Re: OT - For you Electronics Gurus

Elliot Richmond wrote:
In article <00359969$0$12277$c3e8da3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Janet Wilder <kelliepoodle@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I just hooked up the converter box to one of our TVs. This TV is on
DirecTV during baseball season, but on over-the-air with rabbit ears
the rest of the year.

I had no trouble installing it. Everything works fine. I RTFM and no
where can I see how this gadget can work with a VCR.

I haven't tried running it through the VCR instead of directly from
the converter box to the TV, because there wasn't any direction in
the manual on how to do this and I don't want to blow anything up.

Has anyone installed one of these converter boxes and run it through
a VCR? If so, how do you change the channels?

The VCR does not have digital channels on its remote. You can't just
leave the TV on channel 3 now.

Does one need a special VCR?

Anyone have any answers? I tried to Google converter box +VCR and
got nowhere.

As I read the other replies, they are suggesting something like this:

1. Cable --> Digital convertor/Recorder --> VCR --> TV

Using various cabling options. I tried this with Time Warner Cable
Austin and the signal appeared to be degraded. Possibly the old VCR
was faulty or inadequate.

Here is what I did instead:

2. Cable --> Digital convertor/Recorder --> TV --> VCR

Using a composite output on my TV to connect to the VCR. Many TVs will
not have a composite output. I am not sure why mine does. Anyway, for
the composite output, you would need three RCA type cables. Typically
they are red and white for the audio and yellow for the video. You can
pick 'em up at the grocery store or any electronics store.

This would also work:

3. Cable --> Digital convertor/Recorder --> TV
\--> VCR

using the little "splitter" somebody else mentioned. Putting the
splitter after the converter should not cause any problems because the
signal is old fashioned analog at this point.

Speaking of analog, HDTV changes all of the above. If you have an HDTV
and the cable or satellite company supplies HDTV signals direct (on TW
cable, channels above 1000 are digital channels and require a
different box to watch on one's HDTV. In that case, option 1 would
not work, because the vcr would not be able to understand the digital
signal. Option 2 would work, but the composite output would not be
digital.

Finally, this should work with later model "cable-ready" VCRs (those
that recognize cable channels without conversion).

4. Cable --> VCR --> Digital converter --> TV

but it would seem to offer no advantages over option 1 and the VCR
could not recognize the digital channels (from 100 to 999) nor the
HDTV channels. It might screw up the signal on those higher channels.

if you use the composite cables (or s video or component) instead of rf
cables/coax, you bypass the tuners... seems sort of silly to convert video
to rf so you can save a few cents on cables and go from video to rf/coax
cable/another tuner/convert back to video etc..... seems like when you said
you tried it but the signal was degraded, it's counter intuitive (ie
converting video to rf/back to video to rf to video to rf to video instead
of just keeping it video..... sure you didn't have a bad cable or
connector/jack) some tv's even have yellow/red/white jacks in front so you
can plug video games/computers into em...

ever notice that ntsc tuners are analog, but atsc tuners (which you would
think are analog since they start with the letter a) are digital? reminds me
of driving on parkways and parking on driveways.... :)


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Problems with Sony Bravia HDTV
    ... Generally, the optimum solution is to connect the cable to a splitter, and connect the two splitter outputs to the TV and VCR. ... Then run composite or S-video cables from the VCR to the TV. ... the digital channels look good. ... the analog channels are inconsistent in their behavior. ...
    (alt.tv.tech.hdtv)
  • Re: Problems with Sony Bravia HDTV
    ... Good point - - in my situation I watched the VCR output on a different ... composite or S-video cables from the VCR to the TV. ... the digital channels look good. ... the analog channels are inconsistent in their behavior. ...
    (alt.tv.tech.hdtv)
  • Re: DVRs hurting 10 p.m. shows
    ... Is this for free-to-air broadcast channels only? ... If you are using your VCR in front of a set-top box, ... supply input to the analog tuner built into the VCR. ... I usually use composite AV cables so I have plenty of those. ...
    (rec.arts.tv)
  • Re: VCR - No S cable hook up
    ... But when I hook up all 3 to the VCR and to the back of the computer, ... I had the same problem with my video ... with my analog video camera using the red/yellow/white cables AND an S ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support)
  • Re: DVRs hurting 10 p.m. shows
    ... Is this for free-to-air broadcast channels only? ... If you are using your VCR in front of a set-top box, ... supply input to the analog tuner built into the VCR. ... company may give you composite audio-video or audio-only cables (you'll ...
    (rec.arts.tv)