Yes, they still make DVD/VCR combo players. I have a lot of tapes so my wife bought me one. We have Direct TV and the old DVD I have has an antenna in and out for the screw on cables. That's all I used because I didn't record. But the new one doesn't have that antenna connection, just various slide on plugs only. One of these combinations must make this work but even reading the instructions we haven't made it happen. I had the Direct TV cables go to the VCR, then out to the TV and knew it would work, but it didn't. My wife thinks that was probably correct but we should have pushed a certain button on our TV remote, too.
Convoluted, I know. But there's always someone on here who can tackle any problem it seems. Thanks for reading this.

i think you wife may be correct. i recently did this for my mother with her cable box. we had to find the right channel on her tv.

Try channel 3 or channel 4 on your tv and see if you have it then. Hope this helps.

On my Dish system it's channel 68 - check your Direct TV manual.


Pete

__________________
Don't tread on me

Haven't had cable in 15 years....

We have sat tv and a dvd recorder and I use the tuner in the dvd recorder to get antenna local tv. The way ours works is we run the sat into the dvd recorder and and the cables out the back of the recorder to the tv and watch the sat on channel 3, on the local antenna channel we have to watch on Video 1. This sounds simple but I wanted to pull my hair out until I got it to work. You may have to hire the Geek squad from Best Buy to help you if you cant make it work. I run the cables from my Video recorder (VHS) and plug the cables into the front of the dvr to copy VHS to DVD also if I record something from the satellite I have to go from digital to reg tv and use channel 3 to record from the satellite. It can into a real pain sometimes if you dont do it pretty often. Jeff

Wyatt,

Depends on what you want to do with the satellite box and VHS Deck. If you want to record then connect the satellite received directly to the input feed, the out-put to the VCR In, then the VCR Out to the TV. Cabling can be difficult, adapters are available. Both the Direct box and VCR will be either channel 3 or 4 out, and that is what the TV needs to be set to.

You probably have two sets of input jacks on the TV. If all you will be doing is playback, or copying VHS to DVD (If you have a writable DVD drive in the deck.) then you can connect the Direct box directly to one input set on the TV, and the VCR to the other set with appropriate cables and adapters if necessary. Radio Shack will have everything you need. In the second case turn off the Direct box when using the VCR, and the VCR when viewing satellite signals.

__________________
Gunsmithing since 1961

I had to buy some kind of a "splitter thingy", that's the technical term, to get my DVD/VCR to work. Oh, and I had to have my son hook it up so find someone 30 or younger and they'll fix you right up.

Wyatt, you didn't say anything about what kind of inputs you have on the back of the TV but lemme see if I can splain this. Right now it sounds as if you have everything hooked up in series. In other words, sat. input to DVD/VCR to TV. That's ok if you want to record from satellite but it may take some fiddling to get it to work (check what the output channel of the DVD/VCR combo is or check if the TV has a separate video imput in the menu). However, you said in the OP that you didn't record. If this is still the case then you need to hook the sat. input and the DVD/VCR in parallel. In other words, sat. input to TV and DVD/VCR to TV. In that case you need something like this adapter if you don't have dual inputs on the back of the TV.

You just plug both into the double end and plug the other into the TV. Radio shack should have something similar. Turn the DVR off to use the VCR/DVD but you may still need to check if the TV menu has a separate "video input" setting.

Are you thoroughly confused now?

CW

__________________
μολὼν λαβέ