How do I rotate a coax feed?

August 6, 2008 5:29 AM

Can a cable feed be rotated 90 degrees on a monitor if the signal comes in through coax?

I need to hang a HDTV vertically and show a live feed. The monitor doesn't have an option to rotate the image. When done with VGA, the video card usually has the utility to rotate the image. Is there an equivalent for coax?

My boss wants it hung vertically for aesthetic reasons.

posted by MrMulan to technology (6 comments total)

I'm pretty sure the answer is no, unless you either feed the cable signal through a PC or use a monitor that has a portait mode.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 5:41 AM on August 6, 2008

Does your boss realize that, if you somehow do rotate the image, it's going to be a little square with huge black bands on the top and bottom?
posted by zippy at 5:41 AM on August 6, 2008

What is the source of live feed? Is it generated by some program like PowerPoint on a computer? If so, you could just alter the text/photos/video right at the source so it's rotated.
posted by bcwinters at 6:27 AM on August 6, 2008

You will have to process the signal to rotate it before you get it to the tv. And as zippy said, the image won't fit. If you are processing it, you would have the option to letterbox it when rotated, stretch it, or zoom in on part of the image to fit the dimensions - all of which will look odd unless you just have pretty pictures or textures going by.

The other problem is that your coax will be running into the television's tuner, which means you have to send the appropriate signal out of your processor. Not many computers have coax out, so you could go signal -> computer (process) -> RCA out -> VCR input -> VCR coax output. Definitely a good chance of signal degradation because of the number of conversions going on.
posted by shinynewnick at 6:59 AM on August 6, 2008

If you have control over the camera the signal is coming from, you can just rotate the camera.

Alternately you could have a look at 'video wall' technology (via Google); there are companies selling electronics to stretch live video between screens; they may well support rotating the video too. Might be expensive though.
posted by Mike1024 at 7:18 AM on August 6, 2008

You want a video rotator! I found this through this Google search (replace "ntsc" with "pal" if you're in Europe or wherever).
posted by rhizome at 9:55 AM on August 6, 2008