Xref: utzoo rec.video:6314 sci.electronics:6109
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!boulder!stan!dce
From: dce@Solbourne.COM (David Elliott)
Newsgroups: rec.video,sci.electronics
Subject: Re: *** CABLE TV + VCR + TV ***
Message-ID: <989@marvin.Solbourne.COM>
Date: 5 May 89 15:12:34 GMT
References: <1796@ubu.warwick.UUCP> <1825@astroatc.UUCP> <2652@puff.cs.wisc.edu> <1836@astroatc.UUCP>
Reply-To: dce@Solbourne.com (David Elliott)
Followup-To: rec.video
Organization: Solbourne Computer Inc., Longmont, Colorado
Lines: 49

In article <1836@astroatc.UUCP> brown@astroatc.UUCP (Vidiot) writes:
>The Radio Shack unit (and others) moves all channels up to the UHF band,
>starting with 2 and ending with W or later (if the bandwidth is large
>enough).  These work well with non-scrambled systems.

They can also work OK with a system with a minimum of scrambled channels.

What you can do is to wire up your system as follows:

	* Split the incoming signal, connecting one side to the
	  VCR VHF input and one to the cable box

	* Connect the output of the cable box to the VHF-UHF "block"
	  converter

	* Connect the output of the block converter to the UHF input
	  on the VCR

The result is that UHF channel 35 (or something like that) contains
the output of the cable box.  If you only have one scrambled channel,
you're set.  If you have more, you'll have to switch, but if there
aren't too many, it's ok (the bastards in my area scramble almost
everything, including the local broadcast channels!, and the
scrambled channel list changes every couple of weeks, seemingly at
random; I'm going with "wireless cable" pretty soon).

There are a couple of problems with this approach

	1. The quality of the VHF-UHF converted signal is not as
	   good as the original.  Thus, this is only a good
	   solution if you really want to record lots of shows
	   on different channels including the scrambled ones.
	   Otherwise, an inexpensive switch is a better idea
	   (hmm, how about a switch on a timer?).

	2. Some VCRs can't handle both CATV and UHF.  My old RCA
	   (VKT400, I think) worked fine, but my new Quasar can't
	   do this.

It seems to me that the cable companies would really benefit from
having a timer system built into the cable box.  I know that some
boxes have direct video out, and if you could combine that with
a camera pause switch, consumers could just leave the system on
record and let the box do the work of changing channels and
starting/stopping the recording.

-- 
David Elliott		dce@Solbourne.COM
			...!{boulder,nbires,sun}!stan!dce