To my utter shock and surprise, I was able to locate my STB7766G1 user manual after these many months. The more I wish to keep something, the more likely I can make that something disappear. I shall endeavor to work out how to kill that block. This appears on pages 17-20, or the very back of my edition of the user manual.

If you happen to read Spanish you may follow along here: http://www.ezdigitaltv.com/RCA_STB7766G1_Manual.html
With some effort, I have found a version in English. It is a PDF file. Which should immediately download to your computer: http://www.1800customersupport.com/productdocuments/STB7766G1_Venturer.pdf

• With the remote control that comes with the device, press MENU
• right arrow, right arrow to select “LOCK” menu at the very top of the screen
• down arrow to position cursor on the input field
• enter 8888 to unlock “parental control”

This should clear the previous settings, whatever they are. If it doesn’t: arrow down to TV Rating – General and set it to TV-MA, then Movie Rating and set it to X. Unlike the television manufacturers, I shall presume you can hold your consumption of adults-only material to reasonable levels.

If, in fact, the box shows no restrictions at all but somehow the machine continues to let you view next to nothing, you may require another box.

If, as often happens, my advice is, as the young folks say, epic fail, the manual is above. Very good luck to you.

What I have in lieu of proper understanding which is at least a year old now, KTBC was returning to Ch. 7 some time after analog-switch-off day. Working upon the assumption analog-switch-off day was in February, perhaps they have done exactly that. Later still, October-November, they would go to full-power. I no longer remember why this was so, but the only plausible technical reason is that they are protecting a temporary reallocation in Waco or San Antonio. Possibly KLRN who will be returning to Ch. 9 from 8 sometime before the end of the year.

If it is any solace, KTBC is not coming in especially well in South Austin, either. At the moment, I wonder what the signal is like inside KTBC’s downtown studios. I’ll bet they have cable.

KTBC is not broadcasting on UHF 56 any longer. They shut down the UHF 56 transmitter and moved their broadcast over to the vacated VHF channel 7 (after shutting off the analog transmitter). Well, that’s what they claim anyway, I live in Georgetown and can no longer even recieve a bad signal, it’s as if KTBC just shutdown completely. I had been able to watch HDTV broadcasts from KTBC for over 20 months (since Fall 2007), but not any more. Why the KTBC management chose to shut off the good signal on channel 56 and replace it with a low power VHF signal on channel 7 is beyond understanding. Is somebody actually being paid to make such stupid decisions? Why would they even want to be on VHF when all the other broadcast TV is in UHF? Isn’t the goal of successful OTA TV broadcaster to try to reach as large of audience as your FCC license allows? Do KTBC’s sponsors/advertisers know that they have just cut off 10′s of thousands of potential viewers? Totally insane…

Oh yes, if you’re using RCA cables double check that all the ins-and-outs are exactly right. My inappropriate confidence in my ability to use RCA cables has cost me hours of twiddling. You may still have a poorly manufactured cable somewhere.

Do be certain the TV is in fact tuned to the channel to which the VCR is broadcasting. It never hurts to check, and if its one over you may get these very symptoms.

Radio-frequency wire transmission for such things as VCRs, SelectaVision discs, cable boxes, video-gaming systems and the first home computers operate under the assumption you have one device you want to look at on one television, and that’s it. The only other thing you would want to do with that television, in theory, is watch over-the-air programming. In practice you would turn to channel three or four and watch your gadget, then effortlessly tune all of your other channels normally.

This was acceptable as long as you lived in a town with no signal on both channels three and four, and used only one newfangled thingamajig on one TV. By the early 1990s this all changed with the ubiquitous VCR, a cable box and occasionally a video-gaming system all going into the same television set. The cable-VCR combo was most common and the solution was to plug the cable-TV signal into the VCR, then use the channel selector in the VCR exclusively; the TV tuned to one channel, either three or four, all the time. The solution to the converter box dilemma descends from this idea.

I remember getting panicked calls from friends and family at untoward hours of the night because the TV had somehow found its way a channel other than the channel four of my hometown (channel three was in use by a broadcast station) and “nothing worked”. This could not be explained over the phone, and sometimes required a round trip of several hours simply to switch the TV and not the VCR and not the cable box but only the television with a knob or display reading “5″ from channel five to four.

This is the primary reason RCA cables, the red, white and yellow wires used on DVD machines, are now the preferred method of connecting such devices. The twenty-first century promised to do away with all this, but here we are.

Assuming you have a VCR of the vintage that it uses only the RF cable to communicate:
Plug the converter box into the VCR as though it were the TV. That is, antenna to the converter box and the RF cable out to the VCR’s antenna connector.
Connect the VCR to the TV normally. That is the VCR’s RF-out cable to the television’s antenna input.
Both the television set and the VCR should be set to different channels; the TV stays on channel three and the VCR on channel four or vise versa.
Converter box output should be set to the channel received by the VCR.
The VCR output should be set to the channel received by the TV.

This precludes the possibility of setting the VCR to record successfully on any channel other than the channel to which the converter box is communicating. Remember, the VCR always records from its singular channel. The converter box must be turned on, of course. I know of no solution to this. I do not know of a modern device to which you may merely record TV with the relative ease, and absence of subscription services like ye olde VCR. Well, not anything you can just show up at a store and buy, anyway.

You may have devices which output or can receive signals with RCA cables. For both technical reasons I can’t remember right now, and ease of use this is the preferred method. These wires are for sale everywhere, Fry’s, Target, even H-E-B or Walgreens, if you are not the kind of person prone to storing the ones which come with your consumer electronics “just in case.”

Any device using RCA-in would be set to “Line” or sometimes “AV” (usually on the remote control) instead of a television channel. This does nothing to relieve the annoyance of having to make certain the converter box is tuned to the channel you want to record before you leave the house.

Finally, this does mean just to sit back and watch TV in the evening requires powering up three different machines. The TV, which does little but accept input from the VCR.The VCR which does little other than accept input from the converter box, which it can now reliably record.The converter box which is used to tune television channels, adjust the volume and so forth.It is an inelegant solution, but it does work well. Except for having to make certain your converter box is tuned to the singular channel from which you wish to record something on the VCR while you are away.

I guess I should make a video about this, but I’ll have to find my VCR. I’m a bit fond of Hulu and You Tube for my TV fix these days.

About PBS: The PBS Kids 24-hour feed was killed a little while back, Wikipedia says 2006. I read rumors that it had something to do with rights and royalties for all of the studios involved with the old programming they were using. PBS is running that PBS Kids programming on a subscription-television channel called Sprout about which I know little other than it is commercially supported. The old PBS YOU or “your own university” was killed around the same time, possibly due to rampant disinterest in the channel. I never actually saw it, but it was primarily university-credit courses.

Evidently Create is programming controlled entirely by PBS and the only subchannel offering at this time.

And I am still wondering why ACTV isn’t on somebody’s subchannel.

A while ago KLRU used to have two additional subchannels, 18-2 and 18-3. One was programming aimed toward kids but I forget the other. I wonder why they cut it down to just KLRU/Create, and if they’ll ever go back to that earlier arrangement?

What is Univision using on their subchannel?

Unlike good old-fashioned television, the channel allocations for digital TV, at least during the transition phase, are a great big mess. This is why every box needs to scan for locally available channels. The hardest part of setting up digital TV must be done automatically. The channels to which you are accustomed are still broadcasting the old TV, and the new TV is on other channels reasonable people cannot be bothered to memorize.

Using the remote control press: Menu, Down, Enter. You’ll see what it is actually doing on the screen. I’m asking you to activate the “Scan Channels” command. Just about all the channels in your area should then be memorized by the unit. Due to some kind of post-space-age magic the channel number will appear on the screen as you expect, and the channels will still order the same way. In my town every station is actually on some other channel but according to the unit Fox is still 7, NBC is still 36, CBS is still 42 and so on.

Until you “scan channels” the box just doesn’t know what to do.

Then you can pump your details into AntennaWeb to see if you really need a new antenna. If you are in town (within 20 miles of your favorite stations), I will recommend the Terk TV-5. It’s the best indoor antenna for the money.

That’s a neat “snow” effect you have there, but for a minute I thought I was having vision problems.

I’m going to have to think about this digital conversion thing eventually… but I hate TV, so I’ll most likely procrastinate.