How do you hook up Digital Cable with a VCR? (1 Viewer)

[Peter Mazur]

This might not be the right section to ask this question but here goes. How do you hook up a AT&T digital cable box so you can record something while watching something else. We just moved and our VCR was packed up. The last place we lived the guy set it up so we could do it. Now I can't figure it out. We have the cable wire from the wall into the cable converter box. A cable from the box to the VCR, and a wire from there to the TV. I can only record the channel I am watching right now. It is driving me crazy trying to figure out how he had it. Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

In order to watch one show and tape another you have to have two digital cable boxes.

However, with most digital cable service the standard service is also on-line. So you could watch a show from the cable box and record a basic program at the same time. You could do this by using a splitter, and send one side to the cable box, and one side to the VCR.

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

 

[MikeMcGrew]

Ok, I'll give this one a shot. It sounds like your hookups are fine if you are not using any type of receiver. The adjustment you need to make is on the VCR itself. Your TV and your VCR each have a tuner. The tuner is what gets your channels for you (to put it as simply as I can). Go into the VCR setup menu and if it has some sort of "Source" option, choose that. It will say something like TV, CATV and Aux. Select the CATV option. Next, most VCR's have an auto select/setup feature to select the channels for the VCR's tuner. Find "Auto Setup/Auto Program" on the setup menu. When you find it, select it and start it (usually by pressing enter or whatever your remote calls for). You should get a "searching" message or something like that. That means that your VCR is loading the channels into it's memory and this will take a few minutes. Let the VCR finish doing this. Once it is done, you should have two fully functional tuners and you can switch them using your TV's "inputs". Make sure you set your TV's inputs (ie. Input 1, Input 2 etc) correctly. You should be able to select which input you want your VCR to be viewed on. Also, keep in mind, most VCR's will not pick up channels in the 100+ range so if your cable company has your pay channels set up on like channel 201 or 202 , then you most likely will not be able to view these, or record these through your VCR's tuner. I'm sure there are sollutions to this, I have just never cared enough to pursue them! Good Luck,
Mike M.

 

[MikeMcGrew]

Ok, sorry. Not "fully functional tuners" You can view the higher numbered channels on the TV tuner but you can not view or tape the higher numbered channels at all with the VCR's tuner.

 

[JeremyFr]

ok heres how you do it, you have to have the VCR hooked up before the cable box on the coax, you'll only be able to record up to channel 100 as the rest are digital channels and the VCR obviously cant decode them. if you want to record a digital channel and watch another digital channel you'd need 2 boxes. otherwise you just need to hook the VCR up before the box thats all.