I bought a dvd recorder at Target. It was a cheap $89.99 Trutech recorder. I’m not not doing something right because it won’t play dvd’s or record anything. I thought you just plug the line from the tv into the recorder and take the plug from recorder to plug into the tv line? Is it just a switheroo kind of thing because when I did I get a tv signal and clear picture but nothing happens on my recorder? I basically crossed wires. I have the instructions to this thing and I still can’t figure it out. Le sigh. I need a burly handyman to come over and do all my handy things. I need a ceiling fan installed too.
If your TV has a seperate output line then that will work. If it doesn’t then you need to run the cable into the recorder input and the hook recorder output to the tv input. If your tv does have aseperate input and output lines and you are running from the tv output to the recorder in then maybe the recorder is defective.
Good timing - I was just going to start a thread on this.
I just followed the manual and my hookup went fine. But I’m doing it more simply - no cable. Just VCR via RCA jacks and then into the TV.
My problem is it won’t take the disks I got. The manual says DVD-R. So I bought -R disks, avoiding the +R disks that I saw. But the machine won’t take them. Any advice?
If you’re me, you carefully follow the directions, throw a quiet tantrum when it doesn’t work, then get a male relative to do it for you.
So far, I don’t know anyone who has set one up easily. More complicated than a VCR, that’s for sure. I love it though.
I just did this yesterday and the first essential is to RTFI. My shiny new DVD recorder has a co-axial TV input and a co-axial TV output, but the instructions explain that this is just a “pass-through” or whatever the expression is. Basically means you can still use your terrestrial aerial even though you have a DVD recorder in the way. The DVD recorder also has other inputs, including a SCART socket that I’m running from a set-top box (we have a thing called Freeview over here which gives access to a bunch of digital channels, although not the prestigious pay-per-view stuff).
You will hopefully find (as I did) that your DVD recorder has some other outputs, such as a SCART socket, and that your TV is not such an antique as to have only the co-axial (round thing about the size of your little fingertip, with one fat pin in the middle) input. If it does, you need something a little more up to date.
You may have three little sockets colour-coded red, white and yellow, which is another kind of audio-visual (AV) input, and in that case you’re home and dry if your DVD box comes with the same connections. Mine, which is not at all top of the range (£79.99 from my local supermarket) has SCART and about three other kinds of output, one of which boasts six-channel Dolby sound (left, centre, right, left-surround, right-surround and subwoofer) which I won’t be using anytime soon.
Hope this helps!
Questions with factual answers belong in General Questions.
I’ll move this for you.
Cajun Man
for the SDMB