A/V cabinet changes (lots of photos)

[PDR John]

With all the requests for more information about the changes I made to our A/V cabinet I decided to start a thread dedicated to just that.

This is happening on a 2013 Newmar Dutch Star with High Definition wiring. But the information applies to most motor homes. I had updated our '03 Fleetwood Providence this same way.

I hope this will be a great spot to exchange information and everyone can learn something.

First up is cable types. So everybody is on the same page with industry terms.



For motor homes we'll be dealing with: coaxial, composite, component and HDMI. These are the most common among manufactures.

Standard Definition (SD) uses coaxial and composite, High Definition (HD) uses component and HDMI. Coaxial and HDMI carries both video and audio signals, while composite and component have video and audio on separate wires.

Antenna and park cable are always run using coaxial, even on coaches with the HD upgrade. Those of you still with VCRs have them connected with coaxial. Most DVD players have one of the other 3 styles.

[FLSteve]

Originally Posted by PDR John

I hope this will be a great spot to exchange information and everyone can learn something.

PDR John ... keep it coming. This is exactly what I needed. Thanks for taking the time to do it.

Steve

[PDR John]

Our coach has a Winegard Trav'ler SK-1000 satellite dish. For Dish network.



It's control box, that is mounted in the A/V cabinet.



Newmar uses Sony A/V components. TV, A/V receiver and DVD player are all Sony. We only have 2 TVs on board, 1 in the living room and 1 in the bedroom. There are connections in the basement for an outside TV.

Here are the connections available on the back of the living room TV.





Living room (front TVs) and rear TVs are no longer connected together.

The bedroom TV connections.



The bedroom TV has it own A/V cabinet.



In it are (from left to right after the 120 volt outlets): HDMI input, this is connected to the second HDMI port on the bedroom TV. Then next up are the Sat. dish coaxials, we have the optional ground sat. connection. last up is a coaxial connection that I assume is a park cable hook up. I do know it's not hooked to the antenna.

On the shelf buried in the remote pile on the left is the A B switch. It's only purpose is to switch between the roof top dish and a ground dish.

On the right is the DVD player, which is connected to the TV via HDMI cable.

Here are the basement connections.



There is also the antenna booster that is mounted behind the passenger seat.



The coaxial connection you see on the booster plate is a over the air antenna connection.

[PDR John]

Originally Posted by skmwalden

PDR John ... keep it coming. This is exactly what I needed. Thanks for taking the time to do it.

Steve

Thanks, this should take about 4 hours to post all up.

[PDR John]

One of the things that changed the most is the front cabinet switcher box.

We're all familiar with this baby here:



Well it's gone, replaced by this.



On the TV remote is a button labeled "inputs". Press it and this menu pops up, you highlight your video source, press OK and watch your show. Every TV in the coach will have this menu and each TV's viewing source can be different.

That is why there no longer is a selector box in new coaches with HD.



Our satellite receiver is the Dish Network 622 duel tuner receiver with DVR. Capable of recording on one channel while your watching a different channel. It also runs 2 TVs off the same receiver (more on this later). TV one is a HD connection, TV two is SD only. DVR'd shows can be played back on either TV.



Here are all it's connections.





If you notice the connections for the dish, there is a dish 1 and dish 2. Yet my A B selector switch has only 1 coaxial coming out. It's because Dish uses one of these:



Here it is connected (backwards)



If you do as I did, connect the splitter backwards, it will cost you an hour of trying to figure out why you have no sat signal.

Good times, good times.

[chuckinthebus]

Nicely done.

[Roadweary]

It's like a great novel...can't wait to finish but hate for it to end. I can tell the next chapter will be deep.
Gary

["007"]

You cease to amaze me John its all added in QT's # 3.--Thanks

[PDR John]

To undertake this project plan on it taken 8-10 hours, easily. Might even want to spend a couple of days.

Here is the factory cabinet, in fact this picture was taken at the factory.



Starting on the left at the bottom. Sony A/V receiver, staying to the left, Winegard control box, DVD HDMI splitter box, satellite HDMI splitter box and on top is the compass computer for the dash display. On top of the receiver to the right is the DVD player.

To the right of the A/V receiver is the Satellite A B switch, for switching between roof top or ground (tripod) dishes. Behind that are the factory outlets.

The HDMI splitters: These are used to hook up one devise to more then one TV. The input is on the front with 4 outputs on the back.





So for the DVD: the DVD player's HDMI output cable connects to the DVD splitters input slot. Then the splitter connects to the Living room TV and the basement connection.

The same for the satellite setup.

If you have the mid-ship TV, the above the dash TV, behind the couch TV and the outside TV, all will connect to these splitters.

The bedroom will not, no matter how much we want.

I removed everything from this cabinet, I mean everything. Even the outlets. Then I mounted surface mount outlets, 1 on the wall to the right and 1 on the ceiling. These outlets are part of a series, so there is a incoming and an out going wire that must be connected if you remove these outlets.

Then I didn't hook up the ceiling outlet that I mounted. Changed my mind and decided to put in a switched 6 strip plug in.

The reasons for the change: Extra surge protection and to be able to shut all the power off in the cabinet. Dish network receivers draw 50 watts of power when there off or on. When we boondock or while driving I shut the cabinet draw off, no point in putting unnecessary draw on the inverter if I can avoid it.

When pulling stuff out of the cabinet, do it 1 item at a time and label the wires as you go.

Some have factory labels, such as:



I labeled others:



This is the HDMI for our Western Digital media player.

When removing the A/V receiver I wrote down speaker wire colors like this:



For the unused wires that I stuffed back in to the front cap. I labeled the back wall, just in case things change in the future.




Behind the A/V receiver I found 1 of these mounted on the back wall.



The input come from the over the air roof top antenna booster, then goes to the living room TV, basement connection and the bedroom TV. I removed this (I did this originally 3 months ago, I took it all back apart just for this thread), but you can see the mounting holes here:



Also in this picture you can see where and how I mounted the 120 volt CPU fans against the back vent.

The white wire you see is for the FM antenna on the A/v receiver.

[PDR John]

Time to put it all back together. Here is where the frustration is going to pile on. There is a lot of things to be put in here and not a lot of space.

To conserve space I stuffed as many wires up in to the front cap as possible, through this hole.



Looks like there is some room back in there. Hey look insulation!



Winegard in their infinite wisdom uses a power supply like this:



It not only takes up a lot of space but has a removable 3 foot power cord. We all know what happens when we put a 2 piece item in a hard to reach place, it become a 10 piece item on the first bump. So I wrapped it up nice and tight. Then shoved into the front cap.



It fit, just barely but it did fit.

With that out of the way it was time put the A/V receiver back in. start by hooking up all the same wires the factory had. The audio input here comes from the living room TV. When you select TV on the receiver, all sound on the TV plays through the stereo.



Speaker connections.



Now here is where we start the first changes to the wiring. We're now using the HDMI ports on the receiver for the DVD and WD media player. So I took the factory DVD HDMI cable that was removed from the splitter and connected it to the receivers' HDMI output. DVD is connected to the DVD port, WD player to the video port. Right angle plugs were used on the heavy cables. Because space is so limited with out the angle plugs your forced to kink the cables, it's not only hard on the cables but puts pressure on the output port. Those can break easily.



With the receiver back in place, the next item to go in is the satellite receiver.



Its connections: From the left; antenna booster, dish connections, bed room TV antenna coaxial and in the far back is the living room TV HDMI.

With all the connections in place it's time to slide in home. Remember to use Velcro to hold all components in place.



Now we test it, always test each piece as you put them in. It keeps you from having to remove everything if the bottom piece doesn't operate.

The A/V receiver works, but no satellite.

[PDR John]

Originally Posted by cnkinthebus

Nicely done.

Originally Posted by Roadweary

It's like a great novel...can't wait to finish but hate for it to end. I can tell the next chapter will be deep.
Gary

Originally Posted by 007";1499458]You cease to amaze me :bow: John its all added[URL="http://www.irv2.com/forums/f103/newmar-quick-tips-and-easy-mods-3-a-113631.html

in QT's # 3[/URL].--Thanks

Thanks all.

[PDR John]

So I pulled out the sat receiver, said some choice words and tried a few things. To no avail.

Then I saw my simple mistake, sat 1 and sat 2 were put on backwards. Swapped them and



TV.

Now I could fasten down the Winegard control box. Here are the connections it has.



On to the DVD. DVD players are dead simple to connect when using HDMI cables. 1 wire and a power plug.





Same with the WD media player. Each part gets Velcro-ed down as I went.

Here is the whole cabinet completed.



From the bottom left: A/V receiver, sat. receiver, Winegard control box and compass computer. Beside the Winegard is the DVD, on top of it is the Western Digital media player. On the bottom beside the A/V receiver is the hard drive for the WD media player.

Between the built in hard drive and the external hard drive on the WD we have almost 400 movies at hand.

Next up is how everything works.

[PDR John]

To watch the satellite TV, the input on the TV is set to satellite. Turn on the sat. receiver and watch.

For a DVD; turn the TV input to home theater, A/V receiver to DVD and watch your movie with full surround sound.

For the WD; turn the TV input to home theater, A/V receiver to video and watch a movie with full surround sound.

That means there is a remote for the TV,one for the satellite, one for the DVD, one for the A/V receiver and one for the WD media player.

That's to much work, I bought one of these instead.



As you can see on the remote window, you press what you want to do and it turns everything on and changes them to the proper settings.

Support + Downloads: Harmony One Advanced Universal Remote - Logitech

Then I changed the TV input labels. Here how:

First go to the main menu, just press the menu button on the remote.



Toggle down to settings



then to AV setup



manage inputs



Select the input you want to change, highlight it and change how you want it to read.



To those whom want to watch over the air local channels, it's all hooked up. It just needs programed in. This how to do it on the 622, I believe it's the same on the 211.

With receiver on, go to the main menu.



Up to system setup



To local channels



And scan for local channels



When the scan is done, press select all and done. All local channels will be added to your channel guide.


Next up, alternative satellite receivers. First I must eat.

[Roadweary]

Man, have I got questions.

Where does the HDMI from your satellite receiver output go? From the factory I would plug that HDMI into one of the splitters (but we got rid of the splitters).

On the DVD connections, one of the splitters had two HDMi's marked "blue ray DVD" and "DVD" (they were purple and blue). It looks like those are the two in your picture and the "blue ray DVD" is in the Sony receiver HDMI output? I don't understand that but you'll probably explain it in your next post.

The Weingard box isn't connected to anything new, right? It's just as it was from the factory.