is in its original SD quality, so it fills up the entire screen for this TV set. (4:3 content on Disney+ that is upscaled to HD quality are shrunken images encoded with big black border-shaped bars forming windowboxed pictures on the device’s 4:3 output.)

The Rescuers Down Under (1990) at 16:9 aspect ratio on Disney+. Noticeably, the black horizontal bars are placed at the top and bottom views of the screen, forming a letterboxed picture; this is completely normal when watching 16:9 content on a 4:3 TV or monitor set.

[Michelle3]

One thing I forgot to mention in this thread — when I got the Archer/Radio Shack switcher in the mail about a week ago, (3-4 days ago as of the initial and second posts) the switcher initially had audio issues. (and yes I bought it used from eBay)  A day or so later, it seems that the switcher fixed itself, and since then, it has been working flawlessly.  

~ Jordan

[fluke]

There is one thing that troubles me about this picture ...

How do you eject tapes from the VCR when the eject button is missing?

I'm also kind of curious how well the Wii-U works using this method.

It is nice to see the phosphorus is holding up and you are still getting a bright enough picture.

[Michelle3]

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@fluke wrote:

There is one thing that troubles me about this picture ...

How do you eject tapes from the VCR when the eject button is missing?

I'm also kind of curious how well the Wii-U works using this method.

It is nice to see the phosphorus is holding up and you are still getting a bright enough picture.

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That particular Eject button on the unit itself was like that when I got the unit in the mail back in December 2021.  I have no idea why though, but in the pictures on eBay where I bought the unit from, the Eject button was intact, so all I would assume is that it must’ve popped out of the switch-housing board inside the unit while the seller began shipping it.  I have the original remote for the VCR and thankfully the remote has an Eject button on it,  so obviously that appears to be the only way I’m able to eject tapes from this particular VCR model.  I own about 90 something VHS tapes in my physical home media collection, including some Disney releases, and all appear to work great with this VCR.  The oldest tape I own as of currently is a public domain release by Kids Klassics/GoodTimes Home Video, dating back to 1986 (which is the copyright on the tape label, the packaging is still copyright 1985), with the newest one being a Universal film, dating back to 2005 (which is the print date on the spine of the actual cassette; both the packaging and tape label still use the 2003 copyright).  Most of the tapes in my collection have a HiFi track, while some of the tapes in my collection only support the standard linear audio track.  HiFi was introduced to the VHS format back in the fall of 1984, and linear stereo was dumped off of the consumer VCR industry in around the early 1990s, which was likely around the time my Sharp VCR unit was manufactured.

As for the Wii-U, there’s that teeth-looking port on the back of the console labeled “AV MULTI OUT,” which turns out to be the same port as on the back of the original Wii consoles.  I’m using the official Wii RVL-009 composite cables (which I bought seperately from Amazon back in 2020) to connect my Wii-U to the MT-Viki switcher (through input 2), which is connected through input 4 on my Archer/Radio Shack switcher.  Through System Settings —> TV, there is an Aspect Ratio setting — it lets you choose either 16:9, or 4:3.  4:3 displays a letterboxed 16:9 picture on the Wii U Menu and most games on the console, but it will fill the entire screen on the Wii Mode and some games.  I mostly play the Wii Mode on the console.  My Wii-U console unit is the deluxe (WUP-101) model. 
~ Jordan

This is what the cables that I’m using for the Wii-U look like. (Photo credit: Empow’Her)The Wii-U also supports these cables (which output up to 1080i). They are called Component cables. The green cable is labeled Y, the blue cable is labeled Pb/Cb, and the red (video) is labeled Pr/Cr. Model number of these is RVL-011. (Photo credit: chrislexgames2020 on eBay) These cables, however, will only output 720p and 1080i in Wii U mode. Wii Mode on this console will only output up to 480p, ‘cause that is how the original Wii consoles looked.

This is what the ports on the back of the Wii-U look like. (Photo credit: The Verge)