Hello,

we bought a new TV set a few days ago, Philips, 37", HD, LED etc., pretty new, well...

I had always hoped you could still connect an old VHS recorder and watch old VHS tapes; can you? I did manage it to get it okay working, but not very good. (I'm in Europe The VHS recorder is generally connected via Scart and there's a Mini-Scart port on the TV set with a short cable from Mini-Scart to Scart which I used. I connected the VHS recorder and everything works more or less okay: About every 90 seconds, the image flickers with many lines in all colors. It's not terrible, but it's rather disturbing, though. Would be great to remove this problem; any ideas?

I tried another VHS recorder we had standing around, but no improvement. I checked the TV settings and the TV manual and found nothing, so far. For now, I'm out of ideas, any help?

Maybe someone has some advice. Thanks already!
Pete

[reader50]

Do euro TVs and VCRs include composite video jacks? Those would be the obvious choice.

[Waragainstsleep]

Mostly they don't but you can do SCART to composite.

[Uncle Skeleton]

Does it happen on all tapes? How many independent tapes are you using, and how old are they? (Can you tell whether it's inaccurate decoding vs corrupted content?)

[andi*pandi]

We are using our old VCR with our new HDTV; however, I think the VCR is connected to the stereo receiver not directly to the tv.

[P]

I think you have a bad cable. SCART cables are a notoriously bad design - huge port with 21 pins that all have to connect. First advice would be to just replace the cable and see if that helps. For more advanced troubleshooting - SCART cables often disassemble by unscrewing a ring where the cable comes in. I used to do that and pull on the cables a bit to make sure that all the pins were connected and far enough "out" to make a connection. Also check that there is a connection to all 21 pins - sometimes cheaper cables skip the pins not explicitly used by version 1.0 of the standard.

Composite is the single yellow plug for video (and two more for stereo sound). TVs usually have them still, but I would not count on the VCR having one, and you can't use them with SCART. I think you are thinking about component - three pins for video, red, green, blue (and two more for stereo sound) - which can be converted into SCART if the units in question are new enough (it's an extension to the standard).

If you can't get the SCART cable to work, check what ports out your VCR have and we can see if we can't come up with something. If nothing else, I guess yous till have an analog antenna in the TV that you might use?

Originally Posted by P 

I think you have a bad cable. SCART cables are a notoriously bad design - huge port with 21 pins that all have to connect. First advice would be to just replace the cable and see if that helps. For more advanced troubleshooting - SCART cables often disassemble by unscrewing a ring where the cable comes in. I used to do that and pull on the cables a bit to make sure that all the pins were connected and far enough "out" to make a connection. Also check that there is a connection to all 21 pins - sometimes cheaper cables skip the pins not explicitly used by version 1.0 of the standard.
Composite is the single yellow plug for video (and two more for stereo sound). TVs usually have them still, but I would not count on the VCR having one, and you can't use them with SCART. I think you are thinking about component - three pins for video, red, green, blue (and two more for stereo sound) - which can be converted into SCART if the units in question are new enough (it's an extension to the standard).
If you can't get the SCART cable to work, check what ports out your VCR have and we can see if we can't come up with something. If nothing else, I guess yous till have an analog antenna in the TV that you might use?

Alright, so I can see if I could learn and understand this.

Googling, you find a cable like this: http://www.amazon.de/Hama-HomeTheatre-Verbindungskabel-Scart-Stecker-Cinch-Stecker/dp/B000EOQ7QI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1352727488&sr=8-1
So, this appears to be composite to scart. No?
Scrolling, I found in the comments notes however, that only some devices support this, not all, hmm.

On the TV set, there are component out ports (five of them). So could I get this to convert to scart somehow? How?

I already tried a different VHS recorder (with a different cable) and I encountered precisely the same problems, I also tried different VHS tapes, always resulting in the same problems. Hmm. (I didn't try yet buying an entirely new cable, though. Might be a good idea.)
On the front of the VHS recorder, there are three composite ports, too. Good?

There may be a few more options as there's also a blu ray player which I think has composite or component ports, so maybe I could use this. (it has no scart ports however).

Finally, I think you are right - I could use the antenna cable to connect the VHS recorder to the TV set (this is what you meant, I guess, right?). I think the TV set still has an antenna port (what else do you get your cable TV from, hmm...).

Again, I'm pretty sorry, I really try to help my parents with their new TV and stuff, but I'm really not very good at all this. My mum likes her VHS tapes, though, so it's worth it

Greetings,
Pete

[P]

The one you linked was actually a SCART-to-component, with no audio - you can see on the color of the connectors (Red-Green-Blue). I did find a SCART-to-composite as well, though (Red-White-Yellow) - not sure how that works, given that SCART is supposed to use multiple pins for the video.

If your video is new enough to be able to output SCART in RGB format, it can be converted to component video (3 pins, Red-Green-Blue) plus stereo audio (2 pins, Red-White - yes, that means that two of the connectors are red, and that's freaking insane, but them's the breaks). That is however not something you can count on, and in any case, you probably need to find some switch to make it so.

The connectors on the front of the VHS are probably composite + stereo audio, Red-White-Yellow, so you need to find a Red-White-Yellow set on the TV. Do you know which model TV it is? Usually one can google up some pics of the back panel.

You're right, any new TV would have to have an antenna port for cable TV. Forgot about that. That is always one way to do it - connect them up and set the TV to whatever the video channel is - 37, maybe?

[reader50]

The connections on front of VCR are probably camcorder-in, so they won't help. He needs output jacks.

Hey,
it took me a few days to get back to this, but let's see. Still same situation: Trying to connect a VHS player to a new HDTV.

The VHS player has SCART out and antenna out and three composite ports; it is over 10 years old.

I found a page with the back of the TV, this one. It has several HDMI ports, a SCART port, component ports, an antenna IN port and a few others which I think are unrelated to this question.

Trying to connect the VHS player to the HDTV works more or less, the image works for about 20 seconds, then flickers, goes rather wild, for about 2 seconds, then returns to normal; this repeats itself.
- I did try to connnect a different VHS player, with a different SCART cable, but with the same result; this one is also over 10 years old.
- I also tried replacing the SCART cable with an entirely new one (the 'best one' they have, they said in the electronics market, with golden jacks), it didn't help, exactly the same problem.
- I tried, for checking, to connect a DVD player to the TV's SCART port, and it works very well, no problem. So the TV's SCART port works.

Options/Thoughts left:
- I don't know if there's a way to get from component video to SCART if the VHS recorders are so old, apparently not.
- I found a note which says the TV's SCART port can only receive RGB and FBAS signals. I don't know what this means.
- I tried connecting the VHS player with a normal antenna cable to the TV set, and I tried looking through the TV channels for the VHS player, but I didn't find anything. Shouldn't this work? I can try again.

I'm really not so good at this TV tech stuff, I keep thinking it is pretty simple in general, but it is a bit more complicated than what I can do/understand currently, so...

Advice would be great,
Pete

[P]

FBAS seems to be a German acronym that basically just means composite video. Turns out that this is a legal variant of SCART. Memory is not what it used to be.

From your description, I think that something is trying to autocalibrate. Are there any options in the TV to just tell it to stop that and just show the composite/FBAS signal? I think it might be detecting something and trying to show RGB video.

Did you try connecting it via the antenna out from the VCR?

[anthology123]

What you are describing the image going crazy every few minutes sounds like Macrovision protection kicking in on the video tape you are playing. Are these pre-recorded video tapes
or are they ones you created yourself? Are you familiar with what a VHS tape looks like when Macrovision kicks on and does this look like that? Maybe with all the adapters the passive signal
across the connectors drops low enough that the Macrovision is affecting the picture, just a guess, I don't know all the details of your problem.

[cgc]

Is there a reason you need to connect a VHS recorder/player to your TV? Sometimes it's easier to move on with technology...unless you have a lot of VHS videos but then again you could transfer VHS content to DVDs or to files to watch on a PS3, ATV, HTPC, etc.

[olePigeon]

Good thing you don't live in the U.S. where they're actively trying to "close the analog loophole."

Obviously he needs a VCR so he can still play the greatest BMX film ever made: RAD. It's not on DVD.

[cgc]

Originally Posted by olePigeon 

Good thing you don't live in the U.S. where they're actively trying to "close the analog loophole."
Obviously he needs a VCR so he can still play the greatest BMX film ever made: RAD. It's not on DVD.

Not too difficult to transfer to a DVD as I suggested in my post.