Hi All,

Here is the situation, I setup a Tivo as Video
1 & a DVD recorder as Video 2. What I wanted to
do is have the DVD recorder only run when I wanted
to make recordings, basically have it monitor
the output of the Tivo & make recordings as
necessary. A lot easier said that done!

I setup the DVD recorder to the 990's second
set of outputs & then took the DVD recorder's
output & put those on a second set of jacks
on my TV. In this situation I figured I would
be able to watch what the DVD was recording on
the TV's second set of RCA jacks (or S-video).

I could not get this to work. Basically the
DVD recorder always showed a blue screen. There
was no signal coming out of the second pair of
outputs on the Preamp, or at least that's how
it appeared. It's as if they didn't work. I
set the jacks of the 990 to Video 1 so I could
see the Tivo playing. But when I flipped to
the DVD-R's TV connection, it was not picking
up what was playing on the Tivo. I could however,
pop in a DVD into the DVD-R & play it without
problems, so I know that the DVD-R was working
at least to the TV.

Has anyone else tried to set it up this way?

Currently, I have it setup in a daisy chain
of Cable -> Tivo -> DVD-R -> 990.

I was trying something like this:

Cable -> Tivo -> 990
DVD-R -> 990

Thanks,
Twitchy_One

I think I may have spotted a potential fix for your original wiring arrangement. I'm assuming that by "second set of outputs" you mean the second zone. If that is the case, then you need to make sure of a few things before you start recording.

1. Make sure the second zone is turned on and set to the correct input (video1 for the Tivo).
2. Make sure the device being recorded has a set of analog audio cables and a video cable that is the same type as the second zone output is using (in other words, if the DVD-R is connected to the s-video output, then you will want to connect an s-video cable from the Tivo to the 990). This is because zone 2 is a purely analog pre-amp with video switching but no video conversion between composite and s-video.
3. Make sure you have the second zone volume set to a level that works well with your recordings (probably somewhat on the high side).

If you do those things, you should be able to get video from the active second zone input to the DVD-R.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll try this out this weekend & get back with you on the results.