I bought some new TV gear (some Ikusi modulators, amplifiers, etc pulled from a small hotel) to run my own personal (self-contained) cable TV service.

The issue is do I encode all my digital files for square pixel PAL (768x576) or non-square pixel PAL (720x576)? I've no idea how they will look on an acutal TV set until I get the gear next week, so I've made a couple of test vids; one for each.

I'll play them both at the same time on separate channels and see the results.

L: 768
R: 720

PAL TVs don't have square pixels so I'm gonna do this experiment to see if I need to account for that or not.

For example if I throw a square pixeled video at an actual CRT through UHF how is it going to look compared to the non-square pixel video?

Oh also "why do this?"

1) It's interesting technology and I'm nerdy for it

2) I don't watch broadcast TV anymore because (despite the hundreds of channels) there's nothing I would want to watch at the time i want to watch it, and also I'm fed up with streaming.

I want something good to watch and it be in rotation so I don't have to choose. If I'm forced to choose I end up watching a documentary for the tenth time instead of something else I've got waiting.

I want some semblence of old style British analogue TV back and as I can't get it anywhere else I'm going to make it myself.

With the four modulators that I have I'm thinking of recreating something akin to the viewing habits I had on early Sky TV:

A channel of kids shows/cartoons during the day and movies in the evening (Cartoon Network & TNT)
A channel of scifi programs and more adult anime (Sci-Fi Channel/Bravo)
A general entertainment channel (Sky One)
A documentary channel (History)

I want the system to show programs in episode order but not as a box set binge style. For example the scifi channel would show an episode of Star Trek TNG and then an episode of Babylon 5 and then maybe The X-Files.

The cartoon channel would show an episode of Earthworm Jim, then Gargoyles, then MLP, etc and then in the evening it becomes a movie channel and starts showing movies.

Okay I’ve found a project on GitHub that might be able to do this! Will test it out when everything arrives.

If all goes to plan I’ll have four raspberry pis, each acting as a video player, into the modulators and then into a cable TV network broadcasting over the terrestrial UHF frequencies. No actual over the air broadcasting so it should stay self contained.