Help......at my wits' end!!!!!!!

[Machine Head]

First off, I didn't know if this was the correct area to ask for help as the problems I'm having are a bit all composing, but bare with me.

I have an Hitachi 42"3000E plasma & feeding it is a Panny E10, Panny E30, Bog standard VHS, Alba DVD, Sky digi box (just for fta channels) and a Telewest cable box. All sound is thru' my Pioneer VSX-C301 reviever. The cable box & Alba are attached to the plasma tuner box via scart. The two pannys, sky and the vhs are RF daisy chained to the tuner box. Never had a problem, great reception.

Right, I have just moved house and I spent some time setting up all my equipment as it was in the old house. I left the sky digi box as I thought I didn't need it. The reception was a bit poor which I put down to the electricity masts 300 odd yards from the house. Easy solution, I put a channel booster in the loop and it worked great.

I decided to get Sky digital back. This is where my problems started. I set it up as before but the picture was bad. It seems the Telewest & Sky boxes don't like each other. As I'm ditching Telewest I took it out of the loop and attached it to the plasma tuner box via scart and to the panny E10. I then did the same with Sky but 1 scart went to the E30. The Sky box has 2 RF out's so 1 went to a second tv, spot on picture. The other I daisy chained thru' the VHS and both pannys to the tuner box for the 5 terretrial channels. Even via 2, yes 2, ariel boosters the picture is crap. Where before it wasn't. Now, I can record from sky and telewest on my pannys via the scarts but I need the tuner box to pick them up and I can only do this via RF leads. Unless somebody out there knows differently. The scarts at the back of the tuner box are all taken up, 1 from sky, 1 from telewest & 1 from the dvd player.

So, how do I solve this bloody annoying problem? It's driving me round the bend. Please, any help would be appreciated.

 

[AV Junky]

Blimey, mate!

Use a scart switch box (auto switching, if you don't want to get up from the sofa to change source). Much better picture quality, auto widescreen switching, etc. If you want RGB recording on the DVD recorders, then daisy chain the TV scarts from each STB through a DVD recorder before going into the switch box.

RF is not for 42" plasmas!!

 

[Machine Head]

Thanks AV Junky. All I need to do is persuade the wife to let me spend £50 on another piece of kit. I had actually thought of getting one as I had used a manual switching box previously. The thing is, how do I get to record from Sky & Telewest on all three recorders? I have to explain that I work nights and do a lot of recording that overlaps each other so I need 2 recorders for me and one for the wife so she can record and watch her stuff. On the VHS naturally

What I can't understand is that if I put the RF directly to the tuner box it gives a perfect picture yet via 3 bits of equipment it degrades so badly.

Mmmmm...........

 

[Nick_UK]

Thanks AV Junky. All I need to do is persuade the wife to let me spend £50 on another piece of kit.

Nah, go the whole hog and buy an AV amp and speakers ! That will switch both the video and audio for you. No point in a lovely plasma screen if you have naff audio, is there ?

 

[Machine Head]

Well, AV Junky, after a bit of messing about, I discovered that my old panny E30 was causing all the problems. What I've done is hooked everything up like you said and it works great. To satisfy the wife, I put the RF cables thru' the VHS & the panny E10. So, now everything works even better than before and I only need to use 1 remote.

Attached to the Pioneer reciever are some lovely Mission M70's speakers & sub.

Cheers for the help.