E50 connection worries

[miniman]

At last, last weekend I purchased a panasonic dvd recorder(e50) and have connected it up to the rest of my av kit but unfortunatly have hit a snag. I have sky digital and have used rgb scart out of the tv scart socket to the av in on the E50 and then ran rgb scart out of the E50 to a john sims rgb to component converter, which feeds a iscan ultra linked to a 503 mxe.

The problem is that even when I set the E50 to tape a analogue channel through its internal tuner if sky digital is on, it tapes sky.
I have the input and output both set to rgb and have it also set to decoder as when I change the E50 to normal I can no longer get a picture from sky.

Does anyone have any ideas as I'm getting a bit fed up. All helpfull suggestions other than throw it away will be gratefully received. Mark

[kenfowler3966]

When set to normal the sky out put is on AV2 in the E50.

If you press the tv button on the sky remote to allow you to alter the tv channel etc, this switches of the rgb output from the digibox and you only record sound and a black screen.

If you set E50 to decoder it will only record from the digibox, but you can view the digibox all the time.

If you set to normal it will record from sky or from an analogue channel, but you can't view sky through the E50 whilst recording is in progress, except the program you are recording if you turn the unit on.
To get around this take a scart cable from the other digibox scart, through a vcr if you wish to a second tv scart, this will allow you to view sky on the alternate input to the tv whilst the E50 is recording from analogue or sky. This will be at a reduced quality as it is not rgb, and indeed on my tv has some patterning from inteference, but is better than nothing.

[Rob100]

Why not put connect E50 AV1 - SKY VCR and SKY TV to your JS RGB2YUV. The Sky box will pass the RGB output from AV1 on the E50 and you can still record SKY (set E50 to A1) although only a composite signal. Not sure what will happen if you play and record (time slip) at the same time (this isn't how I have mine set-up as I hate "pass through" on scarts). I use my E30 to record a composite feed from my Netgem and I'm always amazed how good it looks.

Rob

[miniman]

Thanks kenfowler3966 and Rob100 I thought this may be the case, although I was hoping not as a composite feed on my plasma is ropey to say the least.

I feel a freeview box coming my way and use s-video connections for the dvdr and freeview as I have two on the ultra.

Thanks again for replying