Hello!
I came across this forum recently and I have found it to be a great aid to learn more about my home theater hardware! Now, I have a question whose answer I've been trying to figure out for days but to no avail... I hope you guys can help.
I recently purchased a Toshiba DR570 DVD Recorder, which has a Digital Tuner and 1080p-Upconverter. I basically want to be able to record the old shows I have saved to my Comcast DVR box and the new ones later on. I have followed the instructions in the manual step by step but I cannot make the DVD recorder record something off the TV (digital cable) properly. At some point, I connected everything and I got a message on the TV screen (looked like one of those Comcast messages) that said about copyrights and added, "HDMI output blocked". I tried changing channels but this didn't help.
I then called Toshiba but they were pretty useless. After 60 minutes of talking on the phone with them and trying different connections from my cable box to my DVD recorder to my TV, they told me I needed to auto-program all the channels again and, given that that was taking a while, they hung up.
I also went to Best Buy and their "Home Theater specialist" told me how to configure all the cables, but that didn't work either.
The way I have it right now is as follows: I have my standard coaxial cable from the wall to my Digital Cable Box. Then the Best Buy guy told me I should buy a couple of RG6 coaxial cables (RG6 would improve the image, he said) that go from the Out of my cable box to the In of my DVD recorder, and from the Out of my DVD recorder to the In of my TV. I also have an HDMI connection going from my cable box to my TV directly (HDMI 1), and another HDMI connection going from my DVD recorder to my TV (HDMI 2). I have not plugged anything else, including any audio cables, but that doesn't seem to matter.
With this connection, I am basically able to watch my cable channels when I set the TV to HDMI-1 (which is the way I've always had configured my TV/cable, even before I got the DVD recorder). However, I cannot see any channels through the HDMI-2 connection. I am able to access the DVD recorder's menu when I'm on HDMI-2, but I can't see anything else and when I try scheduling a recording, I can't select a channel because I can't see any channels!
Can anyone help me?
At some point, using the standard RCA cables, I was able to record something but the image quality was VERY bad. Ideally, I would like to record in HD... but this doesn't have to be the case... if I could at least record in a decent picture quality, that would be amazing!!
Thank you very much, everybody..!!!!