Help Understanding How my RV TV System Should Work

[CPO_Retired]

We just purchased our MH and still learning how the different systems work. My DW has been very patient with me as I have taken apart much of the front cabinets to trace wires and install our Dish Receiver, XM radio and upgraded GPS. I have read the books supplied by the mfg and traced out the wiring schematics even tried toning the wires out but I still do not know if I have a problem OR this is the way it is supposed to work. I have also devoted a few hours on this forum looking for the answer only to have a headache from information overload.

Here is my problem: I have a 2010 Itasca Ellipse with 3 TV's one over the front dash, one in the bedroom and one outside. What I want is all three TV's to have access to DISH, Over the Air TV, and DVD's. We do not care if all three have the same show playing at the same time.

In a front overhead cabinet is a video selector that allows you to choose the input for 3 TV's also a separate Winegard antenna over-the-air control and ant. booster. The front and outside TV's are Sony the bedroom TV is Jensen.

Selecting SAT or DVD on the video selector allows viewing of the DISH receiver or DVD player on the Front and Outside TV when the TV Video1 input is selected. The bedroom TV does not receive a video signal from either device. I have tried every combination of device input selections for both the TV and video selector.

Changing the TV"s to receive over the air signals from the Winegard Batwing Ant. and when I scan for channels on the front TV I can receive 21 channels. When I scan for channels on the outside TV or bedroom TV I do not receive any channels The books for our RV are not clear on how anything is connected but make it sound like all three TV's should work.

My questions are:
Is there a way to have all three tv's receive the same channel either DISH, DVD or Over the Air? (Without rewiring my MH. FYI the DW while patient will not allow me to completely disassemble our MH to rewire it for the TV )

Should all three TV's receive a signal from the Winegard Ant.? If not is there a easy fix to get over the signals to all three ant's? I tried tracing the wires to the outside TV but was not able to easily gain access to the wiring.

Should my bedroom TV receive the DISH signal from the front? If not do I need a second DISH Receiver? I would prefer not to have a second DISH receiver.

Thanks to all this is a great site for newbies like myself.

[clyon51]

You have 3 inbound cables. ANT, SAT, DVR. You have 3 TVs. So thats 6 cables that should be plugged into the switch box. Is that what you have?

If so, are you setting the TVs for the proper type of signal you have going to them? IE, you want to watch over the air, is the cable plugged into the ANT jack on the TV and is the TV set for over air signals? You probably have several inputs on those TVs, so you want to know which one the cable is plugged into so you know which input to select from the menu.

I suspect your problem lies there some place. With over air, you want to be sure the input from ANT is coming from the booster and it is turned on, if not, the signal at the rear could be too weak.

[TechWriter]

I just finished rewiring my RV and you're right, it's no fun. So before you do anything like that, I suggest you go back to the start . . .

Draw a wiring diagram of how you think things are connected.

Next, use a VCR or DVR as a video source and connect it to each input (one at a time) on your video selector while watching what plays on each TV. This is a tedious process, but at the end you should know what's connected to what.

You may also want to swap out that Jensen with one of your other TVs -- just to see if the TV is the problem.

The last resort is a coach rewire. I rewired mine because the original coax was marginal, I wanted more cables, and I wanted to ditch the video selector box in favor of an AV receiver: MobileMe Gallery

[Jim A]

The first thing I would do is label all of the coax leads that you identify. If something fails down the road, you have a starting point.

Like the poster above said, check the connections to the switch box. There should be 3 input coax cables from the DVD, ANT, and SAT, and three output coax cables to the TV's as he stated.

Then I would look at the manual for bedroom and outside TV's to verify that they are digital. With a 2010 model I would hope so, but I would not bet on it. At least look at the remotes for the TV's. Do they have a dot or a dash key with the number keys? A digital tuner will have a dash or dot key needed to select digital channels. If they aren't digital, you won't get over the air channels.

Assuming your satellite box has a RF coax output (my HD DVR does not), and it is connected properly to the switch box and then to the TV's, you should be able to watch the satellite on all three TV's at the same time. But you will have to watch the same channel on all of them.

Each TV should be able to tune to a different over the air station.

The bedroom and outside TV's will need to be in channel 3/4 when watching the DVD or satellite. When you do an over the air channel scan, there is a chance it will not go to channel 3/4, since it did not find a channel 3/4 when doing the scan and will unselect it.

Last, in addition to connecting the coax outputs from the satellite box and the DVD, I would also connect them directly to the front TV using A/V cables. Change inputs on the front TV to select the input instead of the switch box in place of watching on channel 3/4. (The TV manual will tell you how if you need to know.) You will get a better picture.

[wa8yxm]

The buttons on the selector switch should be groupped. . TV-1, VCR, TV-2, TV-3 (Optional may be AUX) are common groupings.

With the exception of no VCR button in the VCR group each group should contain (not necessarly in this order, but usually in the same order)

Sat, Cable, VCR, ANT Aux.

The bedroom (Rear TV) is normally TV 2, Choose SAT for TV-2 and it should work You might also try TV-3 or the "Aux" group if you have them.