I happened to mention to a friend that I don’t have one of those machines that plays those new BVDs, or whatever they are. So she sent me a Sylvania DVL700F DVD/CD player, which was awfully nice of her.
Problem is, I don’t seem to be able to hook it up to my 1993 Sony Trinitron TV (which already has a Optimus VCR attached to it). The instruction book says to attach the twin (red and white) audio cables to the DVD player and to the “left and right audio in” jacks on my TV. My TV does not have “left and right audio in” jacks. It does have a (yellow) “video in” jack, to which I can attach the yellow cable to my TV and DVD player (I tried hooking it all up to the VCR–doesn’t work that way).
Instruction booklet says if I am working from one of these old Edison wind-up TVs, I can buy a Stereo Audio/Video RF modulator and hook it to the “antenna in” jack on the back of my set. There ain’t no “antenna in” jack on the back of my set, just the VHF/UHF jack the cable is connected to.
My friend was very nice indeed to send me this, but now do I have to buy a new TV?
Heya. Your best bet is probably to spend twenty bucks or so on an RF modulator. You can get one at Radio Shack/Best Buy/Future Shop/etc.
If you don’t want to spend any money, you should be able to locate at least one “audio in” rca jack on your TV, if it has a “video in” (I’ve never heard of one without the tuther on an actual TV set. Little monitors, sometimes, back in the day, but never a TV.) Using a stereo device with a mono input has drawbacks, though. (Unless one of your audio outs on the DVD player is labeled “mono”, in which case you can just use that one jack) Otherwise, you’ll either be listening to only one channel, which may make it hard to hear some dialogue or effects if they’re panned into the other channel, or, if you use a splitter like some folks do, you’ll get phase cancellation as the two signals interfere with each other. Ick.
The back of my TV reveals (in addition to an impressive accumulation of dust and cat fur):
A VHF/UHF jack, which the VCR is attached to.
The electrical plug that goes into the wall outlet.
“Video 1 in” jacks (yellow) labeled “audio” and “video.”
And that’s it. If I buy an RF modulator, where on the TVwould I attach it? Is the “adapter” Tuckerfan suggests the same thing, or something else entirely, made for too-old TVs?
The adapter I’m talking about is the RF modulator (couldn’t remember what it was called) and it hooks up just like Mr. Blue Sky says. One problem you might have, that my brother has with his, considerably older, TV is that DVDs look like the film was over exposed because of the way the RF modulator converts the signal. You can adjust that by turning down the brightness on your TV, but you’ll have to turn it back up again when you switch back to the VCR/antenna/cable.
Still, Eve, once you start watching movies on DVD, you’ll love it. In many cases the prints are better than anything you could find on VHS, and the extras, like closed captioning, deleted scenes, documentaries, etc. in some cases are more entertaining than the films!
I assume that Tuckerfan had an RF modulator in mind.
The RCA cables go from the DVD player to the RF modulator.
The coaxial cable goes from the cable outlet (or antenna) to the VCR, out from the VCR and into the RF modulator, and out from the RF modulator and into the TV.
The Y-splitter that Mr. Blue Sky suggests may work fine, depending on the DVD player and cables you use with it. Frequently using this method will result in “flat” or otherwise distorted sound due to phase cancellation. This is most commonly a problem if you’re playing a mono source on a stereo player connected through a Y-splitter to a mono monitor. Knowing Eve’s admirable taste in films, I would hesitate to suggest trying this, since it’s a safe bet she’ll be playing a lot of mono DVDs on that little box.
previews Forgive me for not taking out the redundant info.
Why not run the DVD player through the VCR? If the VCR isn’t too old, it’ll have those yellow white & red input jacks that you can use to connect the VCR to it. Then there’s no need to purchase anything extra, like an RF modulator.
Because the DVD player probably has copy-protection circuitry that will distort the video signal. It will look like periodic brightening and darkening of the image, and shifting of the colors.
The only problems would be that the VCR has to be on (and set to the Video In setting) and you’d get the Macrovision light/dark cycling (that get’s really annoying after a while).
Hmmm, not for me it doesn’t. I sometimes have my DVD player hooked up to the VCR, and other times directly to the TV, and the picture looks the same both ways: no distortion or shifting or anything. The copy-protection only shows up if you’re trying to record.
There’s another angle, folks. Depending on where your stereo lives (preferably in the same room as the tv), you ignore the tv, and send the audio from the DVD player (and your stereo VCR) to an auxiliary input on your receiver/amplifier. Mute the tiny tv speakers and enjoy the audio through your stereo system. It sounds pretty good for non-theater surround sound here-my receiver is a 4 channel quadrophonic Lafayette older than many people on this board.
Looks like you do have an “audio in” socket, even if it isn’t colour-coded normally! I’m presuming your jacks are standard RCA coaxial jacks. Try hooking either the red or the white RCA lead to the “audio” socket, even if it’s yellow.
Assuming you get sound out, Mr. Blue Sky has recommended using the left channel for reasons that aren’t clear to me but I’ll defer to him, and has also given a link for a stereo-to-mono adapter.
As danceswithcats has stated, you could output the sound through a stereo. You can also run the sound directly to powered speakers - do you have an old set of PC speakers sitting around? Finding a stereo-RCA-to-female jackplug adapter for speakers would be a pain, but they do exist.
Tried that, and it didn’t work at all. Of course, I may have plugged the wrong thing into another wrong thing (I am not exactly Thomas Edison).
Nope—stereo’s in the kitchen, as I live in a very old building with only 2 electrical outlets in the living-room, both of them already dangerously overloaded.
So—shall I buy one of these RF modulators? if so, what on the TV do I plug it into? The VCR is already plugged into the VHF/UHF jack. Do I have to disconnect the VCR when I want to use the DVD player? I guess that’s doable.
