Answers to your tech queries

Mar 13, 2011 - Naresh Sadhwani & Deepak Jhangiani

I read your article on DTH revolution. I want to know whether I will be able to connect the cable TV signal through Digital TV recorder of reliance recorder or any other Digital recorder. All these recorders will be able to record and play back only the signal beamed by particular company. Do we have digital recorders in the market which can record and play back? Please suggest.

K. Kalyanaswami

The digital recorders from DTH service providers are a combination of the decoder and a recorder and can receive and record only the channels specific to their service. Yes, you get hard drive based digital recorders which will record TV channels from set-top-boxes or can record from AV devices with USB compatibility. They are available from Sony, Philips and some other makers too but are very expensive and presently they are probably not being marketed in the Indian market.

I have been facing problem with the centre speaker of my 5.1 home theater system while playing certain music files. Do you think my speaker could be faulty?
D.P.K., Mumbai

You may feel the absence of the centre speaker while playing instrumental DVDs and music files. A center speaker is reserved for dialog reproduction and is seldom active during music playback and some other content such as DivX files. To verify if your centre speaker is really working, you could perform this test. Firstly check out if your centre speaker is connected firmly in the dedicated centre speaker input. If that is OK, then get hold of an original DVD movie with 5.1— channel Dolby Digital and DTS soundtracks and play it on your system and make sure that all the speakers are rightly positioned. If your center speaker is fine, you will hear very clear dialogue delivery from the center speaker. If you do not have a 5.1 DVD, you could activate Dolby ProLogic II function, which will convert two-channel audio to 5.1 surround sound and if speaker is OK, you will receive sound from your center speaker.

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