On Tuesday, August 20, 2013 3:48:07 PM UTC-4, novel wrote:
No HD cable box uses a coax connection from the cable box to the TV. It's either HDMI or component video



My Samsung cable box has one coax output that says "out to TV"and i have that connected to my rf of the vcr and able to record cable digital channel...but the consensus here seems to be that i need a converter box, cause my old VCR is not digital.. ..so why would i need a converter box?

The RF Coax out from that cable box is not HD. It's a standard definition
signal that the box has for flexibility so you can use it with an old
analog TV. The post I made the comment about no HD cable box using a coax connection to the TV was where the poster said to use a coax connection
from the cable box to your 55" LCD. That makes no sense because to get HD
it's either HDMI or component video. You said elsewhere that you are using
component video.

As to why you need the converter box, you need it because you said you
want to receive CBS over the air. That is because Cablevision is having
some spat with CBS and it's gone, probably temporarily, right? All broadcast
signals today are digital, ATSC. That VCR has an NTSC tuner for a signal
in a freq band and transmission format that no longer exists, the transmitters were turned off maybe 8 years ago? The converter takes the digital ATSC signal from the antenna, tunes it in, takes that digital channel that you've tuned in and puts it out in NTSC on an RF output which the tuner in the VCR then receives.