I have two questions which I'll get to in a second. We just upgraded to digital cable with Adelphia and realized that our current VCRs are rather old. One of them (Sanyo) only goes to channel 99 and is certainly only analog, and the other (Samsung DVD-V2000 combo) I thought went into the hundreds and did digital, but in fact it go to anything above 125. Also, for the Samsung, when I plug the cable directly into it, it can only tune the analog channels. Last, when the cable guy came he said that I would need a 2-way splitter in order to tape one program and view another (previously we did not have a box-top set and now we do).
Obviously, we're going to need a new DVD or VCR recorders for sure (not ready for Adelphia's DVR, as we want hard copies). So, my questions are:
1. will the newer DVD player/recorders (or DVD recorder-VCR combo's) be able to receive the digital signal from Adelphia, or does everything need to go through the box first?
2. if not, will i really need a splitter to be able to record one thing and watch another? or if i put the RF cable through the recorder first and then to the box (and then the TV) can i still do both? i actually bought what looked like a 2-way splitter from radioshack and hooked it up between the cable source and had it split to the DVD-VCR combo unit and the box-top set, but the combo unit didn't get the right signal (as I mentioned the cable directly into the combo unit did tune at least the analog channels). I wonder if I bought something other than the right kind of splitter (it looked like a 2-way but on top it said DC pass on it and 'digiplex' so now I wonder).