Page 1 of TV and Satellite feed back to your player

Earlier this month, I read a thread on this subject and many people offered lots of practilcal advice, some of which was quite technical and involved diconecting wires inside the scart lead.

I thought about this for a while, as I was experiencing this problem myself then thought why not put the TV on a channel number that had not been tuned in to a station and to my surprise found it had cured the problem.

I know others will already have come up with this idea yourselves, but felt I should share with those, who like myself are new to the DVD Player world.

When you connect a satellite box to a TV using a SCART lead there is no actual need to allocate a specific TV channel, because the SCART signal will force the TV into over-riding the numbered channels and show the picture on the screen, usually flashing something like AV or AV1 on your telly screen when the picture is first activated.

Occasionally, your set-top box will clash with your TV`s settings (this is because, even tho` we use the SCART lead to connect the box to the TV, we still use the old-fashioned way of using RF leads from the aerial out connection of the set-top box, to the aerial in connection on the telly - this ensures we still see the old analogue pictures on our TV), and generally what you can do is dig out the set-top box manual and have a poke around in the set-up menus.

For example, my on Digital box interfered with several of my analogue channels quite considerably. To get round this I went into the menu, into Viewing Preferences, into TV and Video settings, and amended the UHF channel number from 21 to 23 - bingo:sorted !

Whether this is as simple to change on Sky digiboxes I couldn`t say, but there`s generally a much easier way of dealing with conflicts between equipment. I would certainly never advocate snipping SCART pins unless (a) you REALLY know what you`re doing or (b) your name is Jimbo and you`re trying to find a Macrovision hack for the Aiwa 370 player.

An interference problem can often arise when the SCART sockets on a TV function as outputs as well as inputs. One of three things will generally happen:

1) The TV outputs the last tuner channel selected. The SCART picture appears "superimposed" on a "floating" TV image.

2) The TV outputs exactly what is being input, but delayed slightly. This results in a "ghosting" or "ringing" effect.

3) The TV outputs the last tuner channel selected, but this happens to be an untuned channel. Often this is acceptable, but the picture can appear "grainy" as the SCART picture is superimposed over the "snow storm" of the untuned TV channel.

The pin-snipping solution mentioned earlier involves snipping the wire leading to pin 19 in the plug at the TV end of the SCART cable (and *only* at the TV end!) This prevents the output from the TV from getting as far as either the cable itself or the DVD player, where it has potential to cause interference.


Mike