Of learning about audio and video

Wiring in our house has been done for having Internet access in every room, connect all computers, and record and play from every player watching everything on every screen.
In my other life, when I was whole, we managed to enjoy almost anything anywhere, but in these last long months I have neglected most of our "wired house". I didn't feel like watching anything alone, except while curled up in bed. And the TV set there is old and not connected to the rest of the house!

Despite all this wiring I am still at loss when I have to pass information from a computer to another, or to play something that I recorded somewhere else. So preparing all videos for the conventions is something I dread. For STICCON I managed to connect a couple of media players to one computer, and that’s been enough. But for the impending Reunion I had a more difficult task to accomplish: to record from a source that was not connected to a media player with only a vague idea how to connect it.

Today, while I was trying to get the job done, these has been my thoughts...

Why I cannot monitor video from the media player through RCA jacks puts into its RCA sockets?
Why I can only hear audio (and with a disturbing "Daleks effects" in it)?
Why the media player does not record at all (monitor or not) from the source?
Why I can monitor the media player only now that I put the RCA jacks into a RCA-Scart adaptor and inserted it in the media player Scart socket?
Why I can hear and see perfectly now?
Why I can record now that I inserted our old VHS player between the source and the media player through RCA-Scart and Scart-RAC cables?
Why?
I still don't know the answers. It just works.

That's the wrong way of doing things, though. Because if I'd have to repeat the whole thing I will have no knowledge of how to do it, and my memory will not be good enough to remember the wiring I used today. In a few days the media player will be disconnected and brought to the Reunion and when I'll be back home I will not surely remember which goes where!

If Alberto was here it would be a piece of cake!
And if I had listened to him more than I did, I should be able to do it again... Alberto’s always insisted that I learned how things worked in details. And I always listened, but not enough. Actually I did not care enough to remember properly because I unconsciously thought that any effort on my part would be pointless - he would always be there to teach me, wouldn't he?

Alas... he is not here and I didn't learn.