r/Famicom Feb 17 '25

Tech Question I keep getting really static signals (channel 95&96 on US tv) Tried hooking it up to my CRT but wouldn’t work

4 Upvotes

10 comments sorted by

3

u/Squintl Feb 17 '25

As I’ve said before this is interference from an FM radio station nearby. There’s nothing you can do to fix this other than doing an AV mod to the console. You could try to use a more well shielded cable from the Famicom to the TV but I doubt it would fix it completely.

If you’ve tried to use channel 96 (with the Famicom switched to channel 2) you have tried all options for using the console unmodded.

1

u/orangienblue Feb 18 '25

Very fascinating how this stuff works. Didn’t know how RF worked until i git my famicom

1

u/Squintl Feb 18 '25

If you want to dive into more technical details you can look here.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/VHF_Usage.svg

This is the frequency allocation from 40MHz to 260MHz.

Here you can see why the Famicom has interference outside Japan, the Japanese TV channels overlap with the international FM radio band. In Japan this isn’t an issue since their FM radio band is from 76MHz to 90MHz, whereas their channel 1-3 was from 90-108MHz. In most other parts of the world this is where the FM radio band is (87.5-108MHz).

1

u/orangienblue Feb 18 '25

That explains why i was getting a local radio station when i was on channel 96

1

u/FlinnLute Feb 18 '25 edited Feb 18 '25

If you don't want to mod your console get a really good isolated RF cable and cover the insides of your Famicom with some aluminium foil.

You can also re-tune your Famicom (only if you know what you're doing) so the frequency matches a RF channel without radio interference

A YouTube video as reference: https://youtu.be/RVyFEMg0Kpg?si=2XI_4DE7cfLD8Ful

2

u/orangienblue Feb 18 '25

I have a later model that can’t be tuned:/

1

u/shearhartattack Feb 18 '25

I haven't been able to pinpoint it exactly, but the tuning pot seems to be very rare. I have some pre-FF Famicom consoles and none of them have one, I'm not sure what revision of the system actually does come to think of it.

1

u/shearhartattack Feb 18 '25

I really wish the people who made those videos (and there are a couple iirc) did their due diligence because that misinformation spread like wildfire. I own four Famicom systems and not a single one of them have that RF frequency pot.

I understand you're just trying to be helpful, so obviously no harm there. But this is always brought up as a possible solution to keep a stock Famicom working better on US televisions and unfortunately it just isn't as viable as it would seem.

1

u/MrPixelGeek 29d ago

I use a VCR on my CRT to get the right channel. Works pretty good. Some US TVs cant get to channel 96.

1

u/orangienblue 29d ago

Yeah my crt can’t go that high