Connect the box to your VCR and then connect your VCR to your TV. It will work just fine. You don’t need to tune from the box.
:smack: My apologies. I wasn’t considering recording one channel and watching another at all. Yes, some flexibility is lost, but your VCR doesn’t become totally useless either.
Unless you hook up a separate converter box to the VCR, but I assume nobody’s going to do that …
Yeah, you do. The box won’t simultaneously receive all digital OTA broadcasts on all frequencies and push them all over NTSC to the VCR. You’ll have to tune the converter box to the channel you want to watch or record right now. Not a big deal for TV’s, but it will prevent unattended recording of multiple channels from a VCR.
Sorry, but that’s wrong. The tuner on your VCR will only tune analog channels, not digital. That’s why you need the converter box.
You select the (digital) channel you want on the converter, then you have an analog signal (one channel only) that either the VCR or analog TV can use.
Are there any estimates as to how many people have analog TV’s and also do not have cable?
With my cable converter box, you absolutely cannot tape two shows back to back on different channels without changing the channel on the converter box after the first taping ends.
That, I assume, is the same way a digital TV converter box will work, unless the converter box does some sort of fancy digital to analog channel mapping to fool the VCR into thinking it’s getting multiple old-fashioned analog channels. But I’ve never heard of a box like that.
I can account for 4 households with my immediate family. two of those won’t have problems upgrading.
Maybe things aren’t so bad. EchoStar is supposed to be coming out with a $39.99 digital converter, the TR-40.
They also have a TR-50 converter coming out this summer that includes DVR (digital video recorder) functionality, with a 7-day on-screen program guide and no monthly fees! Works with analog and digital TVs, and it’s expandable. I might be able to give up my Tivo for one of those, but I can’t find a price anywhere.
http://ces.cnet.com/8301-13855_1-9840910-67.html?tag=blogFeed
I know people will hate giving up their VCRs, but for recordings you just want to watch once, a DVR is fantastic and beats messing with tapes by a mile.
Does anyone know if these D2A boxes will have only NTSC output, or whether they can also have audio and composite video outputs as well?
The Echostar TR-40 D2A box says it has “a built-in 7-day EPG, program search functions and VCR auto-tune timers.” Presumably, you will need to select the programming from the TR-40, and set your VCR to the correct time(s), and just set to channel 3 (or whatever). This is supposed to be $39.99, essentially free (I suppose there’s sales tax? Anyone know?)
…and to answer my first question, the RCA DTA800 has component video output as well as cable output. It also has a smart antenna input, which I’d never heard of until now.
A programmable converter box. That is a pretty good idea.
This sounds like it’s shaping up to be a bigger crisis than Y2K ever dreamed of…
Thinking about this some more, my HDTV came with an IR transmitter that would mount right in front of a VCR, and you could program the TV and it would control the VCR somehow. I never set it up, so I don’t know exactly how it works, but maybe the D2A converter works similarly.
The whole category everyone’s been ignoring is portable TVs.
We’ve got a little B&W set in the camper with rabbit ears. I’m assuming it’s only got a year’s life left, or will there be very portable, battery-powered converters that can be clipped to rabbit ears?
Manufacturers are starting to produce handheld LCD TV’s capable of picking up digital broadcasts. Radio Shack has a 7" model for $199.99. The reviews aren’t so good, however. Owners say that reception of digital channels is weak using the built-in antenna. Hopefully, newer models with better reception will come out. I’d stay away from the first generation sets.
As for your existing analog portable, I’d say you’re probably screwed. I doubt there will be any battery powered converters coming out for portable use. But that’s just a WAG, I could be wrong.
We do this with the VCR in the living room, it’s hooked to a digital cable box. There’s also a TV in the dining room with its own digital cable box.
I have a digital converter box. Granted, not all models will work the same way, but here’s how it works for me.
I can output to either component cables or RF – if I use RF I set my TV to Channel 3. If I use the cables, I set my TV to the auxiliary input.
Just like I’d do to play back a VCR.
But I have to use the digital converter box to select my station. And I can only set it for one station at a time – it doesn’t have a programming feature.
This means I can only record to my VCR the station the digital converter box is set to. So taping different channels at different times simply won’t work.
As I said, not all models will work the same way. The most basic converters probably won’t have any programming capability, they’ll just be a tuner and a simple converter. If there are more fully featured models, they’ll probably have some programming feature available.
About 15% of the population relies on OTA television. I’d guess that most of them still have NTSC television receivers.
Laptops are another option. There are HDTV receivers that plug into a USB port; USB digital receivers shouldn’t be far off.