I need to know how do you hook up a TV a vcr and a dvd player so you can record from a dvd onto a vcr tape.

You would want to do something like go from video/audio out on the DVD to video/audio in on the VCR. You will need the TV to keep track of where you are. There are several different wiring possibilities. I could go through those if you wish?

The trouble you might be having has to do with copyright protection issues. I'm not sure how they do it, but I have had trouble with this. In fact, I purchased a DVD <> VHS recorder system. I have a large number of VHS tapes that I have purchased over the years and I was running out of space. My plan was to copy them all to DVD. There is some coding protection build in that prevented my system from doing this, but it may only be internal to my system. I haven't tried recording to DVD from a separate VHS system.