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hacktv

Generates and transmits analogue television — a HackRF as a TV station

  • Version recorded: 0+git20250218
  • Categories: rf-research, sstv-atv
  • Upstream: https://github.com/fsphil/hacktv
  • Not a recommended default — installed only when asked for.

What it does

Encodes video into a complete analogue television signal -- PAL, NTSC, SECAM and several older and regional standards, with teletext, colour subcarriers, NICAM sound and even the scrambling systems used by 1990s satellite broadcasters -- and feeds it to a HackRF or writes it to a file.

Why you would want it

Analogue television is switched off almost everywhere, which makes it a subject of restoration rather than of use. This is the tool that puts a picture back on a period television set, and it is the most complete working implementation of those standards in software. For anyone studying or restoring broadcast history, or testing an analogue receiver, nothing else is close.

Before it will work

A HackRF, or the patience to work with output files. Video to transmit. If anything is connected to an antenna, an understanding of what you are radiating and where.

How it installs

  • apt: hacktv
  • Kali carries a much newer snapshot -- 0+git20260515 against 0+git20250218 on Debian 13, Parrot and Ubuntu, and 0+git20230104 on Mint (measured 2026-08-28). This software is versioned by commit date and new television standards arrive between them.

Known problems

This is a transmitter. It generates real signals in bands that are, in most countries, allocated to services other than amateur radio, and connecting it to an antenna is not the same act as feeding a screened cable into a television with a dummy load and heavy attenuation. What is lawful is jurisdictional and this project does not tell you what your rules are -- it tells you plainly what the software does, which is the position D-021 describes. The HackRF also has no output filtering worth the name, so harmonics are radiated along with the intended signal.

Keeping it current

  • probe: apt policy
  • strategy: apt_upgrade

Where to get help with the software itself

Philip Heron. GitHub issues at the URL above.

Source: catalog/packages/hacktv.yaml