I taught our Countryside Homemaker's Club that exercising our brain is an important step in 'Embracing Your Age'. This week I got to do that without playing a computer game or working a Sudoku.
I needed some copies of VHS tapes made into DVD's. Papa is my source for this. He has the equipment and the time. However, there were issues.
A couple of weeks ago his television wore out. He purchased a new one at Walmart and got it all set up. He had to call Direct TV for some help but he got through getting it set up for his enjoyment pretty much on his own.
When I left the VHS tapes with him, we thought all would be okay for him to do them. However, he could not get the VHS/DVD Recorder to work with the new television. I went to his apartment last Sunday and tried to help him get it set up. This is really what Claude would do at our home, not an area I usually tread in at all. But Claude was busy and I figured I could work it out.
Last Sunday, Papa and I spent a long time and didn't get that VHS/DVD Recorder to work at all. Finally I told Papa I was going to take the recorder home with me and try it on my television. We were concerned that the technology in his television was newer than what the recorder could work with. We searched through his drawer full of instruction books and found all kinds of interesting things before finally finding only one piece of paper that seemed to work with his recorder. I took it, the remote, the recorder and the cabling to go between the recorder and the televsion home with me.
This week I took one morning to stop and see if I could get it to work. It took a lot of effort. The piece of paper only addressed possibility for connecting the recording equipment to the television for several different recording possibilities. There were no instructions for how to use the record to actually record something.
I did get it set up so I had a picture on my television when I played a VHS tape or a DVD through the recorder. This was progress. Next I needed to figure out how to get it to record. My sixth attempt I finally figured out the correct set of steps to record. I even made a recording of the VHS tape I had at home that I wanted a copy of. Yeah Me!!!
Thursday afternoon I took the VHS/DVD Recorder back to Papa with confidence our problem was in the set up and not with the television being able to talk to the recorder. It took several tries but I finally got it to have a black and white picture. This bothered me because I knew the video was in color that I recorded. I even put the DVD in Papa's computer so he could see I was telling the truth and the recording on the DVD did have color on his computer even though it displayed black and white on his television.
Back to he television and I tried some other connections with the cable and finally got the right one!! Who would have thought? Yep, I'm pleased with my 'mental exercise' and its success. Papa now can play his DVD's on this set up and also just change a few buttons and record as needed.
Papa is happy. I am happy. And...as an added bonus...I found Papa's copy of the DVD's we made last year that I needed a replacement made of three of them. Papa can do that easily on another DVD recorder he also owns. Life is good...for a bit.
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