Watching something while recording something else- Standby- question...

849 Views 4 Replies 4 Participants Last post by ZikZak, Sep 25, 2007

Cad0587

Discussion Starter · Sep 25, 2007

We have a weird setup. If you press Inputs on our remote, ANT A and Input 2 will show you TV. BUT... the tivo only works on ANT A (if you press the tivo button on Input 2 nothing will happen) and our HD channels only show up HD on Input 2, not on ANT A. So I saw in my Tivo Viewer's Guide about the Standby option in which you can watch something else while recording something. I did an experiment and it didn't work! But I did exactly what it said to do. I tried going to ANT A, recording something, doing the whole standby thing, changing the channel, then when I watched what I recorded it showed the channel change. I then tried to go to ANT A, start recording something, do the standby thing, go to Input 2 and change the channel and then I went back to look at what I recorded and it also showed the channel change! This is when I realized that when you change the channel on ANT A it also changes it on Input 2 and vice versa, so these two things can never be on different channels (I don't know if that has anything to do with it) What am I doing wrong? Recording something and watching something different was a HUUUUGE draw for me with the whole Tivo purchase, without it I'm really going to not like this whole thing as much as I'm supposed to!

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windracer

· #2 · Sep 25, 2007

We need some more info on your setup. It sounds like you have a splitter somewhere. How is your cable connected?

It sounds like you've got coax coming into the TiVo, then out from the TiVo to Ant A on your TV. And maybe you've got the composite outputs of the TiVo connected to Input 2 of the TV as well?

But then you mention HD channels on input 2, so those can't be coming through the TiVo. Do you have a cable box in the mix somewhere?

More details on the actual setup will help.

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Cad0587

Discussion Starter · #3 · Sep 25, 2007

We do have a cable box. But I really don't know much more than that :-/ Let me ask this, how SHOULD it be set up so you could do the standby thing and maybe I can have my husband or his father do whatever it is that needs to be done haha.

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mick66

· #4 · Sep 25, 2007

When you have a cable box the standby pass through thing is not needed. In order to watch one thing while tivo records another, you need to split the cable. One side of the split goes to the cable box and then the cable box gets connected to the TV via composite cables. The other goes directly to the TV which needs to be controled with the TV's own remote and NOT the cablebox remote - no standby necessary.

If you didn't have a cable box, you would connect the cable to the RF input on the Tivo and then connect the RF output on the Tivo the the TV's RF input. When in standby, the tivo can still record and the cable signal is also passed through to the TV's tuner that you would use to watch something else. You could also just split the cable and connect one side to the Tivo and the other directly to the TV and not have to mess with standby.

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ZikZak

· #5 · Sep 25, 2007

Standby doesn't work when you are using a cable box. You will have to run a bypass line as mick suggests if you wish to do this. See wiring diagrams in the link at the bottom of this post.

Cad0587 said:
Recording something and watching something different was a HUUUUGE draw for me with the whole Tivo purchase, without it I'm really going to not like this whole thing as much as I'm supposed to!

Keep in mind that tivo users record something and watch something different all the time--- by getting season passes for all of their programs and then selecting something from Now Playing to watch. The only time you need to bypass the tivo is if you need to watch two programs that are actually aired at the same time and neither are ever repeated (rare). Since splitting the cable degrades the cable signal, you should make the decision to do it based only on whether you need to watch unrepeated programs that are aired simultaneously.

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