• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Went to buy a VCR, had a surprise (no TV tuners?)

N

NathanAllan

Veteran Member
Joined
Jun 1, 2003
Messages
2,437
Location
Bellevue, Colorado
I was told by the store clerk that manufacturers are gettng away from making anything with a TV tuner in it, except for standalone TV tuners.

I guess the digital broadcasting law will be affecting me after all. My dvd/vcr stopped working tonight, and went to buy another only to find that none of the models they had were equipped with such an archaic device.

Off to the thrift store and buy a few, in case they all start breaking down!

Interesting though, the DVD player that broke had a full blown **DVD-rom** drive in it, not just a tray and motor rig that all the cheap-o and now dead dvd players have had. It seems like a power problem, so if it is something on the motherboard, I'll try installing it into a PC and see how it works. I'm kinda hoping it stays broken, so I get to tinker!

Nathan
 
Even though New Zealand's analog TV broadcast network is due to be switched off in several years, retailers are happily still selling TV's and DVR's with analog tuners to grossly uninformed consumers. No legally required notice on the item as in the USA.

Digital set top tuner boxes sell for equivalent of US$180 - 250 and the very few digital tuner TV's available have a premium of about $500+. In the US the government subsidizes the purchase of the equivalent box up to $80 per household, enough to buy one.

On the plus side, our terrestrial UHF HDTV system is the latest h.264 which has superb quality and half the bandwidth of older mpeg2 systems.

As I understand it the USA analog system is going off next year so it sounds like manufacturers are dropping the analog tuners entirely.
 
Last edited:
CP/M User said:
It wasn't a Digital VCR recorder they were flogging by any chance?

I would have thought any ordinary VCR recorder would of have a tuner in them! :-??
Click to expand...
Not digital, just a VCR with AV audio in and out. Nothing digital about it. There was even a place for a couple of coaxial connectors, guess it is easier than a whole redesign of the case. What I ended up getting was a small Memorex dvd player that has a remote that seems to not work. Now we use a PDA with a remote control program on it. It'll work till we get a real vcr with tuner. They're all over the thrift shops.

Nathan
 
I found an old VCR with only tv-tuner and eu-SCART under a sofa in my grand-parents house... It's PAL, so I don't think it will work with US equiptment...
 
per said:
I found an old VCR with only tv-tuner and eu-SCART under a sofa in my grand-parents house... It's PAL, so I don't think it will work with US equiptment...
Click to expand...
Hang on to that thing, seems that not too long from now there will be no more TV tuners out there.

I'll be able to get another. I'll miss my set-top dvd burner though.
 
NathanAllan said:
Hang on to that thing, seems that not too long from now there will be no more TV tuners out there.
Click to expand...

I do also got a TV from ~1980 (Panasonic, Monochrome, manually tuned with small wheels under a panel on the front right side, 6 chanels, swicable with pushbuttons, Current chanel indicated by a red LED, Vsync/Hsync/other technical settings ajustable with small tuning-resistors on the back side. A TV like this was seen in the background at a meeting-room in a McGyver episode.) :D . I have also got a TV-Tuning card for my PC (Pinnacle TV Raid).

TV's in Norway don't really have much of the buildt-in digital tuners yet... Somehow Norway uses it's own digital TV system, so digital-to-analog converters are cheaper to make than TV's with buildt in Digital tuners.
 
All of my current TVs have AFT, but I have my eye on a nice lil' (9") Magnavox with manual tuning at the local Sally. They want $15.00, but I'm waiting for the next half-off day. (I'm gonna need one for the T/S 1000 I'm (still) expecting in the mail).

--T
 
per said:
TV's in Norway don't really have much of the buildt-in digital tuners yet... Somehow Norway uses it's own digital TV system, so digital-to-analog converters are cheaper to make than TV's with buildt in Digital tuners.
Click to expand...

Norway is using the same state of the art H.264/AVC system we are. TV's with suitable built-in tuners are just showing up now, Sony, Panasonic, and Samsung.

Having only recently installed a digital tuner card in my PC, one of things I've found most interesting is that when you record a show you record the digital stream directly (.ts file) - there is no additional compression as the PC is fast enough to capture it, about a gigabyte/10 minutes. The end result is that there is no loss of quality in the playback.
 
Last edited:
Unless you plan on using the VCR to record or your TV does not have A/V ports then there is not much use for a tv tuner anymore.
There are numerous reasons not to run the cable / antenna line through the VCR to the TV.

Joe
 
paul said:
Norway is using the same H.264/AVC system we are. TV's with built-in tuners are just showing up now, Sony, Panasonic, and Samsung.
Click to expand...

Didn't know that... Our TV is still working, so we haven't gotten into buying a new one yet. I don't know too much about the Digital Encoding/Decoding techniques used...
 
ashbourn said:
Unless you plan on using the VCR to record or your TV does not have A/V ports then there is not much use for a tv tuner anymore.
There are numerous reasons not to run the cable / antenna line through the VCR to the TV.
Click to expand...
Perhaps one has an old home computer with only RF output, and you either want to record its performance on tape or your TV is too picky to accept the RF signal, given that the TV has a tuner to start with. I know the early Nintendo video games output a progressive video signal that many modern LCD TVs won't like very much, causing the display to scroll around and so on. However many (slightly older) VCRs may accept it and in their turn produce a stable RF, composite, SCART or whatever signal you use.

On the other hand, I have some home computers which my c:a 10 year old 28" TV won't display properly but my ~2 year old 14" TV/DVD combo accepts on the RF input, so YMMV a lot in this case.
 
probably because of the law that'll take effect in 2009 in the US where all stations over the airwaves must now be digital. i still think they should include it. what if you have another pre-existing device that uses an RF output that you want to record? it can't cost them more than a couple bucks to put a tuner in it.
 
ashbourn said:
Unless you plan on using the VCR to record or your TV does not have A/V ports then there is not much use for a tv tuner anymore.
There are numerous reasons not to run the cable / antenna line through the VCR to the TV.
Joe
Click to expand...
-----
Well, of course "recording" is one of the reasons one uses a Video Cassette "Recorder;" certainly what the 4 VCRs here are normally used for almost as much as playing. But what does having a TV tuner or not have to do with recording on the VCR?

As to not running the cable through the VCR (and/or cable in, audio/video out), I don't follow you at all; if you don't have a TV tuner, you'd HAVE to run the cable/antenna through the VCR tuner (or out the A/V connections) in order to select channels. no?

And all my VCR/TV combinations have more sensitive tuners in the VCR than the TV, so I only see an upside; what are your *numerous* reasons for not using the VCR as tuner?

m
 
Right, some older game consoles and computers used RF out that most TV's of today don't like. The VCR that has a tuner has the antenna input needed for those old machines and cleans up the picture.

We like to record shows, cause I'm out a lot and don't get to watch a lot of what I want (forget that new hdd based stuff, too expensive, wouldn't buy it if I could, TiVo).

Our actual TV set has no good remote to it-- it's a universal and we can't set it up for cable (the TV is cable ready, but can't get into the setup menu to work it). We relied on the VCR for the tuner.

A friend of mine said she has a three year old VCR that'll fit the bill, she may trade me some Atari stuff for it. The pawn shops have been charging a LOT more for a tuner equipped VCR. What was $15-20 when I last worked there is now $40-50!

For us, to have it tuner equipped is not for over the air broadcasts, it's for the cable coming in, and cable-readiness. Plus, we have it rigged so that we can play in one room and record on in the other, works well over coax (40-foot long RCA cables don't cut it).

Jeez, long post. Anyway, went to Target, and yep, they're all tuner-less. The only tuners there were for $140+ for just a vcr+dvd player (player only, not burner). No way I'm springing for that. My friend should come through for me. Says she never uses it.

Nathan
 
My problem is that my TV is so old (1987) that it won't go beyond channel 64...even on cable. I have to use an external tuner (VCR) with that one to receive the upper channels.

--T
 
What suprises me with TVs is where I work - which is in an estate filled with large mansions people are only just starting to throw out those old Wooden Box TV sets from the 70s & 80s! :-o

I can only assume their've kept them in storage and waited until they get a hard rubbish collection notice.
 
I picked up another older VCR tonight, with tuner included. The girl there now knows me, lol. It's not a dvd burner like I would have liked but that's okay.

I also diagnosed the broken one-- bad power supply. Searching for the specs now, I may be able to use an ATX one in there, not sure yet. Maybe AT with a switch. Not sure yet, but since it's a nearly seperate unit from the rest of the machie, it looks reairable.

First, found a burnt 2.5A fuse. Next, jumped the fuse with a single strand of wire, and no smoke, but the thing didn't start up either. Bad power supply. The rest of it is just motors and a laser and that totally seperate DVD drive (love that).

I'll post pictures of this thing's insides tomorrow.

Nathan
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top