harryhomer wrote:
On Sep 6, 9:32 am, spamme0 wrote:
William Sommerwerck wrote:
I don't understand how a VHS recorder can NOT have an RF/cable input, unless
it were designed solely for VHS to DVD dubs.
Take it back, and find one that does.
I went thru the same thing. Sometime back, in preparation for the grand
debacle that is the US DTV transition, there became a rule
for any VCR sold in the USA. If it had an RF tuner, it had to have
an ATSC tuner. DTV is a poor match for VHS, so format conversion is
necessary. Early on, there wasn't any HDTV to watch, so people
wouldn't pay the BIG cost increase for something that couldn't
record what was available, so VCR's became tunerless.
If it has an RF connector on the back, it's likely a passthru only.

What is posted above is what I have run into. All new VCR's, etc. are
sold without RF Modulators because of HDTV. I am trying to figure out
some way to make this work and the only thing I can think of is what I
posted above with hooking the old VCR to the new but running the risk
of screwing up the video because it is going through 2 devices.

DTV converter box works just fine. Problem is that you get only one
channel.
There are a few older cable boxes that have unlocked ATSC tuners and
built-in timers.
You have to set the channel timers on the cable box and again on the
VCR. Picture is no worse than from a NTSC tuner.

Another option is to get a VCR with two AV inputs and an NTSC RF input.
Put a converter box on each one.
I have two dual-AV Vcr's , one single-AV VCR and four DTV converter
boxes and three cable boxes. Doesn't completely
solve the problem, but goes a long way. I'm afraid to ask how much of
my electric bill is due to all that crap.

A better solution would be a DVD recorder with ATSC tuner.
I tried a couple of older DVDRW recorders with NTSC tuners
and a DTV box.
I NEVER got a complete recording. The recording process
is so fragile that it can't recover from an error.
A plane passing overhead that disrupted the signal for an instant
caused the process to crash.
It should just give up and keep going. All the ones I tried
crashed and aborted the recording. Ditto for any kind of DVD
write issue. USELESS.