hooking up my US TV and VCR to Sky?

We brought over my HDTV and a dvd/vcr combo to keep the kidlings entertained while we unpacked and waited for SKY to be installed. They work fine on a stepdown converter.

They Sky guy came, hooked up our new TV and then fussed with the US-made electronics for an hour. He managed to get SKY working, but only in B&W and with no sound.
 
Told me to try a SKART to 3 RCA cable and I'd be set, reworked the cables so the DVD player would work again, and off he went - before explaining how the darn thing SHOULD be wired once I have the cables (even though I asked him twice)

I have my SKART cable, but can't seem to tune in Sky at all - not even the B&W and no sound version.

Has anyone managed to get SKY to work on their NTSC tv and dvd player, or am I destined to go buy the cheapest TV I can find, along with the cheapest DVD player that will play both PAL and NTSC.
If you did get it work, can you go over with simple minded me what goes where? Did you need a separate Scart to the TV and to the VCR? And I thought getting it set up in the US was a pain in the ars*.

SkyGuy also told me that most cheap DVD players will play both NTSC and PAL, as everyone here likes to buy the less expensive US DVDs....is this true, or do I need to find a multi region player (and where).

The kids don't watch much TV, but I am getting used to being able to watch an occasional program of my own in the sitting room - would love to keep Disney to the playroom!

Thanks so much!

I should add that I have no need to record, just to play -- if purchasing a new tv (that wil work with my NTSC dvd/vcr player) is an option, I'm open to that to, if there is no way to configure properly!

Most DVD players can be made multi==region, using a code entered via the remote. Both mine are, don't need to keep switching the region either

If you buy a cheap DVD player and find that it's not multiregion already (some are already, some are not), you can go online and Google how to hack your model. As Tykeman said, it's just a code you punch into the remote under certain instructions that will also be online.

As for the VCR section -- I had to buy a DVD/VCR multiregion that can play my US tapes as well as my US dvds (I also wanted to record to DVD so that was an additional reason to buy the jumped up machine I bought).

Told me to try a SKART to 3 RCA cable and I'd be set, reworked the cables so the DVD player would work again, and off he went - before explaining how the darn thing SHOULD be wired once I have the cables (even though I asked him twice)

I have my SKART cable, but can't seem to tune in Sky at all - not even the B&W and no sound version.

It's SCART - Syndicat des Constructeurs d'Appareils Radiorécepteurs et Téléviseurs.   

What he was telling you to do is use a SCART-to-RCA cable to connect the individual video signals to the inputs on your TV, which will bypass the PAL vs. NTSC encoding issues.

The problem you might have is that there are two different types of component video connections.  One, commonly referred to as RGB, provides separate red, green, and blue video signals along three separate wires, and this is the component video output you have at a SCART socket.  The other component video system which is more widespread on U.S. TV sets still uses three separate connections but with luminance plus two color-difference signals, often marked on the jacks as Y/Cr/Cb or Y/Pr/Pb (U.K. sets have increasingly provided this option in recent years too).   The two systems are incompatible. 

So if the satellite receiver has only a SCART socket for video outputs, and your TV won't accept composite PAL video, it will need individual RGB inputs to work with a SCART-to-RCA cable.

You still need to connect the audio portion separately.  Many Sky boxes have separate L/R RCA jacks for audio output which you can link directly to matching RCA audio inputs on the TV, but if the SCART sockets are the only option provided, you'll need an adapter cable which not only provides the component video feeds but also two more RCA connections for the audio.

Can you list the sockets which are provided on the back of the units, or better yet a detailed photograph?

SkyGuy also told me that most cheap DVD players will play both NTSC and PAL, as everyone here likes to buy the less expensive US DVDs....is this true, or do I need to find a multi region player (and where).

There are two separate issues: There is NTSC vs. PAL and the related scanning systems, and there is region coding.  Generally, the two will coincide since the DVDs are sold for the appropriate market, but technically they are separate issues, so as well as supporting both video formats the player will need to be multi-region ("region free").