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mm

On Fri, 26 Mar 2010 10:07:29 -0400, (MICHELLE H.)
wrote:

Hello,

This is not really a "repair" question, but I am still looking for some
info. please. Comcast Cable is doing some kind of switchover to mostly
all digital channels on April 15th of this year, I believe it is. They
say that channels 23-69 are all going to be in digital, and the only way
you can view them is if you have either #1 a "Digital Converter Box", OR
#2 a "DTA Box, both if which you get from Comcast.

If you don't use one of those 2 boxes, then you won't be able to view
channels 23-69 after April 15th, 2010. Anyway my question is, in the
living room where we have our TV and the Comcast "Digital Converter
Box", we have the A/B Switch hooked up to the VCR, so that we can record
one show on the VCR while watching another show on the "Digital
Converter Box". But now when they do the switch over, the VCR will no
longer get channels 23-69.

I know that you can hook up the "RCA Plugs" to the "Digital Converter
Box" and plug them into the VCR, but the problem with that is you HAVE
to watch whatever your taping. So what happens if you want to tape
something on your VCR, and watch a different channel with the Converter
Box??

According to Comcast, the analog VCR will no longer be able to get
channels 23-69. So basically they are forcing you to USE either the
"Digital Converter Box" or "DTA Box" at all times.

I'm pretty sure you can use any digital converter box. You don't have
to use theirs. You have one already iirc, and you can use the one
you have and a second one in parallel.

Pal Plus by Dish Network sold and may still sell a digital conversion
box that could be programmed like a VCR to change stations at
scheduled times, so you can match up the stations on that with the
times your vcr goes on, and tape either off the air, or off the
digital cable signal (which as far as I know are the same format). The
input on your VCR would be channel 3 or 4, whichever you set as the
output for the digital conversion box.

This was a rather expensive box, selling for 30 dollars above the 40
dollar coupon, but maybe prices have gone down, now that the rush to
buy the boxes was over shortly after the over the air digital
conversion last June.

OTOH, I thought I would be seeing people giving away DCBoxes as more
people bought digital tv's since last June, like on the freecycle list
I read, or selling them cheap at hamfests, and I haven't seen any.
They're probably cheaper but I don't think they are free yet.

They say that you CAN'T use both boxes together, it's either one or the
other.

They probably can't explain things very well, maybe don't even
understand your question. You can't use them in sequence, but you can
use them in parallel, I'm sure. I'm confused what you have now, but
in additoin, You can get a splitter and split the signal out of your
cable box, sending one signal to the tv and one to the vcr. Then you
can choose with the A/B switch, the output of the VCR or the cable to
decide which goes into the tv, like you're doing now.

BTW, there are remote controlled A/B switches, though I only found two
models. One was from Radio Shack, and it has a non-remote switch
also, useful when you are standing at the tv. I found something
strange about Radio Shack, which usually has one of the best webpages
out there. Online it said they were out of stock on the Remote A/B
Swtich and they offered to email me when they had mroe. They did, and
I went to the store and in the course of conversation found out they
had never been out of them. That's really strange because in other
cases, they would let me pick a store and find out how many each store
had of something, including zero.

So what happens if I want to tape something on say channel 49 at
8:00 pm, and watch something on channel 31 at 8:00 pm as well? Channel
49 won't come in on the VCR and only on the "Converter Box", so I can't
tape one thing and watch another.

Does anyone know if there is a way around this? Is there a VCR with a
digital scrambler in it to pick up the digital channels, so that I can
continue to tape one show while watching another?

There is a philips 3576H DVDR that has good thigns and bad things. I
think I paid 200 dollars (no rental) but that was on a big discount of
50 or 80 dollars. OTOH, they might have such sales often. Other than
mail order, I coudl only find it at Sam's Club and they had an offer
in the paper, free membership for one day. Although won't most of
those places let you belong free for one day if they don't remember
you doing that over and over? The H means it has a hard drive that
holds at low def (which is fine unless you have a really big tv) 200
or 300 hours of tv. And you can also record to DVD, or copy from
either to the other. I've made two dvd's but basically I only use the
harddrive.

It does a lot of other things like allowing editing of the show, to
remove commercials for example, but I don't do any of those things.
And it has a digital tuner (and analog, but that won't work anymore)

But it has logic weaknesses. At the end of recording somehing, it
turns off unless you stop it, even if it was on before it started
recordign. It doesn't allow you to play one recording after another
autmoatically, which is no big deal if your in the same room or the
same floor, but I'd like to be in the basement and have the thing play
one after anohter. They could update the firmware but it's been 3
years and htey haven't.

And on the recorded version, it gives the channel and the time, but
not the name of the program, which I think they could have done if
they'd tried.

These are not big things, but it would be nice if they woudl fix them.

Any info. would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!