I have a JVC DRMV 150B dvd/vcr combo w/tuner, older RCA TV that has cable hook up red yellow & white ports and Charter cable and box. I want to be able to record one program and watch another. Is that possible. If so how do I do it? The cable tech said you can only record the channel you are watching. I would have bought a dvd/vcr without a tuner if I had known this was going to be such a hassel. Thanks for any help mhere.
I am not familiar neither with the connections on Charter cable box nor the JVC.
The cable box should have composite video and audio output (yellow + red+white). This will let you watch on the TV whatever channel your cable box is set to.
To record on the JVC, you need to connect the RF out on the cable box to RF in on the JVC. The channel you want to watch needs to be unencrypted. If the channel is encypted, you are out of luck.
NEVER use RF connections unless there's no other way, video quality will be poor and audio will be mono. Connect the RCAs to the line in on the recorder and set the recorder on whatever input you used. If there isn't an input key on the remote, go through the channels until you get to the right input.
The only way you'd be able to watch one channel and record another is to have 2 cable boxes, unless there's still analog channels on your cable. If there are analog channels, you can record an analog channel while watching a digital one and vice versa.
My cable company's signal comes from the RF connector on the wall and is connected directly using a splitter to both my HDTV with digital tuner and my Magnavox DVD recorder with the digital tuner. I do not need a cable box since I only subscribe to the cheap basic cable which gives me unencrypted digital channels
No problem whatsoever.
The video quality is excellent.
As I said above, if the cable box passes the entire signal from the cable company through to RF out on the cable box that is the signal you'll want to use for your DVD recorder. However, as I also mentioned above, this will only work for the unencypted channels. Anything else, you'll need to have the cable box set to the channel you want to record.