I am in the market for a DVD player. I am NOT interested in copying DVD’s to tape. But I have heard that you can’t hook up a DVD player in series with a VCR. In other words, I can’t run my satellite/cable line into the dvd, then to the vcr and then to the T.V. The guy with “all the answers” (Radio Shack) said I had to buy an A/B box. I wonder if he was stupid or if he was trying to sell me something I don’t need. I am not about to reach behind the entertainment center and switch connections every time I want to watch a tape or a DVD. So, were they telling me the truth? If they were, I’ll forget the DVD for awile, since it would be a waste of my money, considering my entertainment center weighs about a thousand tons. 
It depends on your TV and DVD.
My TV set has 3 video inputs, so even with the VCR and the DVD hooked up I have an extra input available. No jokes about “3 Inputs”, please. :rolleyes:
It sounds like you’re planning on using regular TV cable to hook everything up though. My DVD player doesn’t even have a cable output. It’s all RCA jacks.
Check your TV for video (yellow RCA jacks) inputs and go from there.
Ummm…DVD players don’t have “in” ports, so the kind of connection you’re talking about won’t work anyway. Remember, DVD players can’t record, so there’s no reason for them to accept any kind of input. In my experience, few if any DVD players have RF outputs of the kind you see on TVs and VCRs.
You have a few options. Hopefully, your TV has inputs on the back for RCA cables (video, audio L, audio R) or S-video or composite video; that’s the cleanest way to do business, you’ll just plug the DVD straight into the TV and set the TV to VIDEO (or VIDEO 1 or whatever) when you wanna watch a DVD. If your TV is pretty old, you’ll have to do one of two things: one, get a converter to adapt the DVD player’s RCA output to an RF cable, and I have no idea what that costs. Two, run the RCA through the “line in” ports on your VCR, but that’s a VERY bad way to hook it up, because many DVDs are protected with Macrovision, and the video signal you get by going through the VCR will be, shall we say, unsatisfactory.
If your TV is so old that it doesn’t have video-in plugs, it might be time to consider getting a new TV anyway.
Do DVD players have an amp in them? I ask because I tried to hook my VCR up directly to the tv with RCA wires and I had to turn the TV up all the way just to hear it. But with coax cable, it works fine. It is a stereo TV but I like to run the sound through my stereo system so I can “rattle the windows” so to speak.
There are, from what I have heard, encryptions on DVD’s and new VCR’s won’t copy a clear signal directly from a DVD. I have both a DVD and VCR, but I have never tried to make copies. Also, many DVD’s have S-Video jacks which are a little better than using RCA jacks. Of course if your TV doesn’t have the S-Video input the point is moot.
Max is right on. Let me just add an approximate cost for the ‘RF Modulator’ - $30. You can find one at Radio Shack.
The idea is, as Max said, that VCRs get confused by the line-in from a DVD that is copy-protected, so when you use your VCR to take the line-in signal and then watch on your TV you get weird dark-light cycling of the picture. It is almost OK in either dark or light mode, but the cycling drives me nuts.
Anyway, the specific RF modulator I have (the radio shack one) will take one RCA video in (with mono-sound) and one cable F-connector in, and outputs on cable F-connector the appropriate signal. You hook the DVD to the RCA jack on the box, the VCR to the cable hookup on the box, and then the cable on the box to the TV. When the DVD player is off, the box routes the cable in from the VCR straight to the TV. WHen the DVD player is on, it overrides the VCR signal and puts it through on channel 3 to the TV. Thus, you don’t have to switch anything - just turn the DVD player on or off.
For me, I hate mono, so I route the audio out of my DVD into the VCR, which then goes into my stereo. You could just go direct to the stereo, but I don’t have enough inputs. So, my final set up is:
- DVD player on
- VCR on, set to Line-1 input for stereo sound.
- TV on, set to channel 3; receiving video from RF box.
- Stereo on, set to tape-monitor to listen to the output from the VCR.
I get no audio on the TV, but I don’t care because it comes out of the stereo.
When watcing VHS tapes or cable, just turn off the DVD player and it’s the same thing as if you didn’t have the DVD player.
That link to the radio shack page is broken, cuz they suck. Just go to http://www.radioshack.com and search for 15-1244 - that is the catalog number of the item.
So to answer the original question in a way I can understand, you can have both a VCR and DVD player on the same TV. As long as the TV has the appropriate 3 jacks to handle the 3 from the DVD player. The coaxial cable connection that the VCR uses isn’t necessary because there is no input.
DVD players almost always ONLY have A/V out. Won’t fit your tv if it only has RF connector.
Most VCRs these days have two A/V inputs, one in front, one in back. You can plug your DVD player in one of those but if it trips the Macrovision copyprotection your only resort is a Macrovision stripper box.
Course, you can get an A/V TV for more $$ or an RF DVD player (I haven’t seen one). IM pretty sure that one of the APEX DVD players was immune to the Macrovision thing as there was some discussion about that.
Oblong, to put it simply: Yes, if your TV has an extra set of RCA plugs going in the back, then you’re good. Otherwise, you may need to do some fiddling.
If there aren’t extra RCA plugs, then you basically have two choices: get a new TV that has enough inputs, or convert the signal coming out of the DVD player to something you can connect to the coax input on the TV (or VCR). This device is called an “RF Modulator”, as pointed out before.
What’s a modulator?
What it does is take the output of the DVD player and stick it on a particular channel of your choosing. So you connect this thing to the coax input on the TV (or VCR), pick a channel you want it on, and when you tune the TV to that channel, you see your DVD. Of course, in order to hook this to the TV (or VCR), you had to unhook the cable, meaning that you can’t see your real TV channels now. So what you do is get an RF Two-way splitter, like you’d normally use to split the cable TV to two different TV’s, and you use it backwards to combine the signal from the modulator with the signal from the wall. This means that the channel number you choose on the modulator must be a channel which is unused on your cable system, otherwise you’ll combine them together and get garbage. A cheap modulator will generally let you choose channel 3 or 4, and a more expensive one will let you pick whatever channel you want.
This is mostly a rehash of what other people have said. The real reason I wanted to add my two cents to this thread is to point out that there are multi-input modulators, so you can easily hook up 3 different things (like a video camera / dvd player / playstation), and just have them show up as 3 different channels on your TV (see http://www.hometech.com/video/mod.html#MM73 for a couple examples). Of course, at 200 bucks, it might be cheaper to get a new TV…
Just to clarify, the modulator I mentioned has two inputs - one RCA input, and one R/F input. When the RCA input is active, the modulator overrides the cable signal. When the RCA input is not active, the modulator passes the R/F straight through to the TV. This means if you turn the DVD player off you have no problems watching TV.
Of course if you have more devices you may need galt’s device, but mine costs $30. If it had been $200, helloooo new TV. 
How about from lik-sang.com
AV Selector
box to connect various AV components and switch
between them.
US $6.90
An AV selector presumes the TV has composite video inputs at all. Some TV’s don’t. However, if yours does, an AV selector is a good, cheap alternative. One downside is that you can’t switch it automatically (with the remote control) unless you get a real expensive one.
Hmm… that’s exactly the way my DVD is hooked up. I’ve never noticed a problem with my picture. It’s a DVD-ROM drive, though, so I wonder if that makes any difference. Or perhaps I have no copy-protected movies… would that be strange?
“run the RCA through the “line in” ports on your VCR, but that’s a VERY bad
way to hook it up, because many DVDs are protected with Macrovision, and the
video signal you get by going through the VCR will be, shall we say, unsatisfactory.”
Im going to do that with my PSX2 if I ever get it. It should be alright. If Macrovision kicks in, it may be the vcr or youre running it thru too many boxes.
cheezit, I have my DVD output running through my line-in on my VCR (Toshiba Hi-Fi) with no ill effects, I am pretty picky about my picture and I have not noticed any cycling. Perhaps this varies from VCR to VCR. I think you should seek a specific answer in regards to the hardware you have, like through the maufacturer.
Just a quick suggestion, but if your TV takes S-video input, then you should use it, a DVD really doesn’t give you a whole lot over VHS if you don’t, your satellite probably has S-video out too.
Also some higher end VCRs d filter out the copy protection for playthrough without needing a stand alone stripper first, and only let it effect the copying.