Hlep with connections on dish and cable

[jsrabbit]

I had dish network installed last week. I was not able to be here for the installation and the person who was, is not tech savvy.
Not that I AM! But I stumble through. I would have asked a lot of questions.....

The model 625 Dish 500 was installed and my other equipment was left unhooked from the tv. (and to my dismay, the installer even used one of my cables!)

I also have cable tv. (I must have this to get local channels) I was able, with the book left behind, to figure out how to add the cable tv line to the dish box, and get it to the tv.

I have a converter box. (is it called an rf converter?) The vcr, dvd player, and a game system are hooked to this.
Its no longer hooked to my tv.

Here is my problem. I need the vcr to be able to record shows on cable.
I am not so worried about even hooking up the dvd player or game system.

The line for the cable runs into the dish box. Then on the channel 3-4 a line runs out to my tv.

How do I run the cable line to be able to record the cable shows, BUT STILL be able to just push the power button and shut off the dish and have instant access to my cable channels?

I tried a couple of ways hooking and unhooking and all I ended up with was a horrible picture on cable reception and lost some channels.

Can anyone tell me which route I take to get where I am going here?

Thanks a million!

 

[Andrewwski]

Run the line from the cable into the VCR, then to the dish box, then to your TV. You'll only be able to watch the VCR when the dish box is off then, but you can record cable channels when watching dish.