Hilarious. A new VCR would be cheaper than figuring this out. But anyway, I'll proceed with the comments in the order you present the info....
On 10/24/05 23:16 ET, mikeyouse said...
I have a digital cable box (General Instrument
brand name, received with Comcast dig. cable last
year) and I want to hook my rabbit ears up to
it so I can run the AV outs to my receiver, which
runs to my TV etc. etc.
I assume that what you want to watch is on a VHF channel. If it is not, take the UHF channel number, add 51 to it, and search for the channel by the resulting number. This works up to about 90 and gets a bit off after that.
(Yes I realize the absurdity of it, but I just
want to do it for now, I am getting satellite
in the not-too-distant future and want to watch
some Monday Night Football)
Like I said above.
I cannot figure out the correct way to do this,
there are a few settings in the menu function
on the digital box, namely;
AC Outlet and RF Bypass.
AC outlet has to do with whether the AC outlet on the back of the box is live all the time, or turns on and off with the cable box. This is so you can use the cable remote to turn the TV on. RF Bypass chooses either to let the entire cable spectrum go out the OUT F connector on the back, or to have only the chosen cable channel go out as channel 3. This is irrelevant to you as you want to use the line outputs (RCA jacks).
Do I need to do anything to these to make it work,
but more importantly, where do I plug the 'out'
from the antenna to the cable box?
The 'out' from the antenna gets plugged into the 'in' on the cable box. It is typical of all but the most confused equipment that the 'out' of one device has a signal going out of it, so when the other end of the cable is at the destination box, one expects the signal to go in there, so it is connected to the 'in.'
The box is still set up as it was when I unplugged
my Comcast a few years ago,
Well, almost.
but I have no idea if it is correct or what;
There is a coax running from a connection labled
"TO TV/VCR" from "CONV IN" on (what I assume is)
the RF converter. There is another labeled "RF
IN" connected to one off of the converter labled
"RF IN". Then I have two 'empty' connections labeled
"RF OUT" and "CABLE IN".
I have never actually looked at the labels on both ends of that short cable, but leave it there. Remember, this is just the way it was when you disconnected from Comcast a few years ago, or last year, depending on where you are reading in your post, so it must be correct. Unless you have cable gremlins.
Is this even possible? Was my first thought of
plugging it into "CABLE IN" correct but flawed
somewhere else?
No, this is the correct place to connect the wabbit ears.
Let me know, thanks
Mikeyouse
No, you have figured it out.
Just one thing -- after you hook the rabbit ears up to the box, plug the box in, wait at least a minute or two, then call Comcast and tell them that you had your box unplugged and you need them to send a signal to turn it on. They will naturally do that as they are used to people occasionally unplugging when they move things around, and it is a free service you get when you have a Comcast subscription.
subscription.
Oh, yeah, I forgot -- you will have to have it connected to the Comcast cable when they send the signal to turn it on, or it won't reactivate. So disconnect the rabbit ears, connect to Comcast, get the box turned on, then reconnect the rabbit ears.
