Satellite connections

[1duffer101]

Just purchased a new 3055 and found that there are for connections in the control center. Why 4. Do I need to connect to a specific one to send signal to living room tv and different for 1 for bed room. Never use satellite yet at home or rv. First RV.

Thanks a head of time.

 

[jbeletti]

If they are marked as satellite, one set of two jacks are probably from the feeds that are pre-wired in the roof for a satellite dish. And the other set of two jacks are probably wired to the entertainment cabinet for a satellite receiver.

Not for you but if a person was to have a roof mounted satellite dish, using 1 or both of the pre-wired lines, the owner would then install jumpers to jump the signals from the roof jacks to the entertainment cabinet jacks. Then, if that person carried a portable satellite dish and needed to use it due to trees preventing the roof mounted unit from seeing the satellite, the jumpers would be removed in the UDC and the portable dish would be wired to the set of jacks feeding the entertainment cabinet.

For myself, this setup has worked well. I used my roof mounted crank-up dish whenever possible and left a jumper in at the UDC. And when I could not see the satellite with the roof dish, I set out the portable dish and jacked in at the UDC.

Wiring for satellite dishes on the Heartland trailers has evolved over the last year or so - so what I explained above, may or may not be your exact scenario.

Jim

 

[boatdoc]

Dreaded Satellite Hook-Up

Jim, I hope you are right and it's as easy as you say!!! The wife and I just picked up our new 09' 3670 and have been dealing with other issues for the past week and are going to tackle the TV system this weekend. We have tried the DVD player/TV and it works fine but I've been dreading the Satallite try. Wish us luck and hopefully we'll still be married after this weekend!!

 

[1duffer101]

Thanks Jim

I will look into the setup. Did not know there was a set of feeds on the roof.

 

[DougLynne]

I hooked our External dish to the "Right" hookup in the center and that fed the entertainment feed behind the TV. The Cable hook-up for ours is under the Computer desk. I havn't tried, but I assumed the second or left Sat. hookup in the Center is for the bedroom..../Doug

 

[linuxkidd]

Here's a quick diagram of the Cable routing for the '08 Landmark.

I'll have to do up another diagram showing how I got Cable, Antenna and 2 Satellite feeds to the Living Room, and 2 Satellite & 1 Antenna feeds to the Bedroom for DirecTV DVR receivers and a Cable Modem for internet access.. Just haven't gotten to do that yet.

LK

 

[boatdoc]

Thanks Kid, I read somewhere that the 09' BH had the same cableing as the Lm. I hope this does it for us in the morning!!
Why the two leads for the roof?
Thanks

 

[Oldlthrneck]

I recently had DirectTV HD installed and was told by the installer that it would not work hooking it up to the connections in the UDC. He said that the HD would not work because of the splitter that was in the line in the fifth wheel cable wiring. I intend to hook it through there myself, just to satisfy my own Jarhead brain that it is true. If so, I am pretty dissappointed with that set up. He had to run it through the window by the entertainment center. It looks pretty hoky and I am not pleased with the look. Looks like the Clampetts have just moved in. Too bad Hearland can't put another hook up in there that bypasses the splitter so that we can hook things up as intended, instead of having to jury rig things.

 

[boatdoc]

What splitter? I thought it was a direct shot from the UDC to the LR TV and a straight shot to the BR TV from the UDC .
We are going thru **** right now, in fact we gave up for the day, trying to get our Sat Reciever from the house to work with the trailer. I didn't think it would be that difficult to allign an old dish we had and get it to work with the new HDR Direct TV reciever from the house. What a b**ch. All we want is normal evreyday programs on the road, no HD, no recording, just plain old fashioned SAT 119 programs. GEEZ
Sorry about the rant

 

[jbeletti]

boatdoc,

If your Bighorn is wired according to the Bighorn AV diagram on the factory website (image below), there is no splitter in the line between the UDC and the LR TV. There is an A/B switch which you can remove depending on how you plan to wire up the satellite receiver to the TV (RF, Composite, Component, HDMI etc.).

There is a splitter in the line that "comes from" the BR TV to the LR TV. Looks like this line carries the local antenna signals. The splitter is likely used as a combiner (wired in backwards on purpose) to combine the cable TV signal onto the same line.

If it is your intention to use the one cable between the BR and LR to send satellite signal from the LR to the BR, be aware that the wall plate in the BR will not pass the satellite signals. From the looks of the drawing, this wall plate contains the amplifier, power supply and splitter for the local antenna on the roof. You need to get that wall plate out of the circuit in order to pass satellite signals through it. A better bet is to not compromise the local antenna and wiring, rather, run a second, separate cable to the BR for satellite. Run it through the underbelly.

There are many, many ways to wire up a coach depending on what a person's needs are. For an RV manufacturer to know or to guess what everyone could possibly want or need, there would be an awfully lot of cabling added to the RV which would increase the cost by hundreds of dollars, certainly. And the sad part is that fewer than 50% of the owners would want or need it, yet everyone would pay for it.

Give us here a clear picture of what you want to do and we will tell you the simplest way to do it with the minimum amount of work to do it.

Sorry this is causing so much frustration for you.

Jim



//heartlandowners.org/attachments/BH_AV.jpg

 

[slmayor]

Gary, we have dish in the trailer, both tv's using a receiver with the main TV. Which means when we go to bed we have to set the channel to whatever we want to watch. Although local signal works as well.
When Ray comes in this evening, I'll ask him how he did it. I know our unit wasn't wired as shown in the diagrams, but he did figure it out eventually without too much swearing.

 

[linuxkidd]

Why the two leads for the roof?

With Satellite, you cannot just add a splitter to get service to a second receiver. So, you have two lines going to the roof to tap into an LNB that has multiple outputs. One for the Living Room receiver, one for the Bedroom receiver.

boatdoc / Oldlthrneck:

Does your unit have 4 Coax connections across the top of the UDC in the back? And one Coax connection on the right hand side labeled 'Coax' ? AND.. Does your coach NOT have a Signal selector someplace?

If both of those above are true, then it should be very close to what my drawing illustrates.


Either way, good luck with your setup. I had to tweak my Satellite for an hour to get it aligned properly.
LK

 

[jbeletti]

Two years ago I put a crank-up Winegard satellite antenna on the roof of my 2005 Landmark. The install went very smoothly.

Moment of truth - aligning the dish. I spent hours working on it, trouble shooting etc. Could not get it. Threw out the portable dish on the ground and had a signal in minutes.

Turns out that I was looking through some trees with the new roof top dish. Crud! It sure looked like I was climbing out over the top of those leaf-less spring time trees!

So my work was good but my seasonal site was bad for the new dish to see the satellite. Good thing we pull-out every other weekend or so in the summer as that's the only time I can use the new dish. But it has worked well for me on the road for two seasons.

Jim

 

[linuxkidd]

I just posted a new thread with my advanced cable wiring instructions for the Landmark. It may or may not help with your situation, but thought I'd link it here anyway..

Advance Cable wiring in '08 Landmark

I'll add a diagram and pictures to the post later.
LK

 

[1duffer101]

linuxkidd

What is the reason you show 2 satellite lines going to the bedroom and 2 to the living room. I don't have DirecTV yest but wanted to plan the installation once.

 

[linuxkidd]

Any DirecTV DVR device is Dual tuner. For Dual Tuner satellite boxes, you have to have 2 satellite feeds. Thus, the 2 lines to each location.

I had 2 DirecTV HR10-250 High Definition TiVo DVR's. One in each room.
LK

 

[creeper]

Any DirecTV DVR device is Dual tuner. For Dual Tuner satellite boxes, you have to have 2 satellite feeds. Thus, the 2 lines to each location.

Just a note: This does not apply to Dish Network Users in all cases. It will be dependent on your particular dish. Their dual tuners use one line on the interior and split the bandwidth. You also will only have one tuner for two rooms.

Now that I have dish, I have far less lines run.

 

[caddojay]

Interesting discussion. I set up the satellite dish outside, as I always have, and run the dish cable to the 3rd from the left satellite port and it works fine. I connected the Direct TV box inside with the RCA plug connections to the TV. I don't see and A/B switch on the Olevia TV or in the area behind the TV. I can switch from VHF ant. to satellite with the remote and changing the mode. I didn't find a splitter. Is it behind the shelf and does it require opening the shelf?

I'd like to send the satellite signal to the bedroom through a diplexer or splitter at the input in the UDC area. If I understand the discussion, I may be able to send satellite signal from the Direct tv box to the bedroom through the splitter and that would be great. Otherwise, I think I'm going to need/add another box at the bedroom TV for decoding the signal. It would certainly be easier to run from living room box to bedroom off of one box and do the channel switching at the living room box with a switcher. We had a 3 TV setup box in the other unit, and I hope this is an easy fix without it. Is this concievable? I'm also having difficulty with the Sanyo HDTV LCD TV in the bedroom picking up VHF signal. I activate the antenna button, but only receive 2 HDTV channels and regular air channels are very fuzzy even after rotating antenna for picture.

Jim, Thanks to you and LinuxKidd for helping us through the mystifying world of wiring.

 

[sjrellis]

"I can switch from VHF ant. to satellite with the remote and changing the mode."

How do you do this? What remote do you use?

Maybe dh can read this thread this weekend and know what ya'll are saying about connecting satellite to the bedreoom...and then I'll have more than 4 stations in there!

 

[Larryheadhunter]

Holy cow, I just am in the planning stages to pick up our new 2009 Big Horn 3400RE that has the 42" HDTV in the rear of the living room and there is also a 19" TV in the bedroom. We have Cox cable TV in our home in socal so I wasn't sure what else I needed such as Direct TV or Dish. If anyone has any ideas I would greatly appreciate it, as truthfully I am totally mechanically and electrically inept and useless. Initially we are only staying in parks with hookups but that might not be the case in the future. I sure would like to enjoy this entertainment in the easiest way possible. I wasn't sure what entertainment equipment is actually installed on day one and what I have to procure and have installed. I have no clue what I am in for.

Thanks