TV driving me mad - how do you make DVD/Video/digibox all work??

[miranda2]

I keep having pg hormonal crying fits whenever I try to make my tv play a dvd. We have a digibox and a video, and until we got the dvd player it worked fine - whatever you turned on just played. Now you have to juggle scart leads etc and I always get it wrong and now I can't get it to work at all...will have to ask dh to sort it when he gets home. It makes me feel so helpless! Surely there must be a simple way of plugging them all in together so that whichever of dvd player, video or digibox is turned on works? dh spent abuot £30 at maplin last month buying a 'scart switcher' but that doesn't work either - you still have to do something wiht knobs etc which i haven't mastered. I'm an intelligent woman, and this is driving me mad! Has anyone got the solution?

I'm the same miranda! I used to have a real sense of power because I could programme the video and he couldn't, but since we've got a DVD player I haven't even mastered playing the things!

And to make matters worse I am in the doghouse with ds1 because I programmed the video to record the supervolcano programmes, and it just recorded 'snow'.

has anyone made this work? Am seriously considering buying an all integrated thing, which is madness as our current TV is about 15 years old and anyway dh will never agree (we just don't watch that much tv!), but i HATE this faff! I burst into tears the other day when ds asked to watch shrek2 as i couldn't get the damn dvd to work...

Do you only have one scart socket in your TV?

If so, the easiest thing to so is get a scart-splitter. You can then plug in the DVD and whatever else and just flick a switch to change from one to the other.

Oh it's not just me then!
Why are things so bloody complicated???!
Got a lt of weird looks when I bought a tumbledryer recently and told the woman I wanted a max. of 4 buttons (ie. on/off hot/not so hot).

Life is too bloody short.

yup same here. We have sky/video/recordable dvd/tivo-all going through the tv. was just about coping with it till dh bought the recordable dvd, now tivo cant see the video so you cant record off there onto video, have to use the dvd recorder which is complete pain, then cant read dvds on any other dvd player unless they have been "finished" whatever that means! I just about scream trying to get anything to record/play.
Saw advert for video/dvd with hard disc thinking about se;lling the lot on ebay and starting again!

its a b nightmare, dh found a website with diagrams showing what to put where, if i can find the website i'll let you know.

Sorry Miranda, didn't see you had tried a scart splitter. That should work fine, unless you still have the order of the setup wrong.

The trouble is, I can set these things up, but explaining how to do them is another thing altogether! I can try and figure out a diagram for you if you want.

i had tv, playstation, and video all set up working together. then i had a dvd player, then a digibox added, all fine until i had to buy a new tv. it took me hours to get it all working together and i cant remember which leads i shoved where. its a pain in the butt. think actually the way ive connected it all up doesnt look like it could possibly work. its not anything to do with your av channel is it? (clutching at straws here) i can have a root around the back of the tv if you want and tell you how ive got it all connected?

I use a double scart lead (from Maplin). It's two pieces of wire with a total of three connectors attached. The dvd player gets a connector with a single lead, the video gets the connector with the two leads and the third connector (single lead) goes to the TV. I think that the dvd and the TV connectors are the wrong way round according to the leaflet (or was it the saleman's instructions?) Anyway, it now works fine. To watch a dvd, the video has to be set at AV - this is not marked on my remote, but it's one channel down from 1 (I suppose that means pressing 0 would work - must try that). Can't remember whether the TV has to be on AV - don't think so.
The co-axial lead from the roof aerial goes to the video-in, then from the video-out it goes to the TV. No signal here (yet) for freeview but I guess that would be the first place for the co-axial lead.

So glad we're not the only ones with this dilemma. It took DH about a week before it all worked - we have TV/Freeview box/DVD/Video too - I think the video and the DVD share a scart splitter into the back of the TV - we don't need a switch BUT you have to remember to turn the video OFF before you can watch a DVD otherwise you get the two pics at once like a ghostly apparition. We can't watch DVD and record video at the same time, and we can only record terrestrial channels, not digital (no real hardship given the crap most of them pump out!) Haven't got a clue for the leads set-up. When we watch video or DVD the TV has to be set to AV1, but to watch TV through the digibox it has to be set to DVD! (huh????) I think that's just the way we've set it up. It's a nightmare for babysitters, they need a 30 min tutorial just to watch TV, and they daren't change channels unless they lose everything!

Oh well, glad its not just me then! I think at the moment if I don't touch anything we can watch Tv with digibox, or video, and watch one channel while recording another from digitv (not that I ever do). Its when you want the dvd its a pain. I htink its jsut a question of pressing a different button on the scart splitter thing, but I never know which one! (pathetic or what)...I thought it would all jsut work automatically, idealist that I am...
Anyway, had a moan at dh about it when he got home which led to massive sulks from him as he feels guilty that he hasn't sorted it, so that was a mistake. Hey ho!