home entertainment wiring nightmare (help!)

you should get Y connectors so you can plug both the dvd and the cable box/vcr into the back of the tv (unless the dvd player has an input then do what dave says)

My DVD player doesn't have a cable input or output...

I guess I should narrow the question to exclude the DVD player, since I'm just hooking that directly to the TV. What's confounding me is the VCR-cable box connection. I can get the cable part of it to work fine by going through both of them and then to the TV, but not the VCR part.

Thanks for the suggestions, though.

(perhaps i am digging myself a deeper hypothetical hole)

the ideal solution would be a home cinema amp. That would solve all of the video/audio routing connundrums.

DVD via RCA to TV
Cable from wall to cable box, cable box to VCR, VCR to TV. Then just make sure VCR is set to push the cable signal through (VCR/TV button on remote) and that should make it work.

Is that your setup?

If you can watch cable when the cable box is plugged into the tv via the vcr, then the vcr's signal is fine; therefore you need to fix the vcr setup (i.e. what mookieproof said), I think. Maybe the tuning of the tv has reset so the channel you used to watch the vcr on doesn't pick it up?

Oh I dunno. What everyone else said.

dave: Actually, the TV has RCA in and out jacks.

Another friend has suggested an alternative of wiring the DVD to the cable box, the cable from the wall to the cable box, cable box to VCR, VCR to TV. Which someone on here might have suggested to, I get confused. Anyway, I'll monkey around with all of these things and wait for some magic combination of connections.

Thanks.

If you wire the DVD player downstream from the VCR as your friend suggested it's highly likely you'll see signal degradation (brightness of DVDs fading in and out) because of copy protection. DVDs don't like to be played through VCRs sometimes, it depends on your player though I think.

Thanks for the assists.

Or, next time:

Take some masking tape and label the wires your disconnecting.
It really helped me even when I didn't change houses. I think I was just adding a new unit or something.

so what was the problem/solution ?