"Richard Crowley" wrote in message
...

"Scott Ehrlich" wrote in message
news:UXkrb.110681$9E1.547817@attbi_s52...

I have two different working cable-ready consumer-grade VCRs I use for
cable (they also act as the cable converter).

If I flip to a channel I shouldn't get, since the tuner cannot lock onto
a clear picture, the VCRs flips to a blue screen. How do I defeat the
blue screen on either VCR? The VCR menus are very basic, and the
external switches are few. I presume there must be a switch, maybe
inside, to permit me to see the scrambled or poor quality picture
instead of the blocking blue screen.

One VCR is a Panasonic, the other is an RCA. I've seen the same effect
from many other VCRs, and some cable-ready TVs, too.

How can the blue screen be defeated without the use of an external cable
box?

It is almost certainly hard-coded into the firmware.
I doubt very much if there is anything you can do to
change that behavior short of re-writing and retro-
loading the microprocessor code.



My (old) Mitsubishi HS-U770 has a switchable video mute as a menu item. Most
VCRs do not.

Bill