Hooking Up the Smart Way
Don’t let the fear of tangled cables and confusing connections keep you from enjoying the benefits of the various smart television appliances on the market. In this article, we’ll take a close look at four common living-room cabling scenarios. Chances are, one of them will look something like the setup that sits on your entertainment center. The diagrams show how to cable the video signals. We’ll leave audio cabling for another time. Go With the Flow It may be helpful to think of the flow of your video signal as a stream, much like a stream of water. The point furthest upstream is where the television signal enters your home (the cable service). The last thing in the flow must be your TV screen. Any other devices must fall in between, without blocking the flow. The television signal must pass through each device along the way to your TV. Typically your VCR will be the last device in the chain before your TV, allowing you to record the output of all the other upstream devices. The one exception to this flow plan is the DVD player. Because DVD players include a copy protection feature that scrambles a signal routed through a VCR, DVD players need to be cabled outside the regular stream to a secondary input on your TV. To watch DVDs, simply toggle the input on your TV. Cable TV-DVD Player-VCR-TV The first cabling scenario we’ll look at (see Figure 1) is the simplest. It involves connecting three devices in your signal streama DVD player, VCR and cable or satellite serviceto your television in a way that allows you to easily use each of them. If your TV includes only one S-video or composite input and an RF input: Select the CATV (RF) input on your television to watch TV. Toggle your TV to the AUX (S-video or composite) input to watch the output of your DVD player. If your TV has two S-video or composite inputs or one channel for each: This scenario is slightly different (see Figure 2), as it replaces the DVD player with a Digital Video Recorder (DVR) like TiVo or ReplayTV, or an Internet set-top box like WebTV. Because DVRs and Internet set-top boxes include EPGs and act as tuners, they need to be positioned at the point closest to the source of your programming. Cable TV-DVD Player (or Internet Set-top Box)-DVR-VCR-TV The main difference in this scenario (see Figure 3) is the presence of both a DVD player and a DVR or Internet set-top box. As you may have guessed, the optimum setup involves a combination of the two scenarios we’ve already discussed. If your TV includes only one S-video or composite input and an RF input: Follow instructions in Option two to connect your cable TV, DVR (or Internet set-top box) and VCR. Select the CATV (RF) input on your television to watch TV. Toggle your TV to the AUX (S-video or composite) input to watch the output of your DVD player. If your TV has two S-video or composite inputs: Follow instructions in Option two to connect your cable TV, DVR (or Internet set-top box) and VCR. Select Input 1 on your television to watch TV. Toggle your TV to Input 2 to watch the output of your DVD player. You can also buy an audio/video hub for your home entertainment system (see Figure 4). This allows you to plug multiple sources into the hub, and then run one cable from the hub to the television.
Select Input 1 on your television to watch TV. Toggle your TV to Input 2 to watch the output of your DVD player.
Cable TV-DVR (or Internet
Set-top Box)-VCR-TV
Cable TV-DVD Player-DVR
(or Internet Set-top Box)-VCR-TV-Hub
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