Satellite Box placement on Georgetown 378TS

[ramair]

Just traded my fiver and TV in on a 2012 GT 378TS and haven't taken delivery of the unit yet but was courious as to how and where is everyone placing their sat box and getting it hooked up to the TV's. I have Dish now in my fiver and on the Georgetown i saw the cable/sat connection in the rear storage where the main power cord is installed and above the passengers seat in the overhead storage compartment. This is where the Blueray and switch for Ant/DVD/Cable/Sat is. I did see (1) coaxial output there and power plug, but my question is?
--- If the sat box plugs in there is there cables prewired to hook the box up to the TV.
----Is there a coaxial output by the 40" tv above the fireplace?
I know the sat box has to by plugged into the coaxial but then it must be plugged into the TV, via HDMI or coaxial. I have checked the manuals but they don"t answer this question.
Just wondering how is everyone running there system. Sorry for the long post but just trying to get all things covered. In my fiver i have a cable and a seperate sat coaxial imputs.

[SinkorSwim]

The answer depends on where your dish is going....

If you are having a roof mounted dish and you want standard definition satellite the the answer is fairly easy. The reciever will go in the front overhead cabinet and coax will connect to the satellite connection on the back of the ant/cable/sat switching box. That switching box connects to both the TV by the fireplace and the bedroom TV. You will need to get a settop with a UHF remote(rather than infra-red) to be able to change the channel on the reciever from the back bedroom.

If you want HD and/or PVR with a roof dish the answer is a bit ugly. We have an HD PVR in the front over head bin, with the DVD player, and another HD PVR pokeing though a cutout we did over the rear most cabinet in the bedroom. I built a small metal tray for the PVR to sit on mounted behind the cutout in the cabinet. There are two coax cables and the satelitte control cable going to the satellite from a new access hole in the roof above the front cabinet. For the connection from the receiver to the front TV I used a switching box to switch the Y video cables to either connect the TV to the DVD player or the satellite reciever. I connected the audio from the sat reciever to the dvd player to tie into the surround sound. As the fireplace TV is in a slider the only other option would have been a very time consuming routing of an HDMI cable down the corner post in the front cab, into the engine compartment and up thorugh the slide connections. For the rear TV the two coax cables run down the roof and down the side of the washer/dryer vent stack cutout into the closet then through the rear cabinets to the reciever. The receiver to TV connector is HDMI.

Forest Rivers "satellite prewire" is a bit useless. They pull one coax cable and a two pair phone cable to the roof. The challenge is that most of the newer sat systems need a power/control cable and more than one coax cable so you end up needed another hole cut in the roof. I just spray foamed the Forest River one to keep bugs out. It is not possible to fish new cables down through the Forest River prewire one as the chase is just a groove cut into styrofoam which passes thru small holes in the metal roofing studs. It would be way more helpful if FR just provided a 1" pvc conduit to the front overhead bin as their "pre-wire" option.

If you are using a ground mount dish you can mount a UHF receiver in the under storage bin by the entry door for AC power and use the exisiting cable connection there to feed to the two TVs. I think for ground mount dish HD you are pulling new HDMI cables.....

[KarenS144]

We use a 2nd receiver from the house & I fought with our sat hookup all last year and never did get it so it'd work through the coach. We had to run it though the window & into the receiver & out to ONE TV. The dealer assured me it would work by running the cable to the Park Cable In connection at the rear of the coach, then into the reciever, to the box, to the TVs. I tried again yesterday and still could not do it that way.

Then the light bulb went off. DUH! I totally by passed the switch box. I took the Cable In cable off the box & into the Sat In on the Receiver. I took the Out To TV off the switch box and into the Out To TV on the Receiver. IT WORKED!

Maybe that was what everyone had been telling me to do all along but I had it in my head that the signal HAD to go through the switch box. Of course, if we want to use the antenna, I'll have to connect back through the switch box but at least we can shut the window now.

[nemo45]

If you want an HD signal from your receiver and it is an HD receiver you need to run a HDMI cable from the receiver to the TV. We have the dishnetwork 2 TV HD receiver. It comes with an infrared remote and a uhf for the bedroom tv. My receiver is in the middle overhead cabinet. I bought a 12' HDMI cable to run to the 40" tv thru the cabinets to the tv. There is about 2 ft. visible that goes around the corner of the slide to the tv and I have to remember to unhook it when I put the slide in. There is only one HDMI connection on my receiver so I hooked up the bedroom tv thru the coax connection which I ran to the switch box on top of the Surround Sound. I ran it thru the antenna connection via an A/B switch. This means I can either have the dish signal or the antenna signal going thru the box, but not both. Thinking about it now, I probably could have done the same thing by hooking it up that way to the cable connection on the box, which we hardly ever use, and accomplish the same thing. That way I could go right to the antenna without switching the A/B switch if the dish went out. This does mean that you don't get a 1080 picture on the bedroom tv, because the coax outlets on the reciver do not support it. It will be 720. Anyway, this setup really works well for us.

[ramair]

Thanks for all of the responses, we pick the GT around 1 pm today then the hassel of transfering all of our stuff, but it will be well worth it. I have a ground sat on tripod, with a 721 dual receiver with dvr. hope i can get it hooked using the one of the methods listed. I will post back once done or if i have any other questions. Thanks Again for the quick responses.

[manvel]

I ran a cable thru the hole in slide where cable comes into front TV to space below front TV to hook to my receiver.Have a switch box so I can run the way it came or run my dish to front TV only.It works better for me to put my receiver there instead of over dash.That way I can run rear TV on ANT or CABLE hook up and front on SAT or flip switch and have the same as rear.The switch box above dash only has one out to both TVS My old motor home had two cables out of box to both TVS,which makes more sense to me.

[pmsherman]

I'm still working on figuring out what to do for Direct TV in the motor home. My temporary solution uses a portable carry out dish and the DVR removed from the house. The cable from the rear electrical compartment is plugged into the DVR which is reconfigured for the single satellite dish. Output from the DVR goes to an RF modulator which is connected to the switchbox. Output from the switchbox goes into a Radio Shack 29db amplifier which feeds the splitter buried behind the cabinet.

This setup allows me to use the DVR to feed a signal to both TVs at the same time. Unfortunately, it's an analog RF signal from the modulator so we don't have HD but we also don't have any HD signals from the satellite. The other problem is that we need to run two cables to the antenna if we want to use both receivers in the DVR. FR only ran a single cable to the connector in the electrical compartment.

We're looking at options for getting an HD signal to the TVs in the motor home. Our best option so far seems to be a wireless HD system that will feed both TVs from the DVR. The current DTV multi-satellite dish should be a simple install because it uses a single coax cable that allows using both tuners in the DVR without needing two cables. I believe I saw one of these dishes at Quartzite last year but they're very very expensive if you want to roof mount it. You can also get a section of flat coax cable that will slip between the front window sections to make it easy to run a second cable to the antenna.

Phil

[Iggy]

The real question is when will DISH Network and DirecTV come out with something that RVers can use easily on 2 TV. All they want is you to but 2 receivers and multi head dish.

[camper_Lucy]

Originally Posted by Iggy

The real question is when will DISH Network and DirecTV come out with something that RVers can use easily on 2 TV. All they want is you to but 2 receivers and multi head dish.

Direct TV has it.
you need three pieces;

the SWM allows for multiple sets to use one coax from the dish and attach multiple receivers. You will still need a second receiver but at least not a second hole in the roof for a coax.

SWM power inserter
SWM compatible splitter
SWM Head

All the parts are listed here Search results*::*InstallerOasis.com

[pmsherman]

My current setup allows me to send the signal from the DTV box to ALL of the tv outlets in the motor home without additional wiring. I don't have HDMI signal capabilities (yet) but that's a project I'm working on. Right now, I'm investigating some relatively inexpensive wireless HDMI solutions.

DTV's SWM system provides two important capabilities. First, as already mentioned, a splitter can be used to hook multiple boxes to a single antenna. Second is that a single cable to a box will allow both tuners in that box to be used at the same time.

The basic problem with the Georgetown motor home construction where video is concerned is that Forest River didn't really think about what owners would like to do for video systems. Part of the problem is that there's a lot of different ways to set up a video system and how it's set up is dependent on your viewing preferences. The configuration for "watch the same program on all TVs" is a lot different from "watch different programs on each TV" and requires different cabling and switching. This is complicated by the potential need to use a satellite dish, an antenna, and an RV park cable outlet.

A more complete cabling system would include:
1. Three coax cables from the (rear) electrical compartment to the "video control center" (VCC). Note: this is presently the small compartment above the passenger's seat.
2. Two coax cables from the VCC to the satellite dish mount point on the roof. A multi conductor cable to run the antenna positioning system should also be here. Running these cables/wires through conduit would also make it very easy to change the wiring configuration for the antenna.
3. Two coax cables from the VCC to each potential location for a TV.
4. Two HDMI cables from the VCC to each potential location for a TV.
5. One or two sets of audio cables from the VCC to each potential location for a TV
6. A 1" or 2" conduit routed between the small cabinets above the driver's and passenger's seats. This would make it easy to split the video/audio equipment between the two cabinets that have 110ac electrical outlets.

Phil