VCR does not play when hooked to a high def. TV

[hoffmavl]

This post is for a friend he has a TV that is High Def. it uses a card to activate the high def. His cable is coming from the TV into the vcr and then to the DVD. The TV plays but the vcr will not, he did find out if he pulls the card out the TV the vcr will display the move, their is nothing wrong with the DVD. One last thing the vcr is not high def. does that make the problem?

[Vegito72]

I don't know why, but I do know this. There is no such thing as a high-def VCR.

[dnix71]

Yep, a vcr can't play hi-def. When you pull the card the cable signal defaults to something the vcr can handle. If you want to save hi-def movies to be played back later, call your cable rep and ask what they have and how much it costs.

Ask for a cable box with a harddrive so you can watch one program and record another.

[davidsama]

I think you may have to go the dvr route since your vcr is not going to work it seems.

[Marvingj]

Wrong, Wrong, Wrong....

The D-VHS format is a marriage of two things: tape speed (which is proportional to the amount of data that is recordable and inversely proportional to the length of recording that can fit onto a tape) and the amount of MPEG-2 compression used. For instance, a high definition MPEG-2 data stream with reduced compression would require the machine to run at its fastest speed, recording maybe two hours at 28.4 megabits per second. A more compressed HDTV signal transmitted using the FCC mandated bandwidth of 19.4 megabits per second would permit the D-VHS VCR to record at a slower speed, recording 3.5 hours of an HDTV signal (but with more artifacts and less quality because of the increased compression). MPEG-2 can be adjusted to very high compression rates permitting as much as 49 hours to be recorded on a D-VHS tape. Thus the D-VHS format is extremely flexible allowing a wide range of image qualities and record times.