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TheBeans's avatar
TheBeans
Explorer
Jun 01, 2016

RV TV newbie

We are not newbies to camping in trailers---been doing it for many years. Many years WITHOUT a television. And, as they say, time flies when you're having fun and now we are older and would enjoy using the flatscreen TV that came with our 2014 rig....but we are about as ignorant of how to make this work as you could find!

We have a 19" Legend LED flatscreen. It's connected to the standard antenna that comes on all trailers. No cable or satellite hookups will be used us---just whatever we can find on the local stations....if there are any. Here's the rub:

While here at home (in the city, where TV signals of all shapes and kinds are available) we decided to set it up to become familiar with how to do it when we are camping and that's when things began to get enormously frustrating and very quickly.

Following the user's manual, we:

1) raised the antenna
2) pushed the antenna booster button to "on"
2) turned on the TV and used the setup wizard
3) ran a channel Auto-Scan

The results of that scan---here at home where there should be no trouble whatsoever in receiving the local broadcast channels---is that we got all of 8 digital channels. Three of those were home shopping type, 1 was all children's shows, 1 was a religious station and two were movie-type stations and one that seemed to be broadcast from Mexico! Not one of these were the local broadcast stations! The scan said there were 69 RF CH (whatever that is) and 8 digital and zero analog.

We moved the antenna in different directions to see if that made any difference and found that it didn't. We had also tried TV signal finder apps on our cell phones to see if that would help (it told us the same thing we knew at home, which was what direction to aim our antenna).

Are we doing something completely wrong? We followed the almost useless user's manual and double-checked all the connections behind the set and the wall and they all look good. So, please tell me...what are we not doing or doing wrong or should also be doing to pick up local broadcast channels? I'm beginning to think it's a waste to have this television if we can't use the darn thing! Granted, we haven't watched TV in our rigs before and we do understand that broadcast signals will vary depending on remoteness and terrain and all we are looking for are some basic news/weather/variety shows to watch at night before bed or if we are stuck inside during a downpour.

15 Replies

  • We don't use an antenna at home---we're on cable for the house sets. I Googled the channel names/letters that came up in the Auto Scan (since none of them were familiar to me) and they are not channels that appear in our cable lineup, even though we have 700 channels available to us! The numbers on the 8 different channels appear after the dash: 33-1 33-2 33-3, etc. I have no idea what that means but that's how they appear on the screen. All 8 of these channels come in bright and clear.

    If we are having a coax-to-cable problem, where/how would I find that out? The wires inside the trailer (coming out of the wall and those going out/coming into the television set all look good---so crimps or bends. If the trouble is inside the wall then that would be something I can't see and am not sure I'd be able to fix (neither I nor the hubby are electronically proficient).

    I did turn the amp button on and off, just to see if that would get us more than the 8 channels but it didn't. Turned off I got a screen full of snow and turned on I get the 8 channels and nothing more. We do have an outdoor cable input which we've never used as none of the parks we camp at have cable. I don't remember seeing a choice of changing the tv setting to cable or antenna but I'll double-check that as well.
  • do you use an antenna at home? should get simieler channels, can't get anything that is not a local broadcast.
    when you say 8 channels is that 8 different numbers before the dash? or after?
    see if your TV has a signal strength display in the menu, many do. if it does bring that up and rotate the antenna to the strongest signal then re-scan
  • Next time camp on top of the mountain.

    The amp button needs to be on, turning it off also disconnects the antenna cable.
  • Check connections on the booster plug. I found a few with really bad coax crimps.
  • if your locals are close, turn off the amp button
    and try again
    if you have never done any tv use
    i'm betting you have a coax cable to switch problem somewhere in the coax line
    does the TT have an outside 'park cable' input, the video switch in the TT, might be in that mode
    is the TV set to Antenna mode OR is it set to cable mode, it must be set to antenna mode

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