Frustrated with dvd recorder

My household has just got a very expensive sony dvd recorder, and i thought 'great, i can start recording the babe shows now,

However it is ridiculously complicated to work and Im losing the will with it.

Ill explain the main problem.

I can start recording a babe channel from my sky box.

because other people are in the house i dont want them turning on the tv with boobs in their face, so i use the normal tv remote to turn the tv to a terrestial channel while the babe channel is still recording.

However, when i turn the tv back on, it automatically switches back on to the babe channel - not what i want at all.

I know its hard helping when you dont know the set up of the dvd recorder, tv etc but any help would be brilliant. Ill rep anyone who can sort the problem out.

I hope i can explain this properly. I have a tv set with two scarts and red/yellow/white connection at the front. I also have a sony dvd recorder with built in freeview. An old dvd player is connected to the tv via one of the scarts - if this is switched on the tv automatically defaults to what is playing on it or its screensaver. The dvd recorder is connected via the r/y/w inputs and you have to switch to them to get that picture. So to cut a long story short connect the dvd recorder via the r/y/w if you can - if you've got a tv that doesn't have them - like i have in the bedroom i suspect you're knackered but then i'm not that techno minded so someone else may know if it's possible, either way good luck.

If you go into 'services' on your Sky box then go to 'system setup' and then 'picture settings' you will see 'Scart control' This should be set to off and the TV will not receive the AV1 trigger and should stay on terrestrial TV.If this doesn't work because some TV's ignore this then do what the above poster suggests.Scart leads have the 'trigger' wire in them so will always try to overrule any other mode the TV is in.If you only have scart connectors on your DVD recorder then you need to get a pair of scart to composite adaptors.This is just a small connector with a scart socket on one side and yellow,white and red RCA connectors on the other. Connect these two with a triple Y,W and R lead and you should be OK.The only down side to this is you will be recording composite video instead of RGB video which is of a higher quality.I have done this though and to be honest you won't notice the difference when recording the 900 channels as most of them don't have a high enough resolution to show any improvement the RGB may offer.
Hope this helps!

Dreamlander

If your setup is Sky>Recorder>TV then this will work.If it's Recorder>Sky>TV then the lead needs to be between Sky>TV.

thanks dreamlander, that seems to have worked.

one other thing, im not sure if im able to do this, but is there any way of watching one sky programme while recording another. At the moment when i try and do it the recorder simply records whatever is on the screen including the swapping of channels. I cant seem to start the recording of one, and then browse others at the same time.

Unfortunately it is not possible with a standard or Plus box.The Plus box will obviously record two channels itself but will only output the channel you are playing or watching.The amount of times I have wished that the AV2 output could be switched to output recorded programmes so I could convert to DVD and still watch Sky! It would save time and still allow me to not miss something on TV! I would love a Sky Plus box with a built in DVD recorder but I think Sky are worried about the thousands of extra phone calls and call outs they would have to deal with when trying to explain to non techy folk how everything worked!
Glad the fix worked!

Dreamlander

yeah cheers, repping you.