pip problems (1 Viewer)

[MikeMcGrew]

Maybe someone can help me.

I am not that experienced with HT but I'm not that new either. I have an old problem that I have never solved. I can not get my picture in picture to work correctly. Sound stupid? I am happy with my digital setup. I have a Sharp 32inch single tuner PIP (1998 model) with digital cable (Time/Warner) and a Pioneer VSX-D508 receiver and a crappy Zenith alegro VCR. My DVD player is a Fisher but there's no problem there. Sorry to be wordy. My cable line comes in from the wall to my cable box. From the cable box out to the VCR. From the VCR out to the TV. All digital functions concerned with the DVD work fine. The problem is that I can not get my picture in picture to change channels from the picture being viewed. I have tried to get my VCR to pick up the cable channels by auto tuning it but it will only pick up the locals and those suck picture wise. I have front a/v inputs as well (on the TV). Does one set of a/v terminals have priority over another set? I seem to remeber running my video ins to the front terminals along time ago and everything working. At one point, before I got my surround receiver hooked up, everything was the way it was supposed to be. Does my receiver take up one of my tuners? What's going on?

 

[Allan Jayne]

Have you tried it this way?
Cable feed from wall to cable box. Cable box output to TV antenna in. Get a rabbit ears antennna and connect that to the VCR antenna in. Connect VCR video out to TV video in (yellow jack) and VCR audio out to TV left channel in (white jack) If VCR is stereo, connect right channel using red jacks. You should now be able to play tapes or receive stations from the rabbit ears on one side of the PIP and tune in cable TV from the other side of the PIP.
One cable box cannot put different channels on both sides of the PIP.
Other video hints:
http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/video.htm

 

[Chuck_C]

I second everying Allan said. Also -Do you need the cable box to get all the channels or just the premium ones? If you can get basic cable out of the wall without going through the box, put in a splitter and run a line to the box (and then to the TV) and the other side of the splitter to the other TV input.

 

[MikeMcGrew]

Thank's for the input guys. I have tried the splitter thing and it does not work even though my TV is cable ready. Really infuriating. I have not heard of the rabbit ears thing though. I didn't know people still used those
The way I understand it is my VCR acts as a tuner, my cable box acts as a tuner and my TV is a tuner. That's three all day and that should be enough to run what I've got right? I will check in to the rabbit ears and let you know (see this thread). Has anyone else had this problem or used this sollution???

 

[VinhT]

TVs with picture-in-picture have dual NTSC tuners, one for the main screen and one for the little box overlay. Since you need a cable box to descramble your cable signal, splitting the signal from the wall jack won't help because the cable-ready television can't interpret it. Furthermore, whatever channel you switch the cable box to is the only one that it can output, meaning only one possible channel feed at any time. The PIP tuner can't extract another channel like it does with regular broadcast television.
I agree with Allan in going with the rabbit ears setup. If you want all of your channels to be available in PIP mode, then the solution is to request an additional cable box from your service provider and route it through your VCR just like the rabbit ears. It's not uncommon for families to have multiple cable boxes for multiple TVs(in your case, your PIP is the additional set ).