connectivity of TV, DVD, SAT & VCR

[Debbie-s]

Please Help

How Do I Connect The Following

Tv - 2 Scarts
Dvd - 2 Scarts
Sat - 2 Scarts
Vcr - 2 Scarts

I Have Tried Several Different Ways But Cant Seem To Get The Dvd To Work. I Need It To Be Able To Record As Well As Play, But Can Only Get Sound, No Picture.

Any Help Greatly Appreciated...........

[nwg]

Try this.

Plug the DVD out into scart 1 of the TV and set the DVD to RGB. If you get no picture but sound then turn off RGB.

Plug the SAT into the scart in of the VCR (so you can record). Then into the second scart of the TV.

You then watch scart 1 input for DVD and scart 2 input of the TV for recording/playback. You should be able to record and watch a DVD at the same time.

[shulthise]

debbie,

If you're talking about recording from both Sat AND DVD, than you should know that most DVD player/media incorporate protection that does not allow you to record movies you play on your DVD to VCR. (This protection was recently ruled out as illegal protection in France, BTW, but will take time until it will propagate throughout Europe)

Even if your DVD does not incorporate such protection, you still have to get a switching mechanism between the input that goes to the video, i.e. – you only have one VCR input – so how can the VCR know what device you want to record from ? (Sat box or DVD ?)

My suggestion is that you get a video-audio splitter box – a box that has several input and (typically only one) output sockets. The simplest ones are manual and cost very little (I got one in the USA for $19 a long time ago.. must be cheaper today). The more enhanced ones have various input standards (Scarts, S-Video, RCA, etc) and remote control.

These switch boxes are easy to use.

The additional advantage of these boxes is that you can add more devices to record from and switch between. E.g – I have connected: Cable box, TV, Stereo, PC (with video to TV and audio out stereo), DVD, and VCR... and now I have a portable media player to connect as well.. see ?

See here for example:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?type=category&id=cat08063

If you are not talking about recording from both Sat and DVD than the solution described by nwg will do just fine.

Cheers