You should pickup a HackTV if you’re interested in SDR. Add on a portapack and you can scan ADS-B and a bunch of other stuff off internal battery power with no computer/tablet. And it has great driver and software support when you want to connect it to a computer. The only downside compared to more expensive radios like the kraken is that it’s half-duplex. But for how I use and for the price it that’s not a problem.

I might do a brief write up on setting up NTSC and PAL broadcasts if there’s any interest. It’s a neat little project to get some life out of an old CRT you might have lying around. Although I don’t believe the RTLSDR has enough bandwidth to fully cover a NTSC stream, but I have seen a write up where someone got it working with some compromises. I found a neat piece of software that uses ffmpeg and even has yt-dlp support and a GUI wrapper for it. I’m actually using it right now to play music videos, with a MTV logo and all. My understanding of antennas is…lackluster. It’s all over coax anyways to avoid any run-ins with the FCC.

This is the first time I’ve seen anything SDR related on lemmy. Please tell me there’s a community for us somewhere here, that’s one of the few things I still miss from reddit.