LCD TV - SKY - HDD DVD connection help

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bishfish

2 posts

Wannabe Geek

#14005 10-Jun-2007 18:48

Hi

I'm really hoping that someone can help with this one as i think i am going to go mad...!!!
Just bought a new Sony HDD DVD recorder and while setting it up decided to get rid of the old VCR that we never seem to use.
Connected everything up as we thought that we should do but now we are having problems.

Old set-up meant that we had the DVD connected to the TV by Component and then the rest by scart to composite etc.
This gave us SKY on one AV channel and DVD on AV4. never really used the VCR!

Current equipment:
TV - Panasonic LCD TV (TX-32LX500A)
DVD - Sony (RDR-HX720)
Sky decoder

How we have now got it set-up means that AV4 plays the DVD and views sky (but only when the DVD player is switched on).
Even though the sky is connected to AV1 we are only getting the sound through that and no picture. Also the picture quality of the sky is not so grea through AV4.

Does anyone know how we should have this all set-up so that we have sky on one AV so that we don't have to have the HDD DVD on to watch. We also want to be able to record from sky onto the HDD DVD.
We don't have any other ariel plugged in just the sky.

Seems simple but i can't get it to work....

look forward to some help

kirjava

69 posts

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#74198 10-Jun-2007 19:58

You may need to change the settings on the Sky decoder: I have never used one before but I assume you can set it up to output to more than one device (e.g. so you can have the sky box output to both the TV and the HDD/DVD recorder). Then you can hook the DVD recorder up to the tv as well. It should look something likethis:
[sky box]---------->[dvd recorder]------->[tv]
\_____________________________________/

Hope that helps

cyril7

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#74205 10-Jun-2007 20:26

LCD panels such as this are in general pretty poor at displaying Standard def signals that broadcasters supply, not the broadcasters fault, just have to ask why TV manufacturers made these displays whihch are totally unsuited to todays broadcast signals.

Anyway moving on, worse to boot this particular panel has only one (yes thats right) only one component video input. Ideally to reduce the number of negative input results you should attempt to use either Component or HDMI as an input signal to reduce the number of low res paths as possible.

Therefore if you can organise it such you use component video to move signals from the Sky box to the TV then all the best. I would not worry about using anything other than composite video from the Sky box to the DVR as the low quality mpeg encoder in it will no make use of anything better. This is where the sense in getting a MySky make full sense, as it records the mpeg stream without decode/encode, a major plus.

Cyril

richms

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#74219 10-Jun-2007 21:20

Never ever use composite for anything thats digital. Its crap, and no doubt the dvd-r has a crap comb filter in it so that will add noise to any recordings. DVD-R's dont have component inputs, some copy protection restriction the sony guy told me so you have to use RGB on the scart or else dumb it down to svideo.

Its just a shame that the only good input to dvd-r's is RGB on scart, and thats exclusive of component out on sky boxes... I think mysky is better, the only time I had a play on one was at someones house who only had composite on their TV so I couldnt try the others.

Richard rich.ms

bishfish

2 posts

Wannabe Geek

#74220 10-Jun-2007 21:24

Thanks for the advise.... just to add that the DVR has Component as well... Any ideas on how the whole thing should go together, as it's the basic set-up that i am having problems with, or is what Kirjava says right. Thanks

richms

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#74222 10-Jun-2007 21:34

Yeah, set the sky to RGB, and plug that to your DVD-R sith a fully wired scart cable, then take component to the TV, that will give you good quality to record and watch thru the dvd-r - you will need to use the TV scart since the VCR one wont do anything but composite or svideo. the scart setup is in the menu under the spanner icon.

Then take the composite from the sky to the TV so you can watch the sky when the dvd-r is busy doing something else, quality will be poor with lots of chroma artifacts since you are using composite. You cant have svideo and RGB active at the same time because of the number of video circuits in the skybox. I _think_ the mysky is better in this respect but noone I know bar one person wants to fork out for it, and their gear is all crap because they waste their money on other things.

Richard rich.ms

richms

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#74223 10-Jun-2007 21:35

Oh, and if you dont know if your scart is fully wired, change it to composite on the sky box, if it doesnt get heaps worse, then its not since a partially wired cable will pass composite when its set to RGB. Most sky installers are completely unaware of the difference so dont bother asking them, if in doubt open a plug up and see if there are loads of empty pins or just a few.

Richard rich.ms

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#74236 11-Jun-2007 06:01

you first need to change your setting in sky box to shoot standard ie disable the component option if not already done so as i understand your are not using component anymore right

secondly ... ermmm howabout get a tv with more component and hdmi inputs! if not i recommend you plug your sky into your tv straight. using a composite. i dont use sky i have mysky - but it is great if you have anohter output you can plug into your hdd recorder to record, but too many connections = increased noise and decreased quality