you said you tried hooking it up with the composite A/V cables, did you flip your televisions "INPUT' mode to video or video out? there should be a button to press on your tv's remote or on the television itself.

If you have a set of A/V ports on the television leave your DVD player hooked up through those and hook up your converter and VCR using this video:

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5yLDd_hYiM[/YOUTUBE]

So you have your DVD player running through the A/V jacks, and your converter box/vcr going through the Coax. Flipping to 'video' mode when you want to use your dvd player.

Another way you could do it is if your VCR has A/V jacks on it you can run the DVD player through those and flip your VCR to "video out" or "video" mode using the VCR's remote or by pressing the button on the VCR itself.