Old Toshiba TV...can't get cable to work (1 Viewer)

[Chuck Mullen]

Here we go.
My wife brings home this TV that her Grandmother gave her and I'm trying to hook up cable to it. It is definitely not cable-ready. I have a F-connector to spade clip converter and an analog cable box, should be good to go right?
Nope.
This TV has two tuner buttons on the front that work like an FM radio tuner. You press and hold the button and the set slowly changes channels up the dial. The problem is there is no indication what channel you are on unless you can tell what from show is on. I have tried holding these buttons till my finger bled but I can't find the cable signal.
B.T.W. there is no channel 3-4 switch on the cable box like on a VCR.
Any ideas?

 

[Mark:F]

Longshot....had a 20 year old Toshiba, cable ready...lost the remote...found a place online that had remotes for most tvs...had mine for $10...is your tv perhaps remote capable? If so, you might be able to get things going with one of those remotes as I did....good luck.

 

[Jerome Grate]

If you can get a remote for that t.v. get it as it also sounds like to me that you need to set the t.v. to channel 3. I would first try to hook up the cable directly to the t.v. and see what you get. It should lock into a channel that has information (including 3 or 4). Once that's been set, disconnect the cable then hook up the box and see if you can hold the channels from the box.

 

[Allan Jayne]

If you connect non-digital cable TV feed to a non-cable ready TV with no box in between, you will probably get channels 2 through 13 only. The other cable channels do not correspond in frequency to the channels 14 through 83 on a standard TV. (Not so old non-cable ready TV's don't go above channel 69.)

An old cable box might not work with a newer cable TV system, but you should get at least a few (the unscrambled ones that are analog) channels between 2 and 13 on the cable system. They should all come through the TV on channel 3 or 4 but we have heard of rare instances where the cable box delivered them all on a different channel. In the latter case it is trial and error if you don't have a manual.

Try the cable box using a different TV, also, to help find out what channel the box outputs on.

Video hints:
http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/video.htm