I have my panasonic th50pz700 connected to skyhd connected through hdmi and ps3 through hdmi my dvd recorder is connected via scart. my problem is I can't interrupt tv broadcasts or sky broadcasts by pressing play on the dvd/vhs recorder .I have to manually swich to av to watch video. Unless the tv happens to be in ec/hdmi mode at which point everything works perfectly as I want it to . The problem being it appears to only randomly select ec/hdmi mode and there doesn't seem to be an obvious way to do this directly
please help

It would help if you told us the make/model no of the DVDR.

Panasonic DMREZ47VEBS

The panasonic's EC mode is a frustrating beast. It only works as long as you haven't manually changed sources - including changing to analogue/digital TV. As long as you keep your fingers away from the input buttons you should be ok.

Once you have autoswitching is gone until the next time you turn the TV on. (Going into standby appears to switch it back to EC mode as well.)

God that sounds complex , i'm frightened to touch my remote now !

Try connecting the DVD/VCR to the Sky HD VCR scart. This is the scart which enables devices to pass through the Sky box. I used to have my VCR connected in this way and when you press PLAY the Sky signal is interrupted and when you press STOP the picture reverts to Sky.

Rgds,
Scorp

I rushed to the back of my TV to check the connection and it appears to be already connected like that , so it's the ec/Hdmi function that's buggering everything up as it works sometimes and not others