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
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
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.
@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.
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