If I made a circuit to produce a video signal, and wanted to send it to my TV, could I just send the raw signal through an RCA composite video cable and set the TV input to "AV" to get the image? Or would I need to do anything else (add extra hardware to further encode the signal maybe)? I'm not planning on actually making such a circuit anytime soon, but I've been learning about video signals and I was just curious.

Also, what's the maximum voltage I can send without damaging the TV? (also just out of curiosity ).

 

If the composite video signal is compatible with the AV input (such as NTSC in the USA) then it should work.
Where are you located?

The typical composite video voltage is around 1Vpp.
Hard to say how much would damage it. Likely depends upon the particular TV design.

 

Thanks.

I live in the USA and the TV is NTSC.

 

An NTSC composite video signal is rigidly defined as 1.0 V peak-to-peak into a 75 ohm load for the monochrome part, divided up into 140 IRE units. The sync tip is 40 units below ground and peak white is 100 units above ground. If that is your signal, then no other encoding is necessary.

It is called "composite" video because it is composed of three distinct parts: sync, amplitude modulated monochrome video, and phase modulated color subcarrier. The positive peaks of the color subcarrier never should go above 100 IRE, but most displays and TVs can handle super-saturated colors like what comes from older game systems.

ak