We went out and bought a dvd player with surround sound speakers, came home to hook it up, and lo and behold, our 26" screen tv has only a coaxial jack on the back - no video/audio input/output jacks. Not to be completely daunted by this, I decided to post the question here and see if some of the electronic gurus of this board might have an idea how to plug our dvd player and vcr into this tv. Oh yeah, we have cable coming from the wall to the entertainment centre as well. This used to go to the vcr then from vcr to tv.
Anybody have any thoughts other than “Time to get a new tv” (cause we’ve already had that thought)?
What DVD player? I’ve never heard of one with built-in speakers, or that is sold with external speakers. Was this a single item, or did you buy a DVD player AND a stereo surround system as two separate items?
Reeder is right. If you have an “Antenna Out” on your DVD player (highly unlikely) and run that into your antenna input. Otherwise you need a little converter box to take the “Video Out” signal from your DVD and convert it to RF (radio frequency) for your TV’s antenna input.
This conversion degrades the picture. If you can afford it, buy a TV with audio/video inputs or, if your DVD player has “component” outputs, get a TV with corresponding inputs.
Most DVD players have RCA jacks on them (the little red, yellow, and white-colored jacks). Most VCRs do as well. Run all three wires from the DVD to the line-in RCA on your VCR.
If your VCR only has two jacks, plug the yellow one into the yellow jack and the red or white wire into its corresponding jack. Just leave the other wire dangling. It’s only neccessary to plug in the red/white jacks if you want to hear the audio on your TV speakers in addition to your surround.
Now toss a movie in your DVD player, turn it on, and turn your VCR on. Scroll through the TV channels on the VCR until you get to the end, at which point you’ll see something like “L1” or “Line-In” in place of the channel number. Your DVD picture should show up.
For the surround sound, connect a coax (or optical, depending on your DVD player and receiver’s capabilities) wire from the jack on the DVD player to the corresponding jack on your receiver.
Neutron star, that won’t work. DVD disks are encoded with Macrovision, which screws up (intentionally) the video coming through the vcr.
featherlou: You need to get an RF Modulator. They have them at Radio Shack for about $40, The Wiz for about $30, and Wal-Mart for about $20. They have a set of RCA inputs, and an RF Coax output.
Or if you’re in Jersey or NYC Metro, I have two extra that I don’t use. I’ll sell you one for cheap.
Funny, it works just fine on my DVD player and has been working for quite some time. I’ve applied no Macrovision hacks, BIOS flashes, or anything else fancy to my DVD player. All the circuitry is in the same order it’s in when it came out of the box.
FTR, my DVD player is a Mintek 2110 bought for $90 at Circuit City and my VCR is a $75 Phillips from Wal-Mart.
(And if anyone is wondering, no, I wouldn’t recommend my DVD player to others due to its lousy SVCD support.)
I just tried to record a few seconds of a DVD onto a VHS tape as a test. It worked fine.
However, I’ve noticed in the past that when I connect the RCA-out jacks from my VCR to my computer’s TV card, all I get is a blue screen in place of the DVD video.
Hmmm. I don’t know what’s going on here.
WAG : A lot of people have TVs with only a coax input and a lot of these TVs are still being sold. My 25" TV only has coax and I just bought it a year ago. Last time I was at Wal-Mart, they still had that same model in stock.
Perhaps enough people got pissed off enough that they had to buy a $20-40 gadget just to hook up their DVD players that VCR manufacturers started employing mechanisms to defeat this feature. Both my DVD player and VCR were purchased within the past year. Unfortunately, this still wouldn’t explain why I get the blue screen trying to view it on my computer.
I’m stumped.
My advice to the OP would be to at least try this method before you go purchase something. Worst case scenario - you waste five minutes of your life.
Well, I’ve rented plenty of DVDs and they all work.
Also, what do you mean “takes longer than that?” How long does it take? At what point is the picture obscured and in what way?
Furthurmore, if my VCR is immune to macrovision, why do I get the blue screen when trying to view DVD video on my TV card via the VCR’s Line Out? I can view myself playing video games that are connected to the VCR’s Line In jacks on my computer monitor, and I can also view VHS tapes on my computer when its hooked up to the VCR.
Okay, looks like Reeder was right on the money. We went to an electronics store, bought an RF converter, came home, plugged everything in, and dvd, vcr, and tv all work fine now. Apparently this is not a new problem in the home entertainment world. Thanks for your input, peeps.
Video cards are also affected by Macrovision. It appears that you’re one of the few lucky individuals with a Macrovision-free VCR. How old is it? Recent vcrs are required to support Macrovision but many older machines don’t.
Umm, I do. In fact, I still buy and sell them. Sold a Sony mono on eBay a couple months ago for $100. Bought 2 since then including [drumroll]a stereo hifi SuperBeta[/drumroll] in pristine operating condition for $20 at a Goodwill store last Friday. So look for my Toshiba stereo hifi on eBay soon. Keeping my SLHF-300s even though those are going for $250 on eBay. (There was also an old Toshiba mono at the Goodwill for $7.50 but I passed.) I bought a bunch of new tapes cheap when Incredible Universe folded so I’m set for a long time.
A Person could in principle then rent and record DVDs to SuperBeta nicely, but a) I don’t rent* and b) such practices might be frowned upon.
(I don’t feel any need to link to last week’s story about Sony stopping production of Betas. They pretty much were out of the Beta business a decade ago.)
Remember, they stopped making Catalan radios 40 years ago, but they are worth thousands today. Your junk is my treasure (VHS VCRs excluded).
*You can probably guess where that attitude came from.
Umm, I do. In fact, I still buy and sell them. Sold a Sony mono on eBay a couple months ago for $100. Bought 2 since then including [drumroll]a stereo hifi SuperBeta[/drumroll] in pristine operating condition for $20 at a Goodwill store last Friday. So look for my Toshiba stereo hifi on eBay soon. Keeping my SLHF-300s even though those are going for $250 on eBay. (There was also an old Toshiba mono at the Goodwill for $7.50 but I passed.) I bought a bunch of new tapes cheap when Incredible Universe folded so I’m set for a long time.
A Person could in principle then rent and record DVDs to SuperBeta nicely, but a) I don’t rent* and b) such practices might be frowned upon.
(I don’t feel any need to link to last week’s story about Sony stopping production of Betas. They pretty much were out of the Beta business a decade ago.)
Remember, they stopped making Catalan radios 40 years ago, but they are worth thousands today. Your junk is my treasure (VHS VCRs excluded).
*You can probably guess where that attitude came from.
Umm, I do. In fact, I still buy and sell them. Sold a Sony mono on eBay a couple months ago for $100. Bought 2 since then including [drumroll]a stereo hifi SuperBeta[/drumroll] in pristine operating condition for $20 at a Goodwill store last Friday. So look for my Toshiba stereo hifi on eBay soon. Keeping my SLHF-300s even though those are going for $250 on eBay. (There was also an old Toshiba mono at the Goodwill for $7.50 but I passed.) I bought a bunch of new tapes cheap when Incredible Universe folded so I’m set for a long time.
A Person could in principle then rent and record DVDs to SuperBeta nicely, but a) I don’t rent* and b) such practices might be frowned upon.
(I don’t feel any need to link to last week’s story about Sony stopping production of Betas. They pretty much were out of the Beta business a decade ago.)
Remember, they stopped making Catalan radios 40 years ago, but they are worth thousands today. Your junk is my treasure (VHS VCRs excluded).
*You can probably guess where that attitude came from.
Umm, I do. In fact, I still buy and sell them. Sold a Sony mono on eBay a couple months ago for $100. Bought 2 since then including [drumroll]a stereo hifi SuperBeta[/drumroll] in pristine operating condition for $20 at a Goodwill store last Friday. So look for my Toshiba stereo hifi on eBay soon. Keeping my SLHF-300s even though those are going for $250 on eBay. (There was also an old Toshiba mono at the Goodwill for $7.50 but I passed.) I bought a bunch of new tapes cheap when Incredible Universe folded so I’m set for a long time.
A Person could in principle then rent and record DVDs to SuperBeta nicely, but a) I don’t rent* and b) such practices might be frowned upon.
(I don’t feel any need to link to last week’s story about Sony stopping production of Betas. They pretty much were out of the Beta business a decade ago.)
Remember, they stopped making Catalan radios 40 years ago, but they are worth thousands today. Your junk is my treasure (VHS VCRs excluded).
*You can probably guess where that attitude came from.
