Community Forums

seadogjim · 05-13-2014, 12:09 PM

Hi,
I have an older box that has a coax jack marked "off air in". What is this f o r? Can I get OTA programing off the dish using this jack?
Tx, Jim

docj · 05-13-2014, 01:32 PM

No, that was intended for feeding the signal from an OTA antenna into the receiver so the user could switch from DirecTV to OTA. I can't recall exactly how it worked since I never used it and I don't think that feature has been available for a number of years.

wa8yxm · 05-13-2014, 01:51 PM

The answer depends on the age of the receiver... OLDEST: when receiver is OFF television is connected to the OTA antenna

Middle age: Some of them did have an ATSC receiver/converter in them so they would receive OTA and re-transmit on chan 3 or 4 as NTSC letter boxed if needed.

Newer: Back to the oldest.

Newest: No such jack.

seadogjim · 05-13-2014, 01:54 PM

That's what I thought. So, if you want to watch both OTA tv and DirecTV on the same tv why not just put the coax cable on the tv itself vice attaching it to the DirecTV box? That way you can watch either by switching it with the "input" on the remote.

Jim

TVforMyRV · 05-14-2014, 07:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by seadogjim

That's what I thought. So, if you want to watch both OTA tv and DirecTV on the same tv why not just put the coax cable on the tv itself vice attaching it to the DirecTV box? That way you can watch either by switching it with the "input" on the remote.

Jim

That's the easiest.

DirecTV does have the AM21 Off air receiver which connects to all current DTV receivers and your "local" off air channels will appear in the guide also. This allows you to control the off air channels from your DTV remote. I'm guessing you could also use the DVR and record the off air channels also. I have never personally used this unit, so I'm only repeating what the literature states....

docj · 05-14-2014, 07:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TVforMyRV

That's the easiest.

DirecTV does have the AM21 Off air receiver which connects to all current DTV receivers and your "local" off air channels will appear in the guide also. This allows you to control the off air channels from your DTV remote. I'm guessing you could also use the DVR and record the off air channels also. I have never personally used this unit, so I'm only repeating what the literature states....

I used to have an AM21 and it does enable you to record OTA channels with the DVR. In fact, it totally integrates them into the DirecTV online guide and they look just like any other channel.

A limitation of the device, however, is that it relies on information transmitted via the satellite link to populate the programming for the OTA channels in the guide. Therefore, you must have a satellite signal for the AM21 to work. If you wanted to watch OTA because you didn't have a satellite signal you had to unplug the coax from the AM21 and connect it directly to the TV.