December 25, 2003

Thanks, Santa, but...

The old catch-phrase was "batteries not included," right? The new one ought to be "unconnectible without yet another space-hogging box for the TV stand."

We have three televisions in this house. One is in the family room, one in the kitchen, and one in my bedroom. My sister and her husband bought us identical DVD players for two of them, and we got a third from someone else. Quite a surprise, and we were astonished and delighted. Delighted, that is, until it came time to plug them into the televisions. The one in the family room has multiple audio/video RCA plugs (good thing, because I got my Mom an MSN TV receiver, which also needs those plugs); the one in the kitchen is fitted only with a coaxial cable plug, so it won't accept the DVD players' RCA jacks. I guess this means I need some sort of intermediate gadget to go between the two devices. An RF modulator, maybe? Has anybody faced a similar problem? How do I solve this? Magnavox seems to think a model as old as this (1995, for cryin' out loud! Is that old?) isn't worthy of keeping in its product database on the web, so no joy from it.

Update: The gadget does seem to be an RF Modulator. Here's an example, but they're sold by a bunch of vendors, at prices ranging up from $19.99 or so. Anybody used one with an old television?

Posted by Linkmeister at December 25, 2003 03:37 PM
Comments

It's a common problem. Head down to Radio Shack and snag a converter.

Posted by: Alwin Hawkins at December 25, 2003 04:32 PM

And when you do find a converted post info about it and your review. Because some of us geeks care about this kinda thing. (I have an ancient tv I might want to use...)

Posted by: batty at December 25, 2003 05:38 PM

happy Christmas past, Linky. May you find the adaptors you need. On to the new year!
>..

Posted by: barbara at December 25, 2003 07:29 PM

When I've had similar problems I've just showed up at Radio Shack and acted dumb (actually, I wasn't acting). This could be a problematic approach for a man, sort of similar to asking for directions. I don't know if you fit that description or not ;)

Happy Holidays, Linkie.

Posted by: JadedJu at December 26, 2003 04:35 PM

I'm perfectly willing to look dumb, and perfectly willing to ask directions. In the case of Radio Shack, though, I'm never sure whether the salesclerk wasn't selling shoes last week and is thus completely ill-informed about the products he (almost always a he) is selling. I ran across that problem a lot in the early days of PC stores. ;)

Posted by: Linkmeister at December 26, 2003 04:46 PM

Reminds me of when we bought big Bose speakers for our stereo system. Seems like our system wasn't something or other enough to handle the new speakers. We then had to go out and buy some new stuff to go with the speakes.

Sounds great, though.

Cas

Posted by: Cassie-B at December 27, 2003 07:56 AM

Can relate. My DVD/VCR player required another gadget. Nice autumn foliage image on the main page.

Posted by: Rob at December 27, 2003 07:58 AM

Cassie, that sounds like the old amp/pre-amp days of stereo. I way overbought my receiver/amp, so the Bose speakers I then got worked fine, even with the Pioneer 88s I already had, but that was blind luck or I'd have had to do what you had to.

Posted by: Linkmeister at December 27, 2003 08:27 AM

Take a look at this.

http://hometheater.about.com/cs/dvdlaserdisc/a/aadvdrfmoda.htm

Posted by: Alwin Hawkins at December 27, 2003 05:21 PM