how to connect modulator to tv etc?

exprog

Hi, can anyone help with this?

I have an old tv with no scart socket and a freeview stb with two scart sockets. I also have a vcr with a scart socket. From the posts I have read here I realised that I needed to get an RF Modulator in order to get the stb to work.

Yesterday I bought a modulator from Maplins (Model VH89). I asked the guy in the shop if it was easy to set up. 'Very easy' he said. Ho ho.

The instructions might as well be written in hieroglyphs for all the use they are (- god knows what the little switches on the back of the modulator are for). I simply cannot work out how to connect the four bits of kit and in what order using what cables. :wall:

(The Modulator has one socket (?) marked ' TO TV' but that requires a female connection which is the same as the tv itself requires. I've no idea how relevant that is.)

Could anyone possibly explain this to me?

weegie.geek

for the bit marked to tv, you need a male-male RF cable, or a male-female with a male-male converter on the female side.

The little switches, I think, will be to change the RF channel output of the modulator, so the output doesn't interfere with any other RF kit you might be using, or locally broadcast analogue tv channels.

scart from freeview box to modulator.

rf cable from modulator to tv.

Tune the TV until you see the freeview output. If it's clashing with another station or whatever, change the dipswitches on the modulator (with the modulator off) and retune the tv.

Repeat until you get a clear picture and it doesn't interfere with any other stations.

espresso

exprog wrote: »

Hi, can anyone help with this?

I have an old tv with no scart socket and a freeview stb with two scart sockets. I also have a vcr with a scart socket. From the posts I have read here I realised that I needed to get an RF Modulator in order to get the stb to work.

Yesterday I bought a modulator from Maplins (Model VH89). I asked the guy in the shop if it was easy to set up. 'Very easy' he said. Ho ho.

The instructions might as well be written in hieroglyphs for all the use they are (- god knows what the little switches on the back of the modulator are for). I simply cannot work out how to connect the four bits of kit and in what order using what cables. :wall:

(The Modulator has one socket (?) marked ' TO TV' but that requires a female connection which is the same as the tv itself requires. I've no idea how relevant that is.)

Could anyone possibly explain this to me?

I don't really see why you need a modulator. Connect the Freeview scart to the video scart and then use the RF output of the video to connect to the TV without a scart socket.

The modulator that you have bought simply allows virtually any device to be connected to a TV without a scart input socket. TO TV connects to the RF aerial socket on the TV using a patch lead.

gnatschuffed

Although SCART is bi-directional if the VCR only has one SCART socket, I would safely say it's an output only but no harm in trying I suppose. This might sound harsh but buying freeview boxes, modulators and cables to support old technology like a CRT TV with no SCART and a VCR seems like money down the drain to me. I would save your money and upgrade the TV to at least a newer CRT (2nd hand) with say SCART and component input and connect the Freeview box to that. Loads of people are downgrading their TV's (I'm a fan of CRT!!!) to LCD and plasma and offloading their old bulky TV's. That's what I would do anyway.

exprog

Thanks for the advice chaps.

espresso: I'm sure I've already tried that.
What previously happened was that my main tv died of old age. I thought I might as well 'use up' my smaller tv (- I formerly used it if I needed to stay away from home in a rented room) as it will stop working anyway when the analogue signal is switched off. I connected it and the vcr to the stb I then had. That was fine until the stb was killed by a burst of thunder a while ago. I got a new stb but could not get it to work. At that point I didn't really have time to bother about freeview anyway. Eventually I found about about these RF Modulator thingies. When I found out that it is possible to get an external modulator I decided it was time to get things sorted. So I was especially annoyed when no combination of wiring seemed to work.

I'll give it another go to see if it will work. I'm not optimistic. Having said that, reception on Channel 5 has been not good since acquiring the not working stb but after fiddling around with the wiring yesterday reception seems much clearer.

weegie.geek: thanks for that.

Could I just check with you about the vcr? How exactly should that connect to the tv, modulator and stb?
At this point I'm assuming I will need a RF cable of the type you mention to connect from the modulator to the tv. I'll try to get one later this morning though that could be a problem round here especially on a Sunday. It seems a bit strange to me. Everything else on these tv things seem to use male-female. I can't imaging why modulator-tv has to be different. Not that I know anything about it.

gnatschuffed: I'm sure that is the correct long-term advice. I'm planning to ditch the vcr and get some sort of dvd recorder (I gather the cheap Duraband ones sold by Asda are reasonably good and cheap) some time around the autumn. As for the tv, I just thought that waiting til next year might see the digital ones start to come down in price. Currently they seem to be enormously more expensive than analogue ones, and the analogue ones, even when available, seem overpriced given they will be useless in a few years. I'm not sure I would trust anything 2ndhand round here, I have enough trouble with new ones.

Moneymaker

exprog wrote: »

Could I just check with you about the vcr? How exactly should that connect to the tv, modulator and stb?

Aerial -> VCR -> TV aerial input

Freeview box --scart--> VCR

Select AV input on VCR to view Freeview.

For information about the modulator you bought, try a Google search for "DIP switches for setting UHF output channel"


BTW I always buy my TVs second-hand. I like them nicely run-in. I let people like you buy the new ones and suffer the "early failure" problems.

HoofeHearted

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Media/product_pdfs/vh89.pdf

shows the settings for the switches to select the required UHF channel.

exprog

Moneymaker:

Thanks for the cabling advice. I'm really not good with these things. When I lived in London I got girlfriends to explain that sort of stuff to me . Then I went to the Midlands and died so have to seek advice elsewhere. I did again try without a modulator but couldn't get it to work.

Also thanks to you and HoofeHearted for further information about the modulator.

However the modulator annoyed me so I returned it to Maplins. As it happens there were other things I wanted so I exchanged it.

The problem was that it seemed to hijack my tv.

With my old stb I had five terrestrial channels plus a channel for the vcr plus a channel for freeview, making 7 channels altogether (with the freeview one picking up whichever freeview station the stb was set to). The vcr could record a terrestrial channel while I viewed either another one or a freeview channel, or it could record freeview while I viewed a terrestrial channel.

With the modulator I had 1 channel that could either pick up a terrestrial station if the stb was switched off or, if the stb was switched on, it could pick up whichever station freeview was tuned to, or I could watch a video. The vcr could only tape whatever channel the tv was set to watch i.e. it was not possible to view one thing and tape something else. I simply couldn't be bothered with that so I got rid of the modulator.

I'll give the cabling another try as it is possible I didn't configure it the way Moneymaker indicates.

Otherwise:

Moneymaker wrote: »

BTW I always buy my TVs second-hand. I like them nicely run-in. I let people like you buy the new ones and suffer the "early failure" problems.

Perhaps I'll be radical and reconsider this second hand option.

seilbahn

Since you have a VCR which already has a modulator built in, there is no need to buy another modulator. This has already been pointed out by Moneymaker. What he didn't mention was that after connecting the scart output of the s.t.b. to the scart input of the VCR and making the aerial connections, you should retune the VCR and allocate a channel to the Freview signal

exprog

Thanks seilbahn.

I tried that but it didn't work. Like I said before, the setup did work with my original stb but I now think that must have been a miracle.

At the moment I can't be bothered to do any more about it especially as I have so many films on tape I'm practically overwhelmed anyway. I'll probably just forget about it for a while until I get a tv with a scart socket.

Plus I've moved on to my new project of having a go at making homemade wine. Then I can get drunk while thinking about freeview. :dance: