I have a toshiba d-r400 hooked up to my directv receiver and it works great, but i just bought one for my dad and he doesn't have cable box, just the coax cable going right into his tv. Can the toshiba be hooded up to a tv with no box? I was thinking maybe i could run av wires for the tv out to the dvd in, and then dvd out to tv in, will this work? Any way of doing this for him, he won't get a digital box or sat. Thanks for any help.

I have a toshiba d-r400 hooked up to my directv receiver and it works great, but i just bought one for my dad and he doesn't have cable box, just the coax cable going right into his tv. Can the toshiba be hooded up to a tv with no box? I was thinking maybe i could run av wires for the tv out to the dvd in, and then dvd out to tv in, will this work? Any way of doing this for him, he won't get a digital box or sat. Thanks for any help.

This recorder has no tuner and needs a cable box/receiver of some kind to work....

DGK

This recorder has no tuner and needs a cable box/receiver of some kind to work....

DGK

isn't the tuner bulit into the cable ready tv? i can watch cable channels on the tv fine b/c it doesn't need a box.

I'm wondering how well the successor of this, in the D-R410 would work for you?

I'm wondering how well the successor of this, in the D-R410 would work for you?
so do you agree that there is no way to use the d-r400 w/o a box? what is different about the d-r410 that might make it work?

i tried talking dad into a digital cable box or satellite, but he's set on living in the stone age lol. he has a vcr hooked up to the tv and that has a tuner in it, so maybe i can run av's from the vcr to the toshiba, then from the toshiba to the tv?

just wanted to update in case anyone else runs into this problem. i was able to run the av's from the vcr to the dvd recorder then to the tv and it works great. he is using the tuner in the vcr.

Probably a hassle though now that he has to set manual timers in both the DVD recorder and the VCR whenever he wants to record more than one program at a time.

It'd be a lot easier to have it all in one recorder. Also, he'd get the local digital channels from his cable through a DVD recorder's QAM digital tuner, and those look a lot better than the analog versions.

It'd be a lot easier to have it all in one recorder. Also, he'd get the local digital channels from his cable through a DVD recorder's QAM digital tuner, and those look a lot better than the analog versions.

Yes... I'm wondering about using QAM in a DVD recorder, wasn't Panasonic the only brand that did this well? I know that other brands, including Toshiba, do have this, but fail to do that QAM tuning well.

Probably a hassle though now that he has to set manual timers in both the DVD recorder and the VCR whenever he wants to record more than one program at a time.

It'd be a lot easier to have it all in one recorder. Also, he'd get the local digital channels from his cable through a DVD recorder's QAM digital tuner, and those look a lot better than the analog versions.

how would he record 2 programs at a time? all he has to do is leave the vcr on and set the dvdr to record whenever he wants. i don't see how this is a hassle at all? he didn't want to spend the money on one with a tuner, so this will work good for him for very little $$. He's an old man who can barely see as is, he could care less about digital quality, he just wants to tape his nascar races lol.