How Did OTA Recordings work with VCR's before DTV?

[Benjaminm_00]

In my house we kick it old school. We still use a VCR to do recordings from satellite tv. Our current box is a DVD/VCR combo and only can record via RCA. Of course we have a few old VCR's laying around and I have a question about them. How did one once record a tv show from an OTA broadcast on a VCR? Did they have tuners built in? How did you set what channel you wanted recorded? Were you stuck recording just channel 3 or 4?Did you need a separate device to tune? I am aware these days tv broadcasts are digital and you need a converter box or a tv with a digital converter built in. Now, you can simply take the output from the converter box and record from that. Thanks

 

[tynopik]

Did they have tuners built in?

yes

 

[Ken g6]

Tuners were simpler and cheaper before DTV.



One early VCR I used had one tuner, manually tuned, for every potential channel. Rather like an old car stereo, but each channel had its own little adjustment dial.

Later, TVs and VCRs got self-adjusting tuners that looked for the strongest signal in a channel. Of course, your converter box still has that, but it has a lot more decoding hardware and software too.

 

[Ichinisan]

Yes. Recording OTA was what people generally referred to when they said "program the VCR." Basically, tune [X-channel] at [Y-time] and record for [Z-minutes].

There was always a "TV/VCR" button on the remote control to disable the channel-3 output and pass RF through through to the TV so you could tune/watch a different channel than the one your VCR is recording on.

 

[Oyeve]

Tuners were simpler and cheaper before DTV.



One early VCR I used had one tuner, manually tuned, for every potential channel. Rather like an old car stereo, but each channel had its own little adjustment dial.

Later, TVs and VCRs got self-adjusting tuners that looked for the strongest signal in a channel. Of course, your converter box still has that, but it has a lot more decoding hardware and software too.

Ug, I remember that. Had to use a little yellow plastic tool to adjust each channel. Kids have it so easy today.

 

[JeffMD]

Haha..i remember those manual fine tune controls on one of our first VCRs. However I had cable most of my child hood and so my setup was more "set the timer and leave the cable channel on x station".