I just found out I am moving. For the last 6 months I have been watching satellite(Dish Network) via S-Video on my DTV (Samsung 30 widescreen). My new apartment comes with plain old cable, not digital cable. So I need a recommendation on how to set this up. In the past I have always put cable into the vcr and used that to feed the receiver. However am I better off running cable directly into my tv and than sending the sound to the 950? My first inclination was to purchase one of JVC's S-Video VCRs and use that but I don't know if the picture quality will be any better than using my existing VCR.

Thanks for your help.

DM

Do you record much TV? If not, going straight to the TV and taking the TV's audio output to the 950 would be very straightforward. If you do record some stuff, you could either do the "VCR as cable box" approach, or even both -- pass the cable through the VCR and on to the TV, use the TV as cable tuner most of the time and still be able to record TV and play back video tapes. As for the benefits of S-VHS, if you use regular tapes it won't really make a difference (maybe some, but nothing remarkable). Recording stuff to S-VHS can provide some better video quality. I wouldn't think it would make any difference at all if you were using it solely as a cable box, though. The main reason I bought an S-VHS VCR many years ago (a Panasonic that I'm still using) was because my dad has an S-VHS camcorder, and it offered both a way to watch the tapes and copy them to regular VHS without putting extra wear on the camera.

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gonk -- Saloon Links | Pre/Pro Comparison Chart | 950 Review

As I understand it using a JVC S-video VCR is not going to improve my picture quality on regular TV over just plugging the coax cable into the TV itself. That's too bad. Does the VCR make a noticeable difference when you play back existing movies on VHS?

Thanks for your quick reply Gonk.

DM

I haven't ever really tried a head-to-head comparison between an S-VHS deck and regular VHS deck when watching movies, but I haven't seen any startling differences. If your current VCR is a decent unit, you may not really benefit.

It was mighty handy for using the 1050's video switching because everything was native S-Video (the 1050 does no composite/S-video conversion), although in your case you are probably using component for the DVD player so that won't make any difference for you.

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gonk -- Saloon Links | Pre/Pro Comparison Chart | 950 Review