Excuse me if this has been answered 1000 times. I couldn't search for vcr, red, box, etc.

Anyway, I have my cable box hooked up to my VCR via coax cable. Then I have another coax cable running from the VCR to the TV. The picture on my TV is fine. When I power up the VCR though and view the picture through it, everything has a muted, reddish glow to it. When I shut the VCR off and go back to the TV, the picture is fine again. I've tried 2 different VCR's and upgraded to Gold cables and it makes no difference. I tape a lot of stuff and it's getting a little annoying to have to watch things of mediocre quality. Any suggestions?

I had a similar issue and I found the tuner in VCR to be the cultprit. The older tuner in my VCR (old Panny) was transmitting a softer picture as compared to the tuner in the cable box. I bought a good quality splitter (RCA digital at Home Depot) and connected to "cable out" on the cable box. Then connected it to VCR and and TV separately. This way I always get a direct connection to TV and I do not have to use the VCR tuner at all except when recording.

That sounds like the same problem. I just bought a new VCR though, and it didn't solve the problem. So what you're saying is that when you recorded things after using the splitter, it looked OK? Or did things still look softer when you watched taped footage? That's the problem I'm having. The picture coming out of my VCR to the TV looks fine, it's just the picture through the VCR tuner that's soft. Weird.

If you input signal from cable to VCR and then to TV, you're forced to use VCR tuner which is resulting in a softer picture. The recorded material looks great from the VCR because it doesn't use VCR tuner to output. Moreover, I'm not using RF output for watching recorded material, I use a composite connection via receiver. By using a splitter, I all together avoid using the VCR tuner.

I don't watch cable through my VCR though. I only turn on my VCR when I'm going to tape something and that's when the picture goes south. The connections I have are Cable box ----> VCR -----> TV. Most of the time the VCR is off and the picture on my TV is fine, even though it's coming through the VCR unit (powered off). It's when I turn my VCR on and click my video/tv button on the tv that I get the softer picture, aka the VCR tuner problem. Splitting the cables from the box won't make a difference in my case because the problem seems to be with the VCR tuner. Like I said the picture to my TV is fine when the VCR is off. Does that make sense?

I guess my main question is now, how can you make the VCR tuner stop messing with the picture?