Freeview Recording

[mattyn]

Good Morning

My neighbour has just taken delivery of a new Wharfedale 27" LCD TV with Freeview, and has it connected to a Philips VR550 VCR.

She can easily record from dinosaur Tv - channels 1-5 through setting the timer on the vcr as she did before - however she cannot seem to record from freeview. when she uses the timer function on the VCR there is no channel option for any of the AV sockets as you would expect to normally see.

She can view the TV through the video channels by selecting channels 1-5 for dinosaur, or E1 for the digital freeview from the TV.

The VCR is connected from the AV1 scart on the VCr to the AV1 on the tv. The co-ax aerial lead is connected correctly.

She wants to be able to record from freeview (for instance ITV2) whilst watching BBC1 for example.

Hope this is clear and any help in the set up would be much appreciated.

Many thaks in advance

Matt

[m.stephens]

I assume that the TV only has a single Freeview tuner hence she can only watch one channel at a time (and possibly could record the same channel if she was so inclined). The VCR can only tune analogue channels and needs something else to provide digital TV input.

The options in order of cheapness are:

a. Always watch the Freeview channel you want and record the analogue channel for later.

b. Buy another standalone Freeview box for the VCR and accept that you will need to set the box to switch channels at the right time and the recorder to record at the right time separately. You also might have to mess around a bit if you only have a single SCART on the recorder

c. Buy a Freeview recorder - either hard disk or DVD ( I would recommend hard disk as it is so much easier!). As she already has an integrated freeview tuner on the TV, she would also be able to separately archive stuff off the hard disk to the VCR while watching a different program on TV and recording one (or maybe 2 depending on the freeview recorder) different channels at the same time. Now how cool is that !

[Broadz]

Some idTVs (i.e. Toshibas) allow you to watch analogue TV whilst recording digital TV via the two tuners in the set. Basically, whatever Freeview channel you are tuned to on the TV is sent down both scart connections, regardless of what you are watching on the TV (Sky, VCR, DVD, analogue, digital, Playstation etc). So, you could record ITV2 (digital) while watching BBC1 (analogue). Read the manual - the Wharfedale may be capable of doing this.

This however doesn't sound like your problem - what you have described is that there is no option on the VCR to select E1 as the source when setting up a timed recording. What about just one-touch recording - select E1 as the source, put a tape in the VCR and press record. Does that record the current Freeview channel that is being shown on the TV? If so, what button did you press on the VCR remote to select E1? And, can you not press the same button when setting up a timed recording to select E1 as the input at that point?

[MarkE19]

On my VCR remote there is an 'Input Select' button that I press to select the scart socket as the input to view from. To record from this input I just use the up/down channel select button to select the input. You have already stated that E1 is the scart input for the Freeview channels, so I would think this would be the method to record it.
As for recording Freeview and watching analogue TV, I doubt you could do this as the scart socket will probably output the channel you are currently watching. You would have to read the manual of the TV to confirm this though. If this is the case then you would need a separate FV STB to record ITV2 etc. while watching something else.

Mark.

[m.stephens]

Having checked back a few years the VR-550 uses "record link" which should automatically detect an input on the SCART socket and start recording from it, provided you have told it to do so with the remote. Not quite sure how this would work with a TV which is already switched on and, judging by the reviews on the attached link, no-one else knows either !

http://www.philodox.co.uk/e/VR550.htm