Tv,DVD,Vid & Freeview connection

[Deborah3108]

Please could someone help me before some poor unsuspecting passer by end's up with the aforementioned technology landing on their head after been launched from my living room window!

Last weekend I bought a Freeview box. I managed to wire it in but couldn't get the sound through my dvd surround sound. No probs - listen to Freeview with the tv sound. I then decided to watch a DVD last night and it wouldn't work. After re-sorting the dvd player this morning (I think the scart lead had come loose) the Freeview won't work. I'm almost certain that it's something to do with having a multi scart adapter from the tv as the tv only has 1 scart lead. The tv is about 5 years old so I'm also wondering whether it just can't cope with all of this modern techology!

The Freeview is coming through onto the AV chanel of the tv but it's all jumpy, the sound is fine. I've tried to re-tune Freeview onto a different channel but that won't work either.

Please can anyone help!!!!!!

Debbie

[DaveB]

It sounds like a dodgy SCART lead. As I guess you have two of them I would connect the Freeview and DVD separately and try and work out which is the bad lead. If your freeview box has two SCART sockets (as mine does) you could also use it to "pass" the DVD signal through, avoiding the use of a multi SCART adaptor.

[Deborah3108]

Dave,
Thankyou for your help.

It seems that when I got myself in a tiswas last night about the DVD not working the scart lead had come out a little bit - but in the meantime, in a fit of anger, I'd unplugged the Freeview and taken it upstairs to try and make it work on the tv up there!

Anyway - after checking the scarts were all in correctly and pushing them in a bit further, the freeview picture improved slightly, as though more information was getting through. So I checked the pins on the scart leads and discovered that one of the pins had got pushed back in so after tweezering it back out again it works!

Many thanks,
Sometimes you just need a suggestion from someone else to make you see the obvious!

Debbie

[Allan Carr]

I've had similar problems with our setup. SCART leads are very prone to coming loose - not a very good design. I bought a Hitachi 3 way switching box and this has a very poor plug on the output - going to have to replace it.

[MartinS]

Deborah
I beleive you may have problems if your multi-scart adapter is not switchable as it will not know which signal to read. If you can get one with a switch, then you just simply switch to the piece of hardware you want to watch.
Also, Homebase do some really good locking scart cables (big chunky scarts with blue cable) which have a really good fit and don't seem to come loose anywhere like the usual black ones, so if you need to buy any new ones, check these out first. Strangely enough, I set up a Freeview box for my mum the other week cos she couldn't get it to work. I came along with a different scart cale and all worked perfectly - it seems the scart provided was absolutely useless, so it went in the bin as I had a few reasonable ones spare at home.
Martin