On Sat, 25 Dec 2010 17:54:48 -0800 (PST), aemeijers
wrote:

Subject says it all, almost. My 85YO half-blind father wants to
upgrade his bedroom TV, which he uses several hours per day. But it
need to have inputs for his old composite-feed VCR, DVD, and Dish
box.

I still get component and composite mixed up, even though I have one
and not the other. The mnemomic I made up and was using turned out to
be wrong.

DTV from antenna won't play nice being fed through old SD dish
box, so I want the reserve the F connector for the roof antenna. (no
dish locals around here). I'd strongly prefer for him to not have to
do any voodoo of switching stuff on and off in a certain order, so

That's enough to drive anyone crazy. Although they do have remote
controls that can learn macros, and do several things in a row iiuc
from one button.

I'd rather not use the dish RF output anyway- just hit the source
button to switch back and forth. I'd rather not use a mechanical
switch box, but that is the fallback, since he has to stand in front
of the stack to put in a tape or DVD anyway.

There are two but only two remote controlled A-B switches that I could
find. One is at Radio Shack and has a remote and also an A-B button on
top. The other was on the net, had no button on top, but they sold an
additional remote for it separately.

He won't let me just
replace it all with modern stuff that uses HDMI cables- the old stuff
still works.

Absolutely. The old stuff still works. You're lucky he's willing to
get a bigger tv!

You can also try sci.electronics.repair. Many of the technical
electronics answers are way above my head, and a couple don't like
non-repair questions or simple questions, but others are quite
helpful. For one thing I'm thinking there might be a box which would
take some of your inputs and do the switching necessary, like an A-B
switch but more powerful. I don't know how the prices of these boxes
compare with the price of a fancier tv.

When I was in my 20's I had (sound only) a reel-to-reel, a cassette,
and something else all going into one set of RCA inputs of a simple
but nice AM-FM stereo radio, via 3-input selection switches, one for
the left channel and one for the right. I didn't know there were
such switches until I saw them at a surplus store, and they were
cheap, but later I realized they were soldered/assembled wrong and the
switches didn't point to the device selected, which is why they were
surplus and why they were cheap. I still have them.

This was in the living room of the fifth-floor apartment, and I ran
wires out the window to speakers in the kitchen, and also my bedroom,
where I had an outboard amplifier, assembled on a scrap piece of metal
2x4 from an old kit someone gave me, and from there to the bathroom,
where I had a volume control glued to the toilet, and also reachable
from the bathtub. And a 10 or 12" woofer and tweeter from a 1930's
record player in the corner between the wall and ceiling of the
bathroom. Great sound. The speakers got moved to my house now.
They're about 75 years old and sound very good.

The grill cloth (decorative burlap actually) is water-stained from the
steam we talked about in another thread. I will replace the grill
cloth eventually but connnecting the speaker wires, then nailing the
molding up there while holding the speakers up with the other hand,
with a ladder too nearly vertical because it was in the bathtub was
hard enough 27 years ago