I was checking to see what kind of cable is hooked on my TV last night. I have a 1996 How to Fix it Yourself book by Reader's Digest & It says a TV can contain 32,000 volts even when unplugged& the most dangerous part is the picture tube anode terminal. So I think that is plenty to kill you or if you survive fry your insides!! We talked to the firemen after the guy got electocuted & the set had been in the corner. He owned the shop & he got it from his father who had retired. He had worked fixing TV's for years. So he was guy who knew TV's well. Then I turned the page & it has warning about your computer monitor & it says it also can carry a lethal charge. If you saw I think it was "60 minutes "last week it showed these things taken to China where all the lead,& several other metals & dangerous things are removed from them. Well, the air there is so bad you can hardly breathe from fumes of this stuff & the workers only last about 2-3 yrs before too sick to work any more. They had to sneek their cameras in !Messing with electronics if you arn't an expert is pretty silly. A lot of the TV's going out will be old ones, mine in LR is 30 yrs old & works just fine until Feb. then I may not get anything even with a new antenna,got a small hd TV & all I get is analog nothing digital, boxes don't work here. Too close to mountains I guess.

Two more things: 1.) Some HDTV converters have VGA outputs, so they can directly drive an computer monitor at full resolution. (I have an old Samsung SIR-T451 converter box that can do this.) However these converter boxes will not be "coupon-eligible". 2.) Yes, there are a number of monitors nowadays that do have built-in TV tuners. Alternatively, you can also buy TV tuner cards that plug into your computer. You can then watch the video in a window, and use the computer for other things at the same time.

Is the 'channel 10' that you are trying to record an analog or digital signal? If analog, then you probably need to turn the converter OFF, so that the 'analog pass through' feature is enabled. Then tune your VCR to channel 10. (If you want to also watch the broadcast, your TV would need to be tuned to either channel 10 or channel 3 - depending on the specifics of your VCR.) If digital, then yes, your VCR would need to be on channel 3 (as does your TV.) If you are recording a digital signal though, you will get better audio and video quality by using the A/V connections from the converter box to the VCR. And same between the VCR and the TV set. I wonder if the reason you couldn't get the A/V connections to work was because some menu option in either the VCR or TV was not set to the correct input? What you might consider is to connect the VCR to the TV using the A/V cables. Period. Then use the TV tuner in the VCR for all the analog tuning for the next 2.5 months. (When watching/recording digital, you would turn the converter box on and set the VCR to channel 3.) After that, just use the A/V cables between the converter box and the VCR. This gets rid of all the 'channel 3' stuff and gives the best quality possible.

Casey, yes that is the case I believe, that I should need no extra plugins for a digital-TV-ready set. I do get both analog and digital versions of all the channels. We've found them through trial and error. The issue I have is the numbering scheme on that TV is different. Sorry if I was unclear. I just used an example of a channel that is on a different spot on the dial. The digital TV B goes up to the high 3 digit channels. I only have the digital starter pack so the QAM channels are the ones from the basic set. I just want to be able to dial them up without having to hunt for them, by using the numbers on the published channel guide. Casey, I will try your suggestion and see if it works. Thanks all!!! --Karen