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Here's how my three jacks in the living room were wired at the factory.
One of the them has a little pushbutton that lights up a little red or green light. This is the preamp. Its jack is the one that you hook your TV's "antenna" jack to. Label it TV.
Of the remaining two jacks, one goes to the jack outside for the cable/sat connection, and the other connects behind the preamp. You can buy a coax tracer---or simply unscrew the jack plates and wiggle a pair of cables to quickly deduce which one is which.
Label the one that goes outside "Input" and connect your cable/sat box's input jack to it. The remaining jack is the "Output" and, not surprisingly, connects to the box's output.
If you want to use cable without an external box, simply connect a short jumper between the Input and Output jacks.
To use the roof antenna, the little light MUST be ON. To use satellite or cable, the light must be off. If the light is on and the antenna still doesn't work, the antenna head (the thing on the end of the mast) is probably fried and needs to be replaced for around $40.
Note that under this setup, the bedroom set either receives the antenna signal (if the pushbutton/light is on) otherwise the same cable/sat channel as the living room. So you only need one cable/sat box, which controls both sets.
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