Hooking Up A 35yo Betamax VCR Improved Reception. Why?

We dropped cable today, and after hooking the antenna up and seeing some fuzzy channels, I seemed to recall that my TV in junior high used to pick up channels better with my family's old Betamax VCR in the connection than it did without. So I just went and fished it out of the closet it was in, hooked it up, and sure enough, the channels are much clearer. Can anyone tell me *why*?

 

I figure it's because the VCR acts like a signal amplifier.

 

Me, too, except I don't recall any of my other VCRs ever doing this. Maybe it's something specific to this model, though.

 

If it's a sufficiently older model, and a Betamax would certainly be older, then it's likely a solid state machine.

 

In which connection? The F-connector for RF/antenna signals, or the composite video connections on the TV? One thing is for certain, the Betamax is not acting like a signal amplifier because all TV transmission in the US (I'm assuming you're in the US) is now digital. You might run into some low-power transmitters that are still analog, but they'd be rare.

If you are seeing any improvements, it is possible the VCR is acting like a matching transformer, but that's total guess work. You haven't told us what kind of TV, or antenna, etc. In fact, even analog composite video connectors are becoming rarer on new TVs. A common digital antenna these days—good for about 100 Km—looks like a flat sheet of plastic about the size of a chess board.

For anyone who remembers TV antennas from the days of analog transmission, digital antennas seem near miraculous. Cable TV has been the only way to go for a long time. But thanks to the advances that come with digital transmission (error checking and the like), many people are now discovering that they no longer need cable service. For those who want special programming above the "basic tier" service, Internet streaming has become the alternative of choice.

 

Perhaps it's the same reason these power cables can make an audio system sound so much better.

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Because, they don't make things like they used to, isn't just a cliche.

Manufacturers are constantly, new and improving, not to actually make a product better but to shave manufacturing costs for increasing profit.

And everything is becoming "tiered" quality wise. If you want something as good as the thing you are replacing then it will probably need to be Top Tier at Premium prices. The replacement thing at the price you want to pay..., say, at the same price you paid for the thing being replaced, will now be a piece of shit.

Anyway, my point is, the old vcr tuner is probably of better quality than the tvs.

 

A Betamax deck would not have an ATSC tuner. Try again.

 

The coax. Coax (from the cable company. but there's not supposed to be service on the line, so I'm effectively using the wiring as an antenna until I can get someplace to buy an actual antenna this Friday) comes out of the wall, goes into the input on the Beta, then back out the "To TV" coax connector to the TV. With the coax plugged straight into the TV, I was getting a lot of fuzz on the analog channels (which are cable company channels that are somehow still bleeding through) and digital artifacting on most of the digital OTA channels. With the Beta in the circuit, those analog channels came in a LOT clearer, and the digital artifacting cleared up a lot on all of the digital channels except for two, which disappeared altogether (43-1 and 43-2). This is without using the Beta's tuner at all, as far as I can tell - the Beta is plugged into an outlet but is actually off, and it is still having this effect.

(Oh, and btw - when I get the antenna, I'll be removing the cable company's coax from the equation - just so no one thinks I'm actively trying to steal cable. In case anyone would actually care. I'm really only concerned with what effect the Beta has had on those channels as a matter of curiosity, not to watch them.)

 

The best explanation I can think of is that the signal now has to go through the circuitry of the Betamax which probably smooths out the signal even if the machine isn't switched on.

 

Wouldn't need to. It is just in the chain leading to the RF connector. He isn't actually using the VCR as a tuner.

 

Anyone have an extra BetaMax deck they can let me use for a bit?

 

To be fair, though, I only really spelled that out *after* they posted that about the tuner.

 

I was able to figure out what you meant.

 

If you're plugged into the wall to use the wiring as an antenna, that might explain something. If it's cable wiring, it will be coaxial cable, which is shielded. I doubt you would pick up anything with that. It might just be that plugging in the VCR provides a little more unshielded area to pick up the signal.

 

I used to have to turn off the speakers on my old PC when the computer was off because the speakers would get remarkably clear reception from CV radio traffic a the expressway three blocks away. I haven't had that problem with any NEWER speaker sets, but a couple of months ago I tried plugging in the old ones to see if they still worked. They don't -- something wrong with the connector to the PC -- but the CV radio still comes through clear as a bell. I mention this because this was my first very early lesson about how radio waves work: the same signal that travels through a wire can also travel through the air.

So the same rules probably apply. My guess is this: the coax signal coming through the cable is basically a radio signal traveling down a waveguide. The electronic components in the Beta deck are configured in just the right way to resonate and amplify that signal. In other words, it's like a complicated version of the old aerials from broadcast TV. The VCR's components -- some or all of them -- are behaving like an antenna.

It doesn't really matter if the VCR is off, in fact that's probably the only reason it works (any additional electronic activity would just be noise).

 

Did you mean CB radio?

 

When my old TV tuner performed awfully, I heard urban legends about VCRs (not Betamax) improving the signal like that when you use them as simple passthrough, but I never got to test them as I simply used the much better tuner in the VCR at the time. Never even considered comparing the two connections. I might one day take it apart to see what circuitry is there out of curiosity, because not believing the urban legends I always thought it's something similar to a regular splitter, which shouldn't improve anything.

Now, my VCR tuner is not going to help with digital TV channels, but those are generally more tolerant of somewhat bad signal (redundancy or parity I guess?), and when the signal is too bad they break down too fast, particularly the encrypted ones, so in most situations there shouldn't be a difference (but if there is, it's bound to be easily visible).

 

No, I meant CV radio. You know, the stuff they used to talk to people on before we had DBDs, when we were still using BCRs.

I can tell you it's not just a legend. In the early 90s the clearest TV picture in the house was back room TV because that was the only one that had a VCR attached to it. I remember accidentally turning the VCR off a few times and seeing the picture suddenly get fuzzy and everyone else in the room yelling "Hey, what'd you do! Turn it back on!"

 

Its an uneducated guess, but maybe the vcr gives the screen on the coax a good, stable ground that it isn't getting through the modern plastic cased appliances.