"Cable" hookup for satelite dish won't work.

[Stangfire]

Hi,

My 2013 Hideout 31BHS is set up at a permeant camp. I have my shaw satellite dish set up and working when a TV is directly hooked to it outside.

My though was to connect the dish to the rear of the trail at the "cable" hookup on the rear exterior (I assume this is an input signal). That should provide the signal to inside the trailer to the TV at the entertainment center. Well there is no signal there.

I read the trailer manual and it said when using the "cable" hook up to turn off the antenna amplifier switch. I tried that (which is located in the ceiling of the bunk house) Still no signal.

I also have a hookup on the side of the trailer where a TV mount is. I did not try that one.

Behind the radio at the entertainment unit I can see a cable come in a splitter and 2 out's. One goes to the TV and one goes back into the wall, I'm assuming to feed the connection on the side of the trailer.

Am I missing something else? Shouldn't this work? I'm not exactly sure how the feed from "cable" and "antenna" is controlled.

Worst case scenario I run a separate line under the trailer and drill a hole through the floor to get up into the entertainment unit.

Thanks.

[Stangfire]

I did some searching and sounds like a common issue. The splitters and antenna amplifier cause issues with the satellite connection.

I just had a thought.

Like I said there is a splitter in the entertainment center. 1 in and 2 out. One out goes to the tv the other out goes back into the wall. Perhaps it goes to the connection on the side of the trailer where the tv mount is. Maybe I can connect my satellite to that connection and then disconnect at the splitter and simply put a barrel type connector to the SAT box. I can try anyway.

It would be nice to find a wiring diagram of how it’s all ran.

[wiredgeorge]

Originally Posted by Stangfire

I did some searching and sounds like a common issue. The splitters and antenna amplifier cause issues with the satellite connection.

I just had a thought.

Like I said there is a splitter in the entertainment center. 1 in and 2 out. One out goes to the tv the other out goes back into the wall. Perhaps it goes to the connection on the side of the trailer where the tv mount is. Maybe I can connect my satellite to that connection and then disconnect at the splitter and simply put a barrel type connector to the SAT box. I can try anyway.

It would be nice to find a wiring diagram of how it’s all ran.

Your sat dish likely connects to some sort of a box which connects to the television? If so, the sat dish is powered by the box and the connection had best be direct. If you have a slide or window adjacent to your entertainment center, run the cable in there and connect the dish to box (and box to TV) and try before drilling holes in the floor. Keep splitters and such to a minimum as each thing inserted will degrade the signal.

That is basically what I did with my Dish TV set up and once I found that this method worked fine I installed an outdoor bulkhead coax connector on the wall adjacent to my entertainment center and would sit my dish on my slide and only needed to use about a 10-12' piece of coax but your set up will likely be different.

[chuckster57]

If you have a splitter it has to be bidirectional. I would do as George said and run it direct. Park cable is often RG56 coax, and satellite works much better with RG6.

[dutchmensport]

We had DishTV for a few years. When connecting the antenna (cube) or the actual satellite dish to the connections in the camper, it absolutely would not work. Even when connecting to that connection that said, "satellite" it still would not work.


Why? The COAX wire was different than the wire Direct TV used. The signal would not pass to the receiver box. And if attempting to connect to the Cable TV jack, the electronics in the booster interfered (and) the wire was incompatible.

It only worked when I ran the wire directly from the antenna to the receiver via the window.

It goes without saying, we eventually got rid of Dish TV and Direct TV and went back to over-the-air only. Fast forward, introduce streaming video via our cell phone hot-spot. This opened a whole new world for our television viewing. We'll never go back to Dish or Direct....

[Stangfire]

Thanks everyone. I'll run a direct line. Sounds like in the long run that will be easiest and best.