I can't imagine this many cables (UPDATED)

[Tinstar]

In my "new to me" motorhome, I am getting it set up for my wife and me. I was getting ready to install the satellite receiver and take out an old VCR.

Here is what I found when opening the cabinet. I know there should be four wires in there. One in for the roof antenna, one in for the cable/portable satellite, one out to the front TV and one out to the rear TV. I have 13 coaxial cables in that one cabinet and there are more in the other overhead cabinet which I haven't explored yet.

Does anyone know what anyone might use all the different ones for? Several of them are numbered with professionally made labels. You can see those that have the little white plastic tape on them. Numbers 1 through about 8 or 9.

I'm about to go out and try and trace where they might go but any ideas might be helpfull.

[Ivylog]

I also recently went through and cleaned up my receivers area. Ended up with a large handful of unused cables. Depending on the Sat receiver hopefully it will have a HDMI output so one cable to your new LED TV... hint, hint.

[MrWizard]

the sat receiver is receiving a code inside the transmission
the HDCP "high def cop protection" must be acknowledged over the HDMI cable
its a two way link , the TV communicates with the receiver
that communication cannot happen over the A/V cables or coax cable
so the front TV must be on , or the receiver shuts off the video signal

[Tinstar]

creeper wrote:
Go to lower or Home depot and get a tester. My new coach was wired wrong (winnebago quality control), once I corrected their wiring mistakes everyone worked as it should.

Cable in. Cable out to multiple TVs, cable to antenna, cable to antenna in in rear, cable to outside tv., cable to outlet in bay, satellite in, satellite distribution. The cables add up fast.

I used a meter to check continuity to trace a lot of the wires (from the bays especially) and found which coaxial went to where.

The only thing I can not do and which it totally weird; I use DISH network (and no, I'm not going to change to DirectTV), I installed the the Dish receiver in the front cabinet and used HDMI to the front TV. Of course the back TV is wired with coaxial. I used component cables from the Dish receiver to send the signal from the receiver to an A/V switcher, then out of the switcher to the coaxial output on the selector switch (TV ANTENNA/AUX/VCR) then coaxial to the rear TV. It works great and I can watch any channels, including all premium movie channels as long as the front TV is also turned on and is set to watch programming. If I turn the front TV off, I can still watch all channels EXCEPT premium channels. When I put it one of of the premium channels I get this error code.

"The receiver has detected that the HD television or the digital connection to the TV does not support High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP). Because this event follows HDCP, this event is not available to order on this TV".

If I turn the front TV back on, I get the signal back on the bedroom TV. It's weired since it only does this on premium channels. None of the regular channels are affected. I assume what's causing it is the component cables converted to coaxial BUT it worked fine (including premium channels) wired the same way in my old motorhome. I did buy a brand new TV for the bedroom for the new motorhome so I'm reasonably sure it is HDCP compliant. I'll send DISH Network an email and ask them if there's a way around the HDCP issue if I don't find an alternative solution.

[creeper]

Go to lower or Home depot and get a tester. My new coach was wired wrong (winnebago quality control), once I corrected their wiring mistakes everyone worked as it should.

Cable in. Cable out to multiple TVs, cable to antenna, cable to antenna in in rear, cable to outside tv., cable to outlet in bay, satellite in, satellite distribution. The cables add up fast.

[Tinstar]

Just as a follow-up for ya'll. I started tracing wires yesterday afternoon and ended up pulling out about 100 foot or so of unused or cable that was not needed. I found about four of the 13 coaxial were about 6 or 8 feet long. They entered the overhead cabinet thought one hole, snaked up in the front cap then came back into that compartment through a different hole. I did remove the Motostat dish from the roof and the three cables that ran to it. Some cables were just laying loose inside the TV cabinet and some ran to the surround sound system but were not hooked up. I also had to rewire several systems that were not done right. Took me most of the afternoon and into the night but I'm really happy with the way it turned out. Well worth my time.

If anyone is in the market for 100 or so feet of cable, I've got some extra.

[Dale_Traveling]

Took me a few years but double post.

[Dale_Traveling]

My coach is an 2006, the height of coax and also have a snake farm of coax. After replacing the analog TV's I'm down to four and about to ditch the bomb, Box-Of-Many-Buttons. Two in (bat wing TV antenna and park cable) and two out (front TV and bedroom TV. Never use the park cable since I have satellite (HDMI to front TV only) so more or less just need a splitter for the bat wing to the two TVs.

New rigs change the coax BOMB to HDMI BOMB.

[time2roll]

Just trace what you need. Abandon the rest in place.

[Bill_Satellite]

If you happen to be near Houston, TX let me know and I can trace it all down for you.
It's pretty obvious that there used to be a Winegard video distribution box (what some call a BOMB or box of many buttons). That means that if you have 2 TV's 2 of those coax cables are a direct run to the TV coax input. Using the distribution box you could sent OTA TV, Cable, VCR (remember those?), satellite and usually an AUX option. With all of the cables disconnected and not labeled you just need to take a bit of time to trace each on down. For coax you just need a multi-meter. Push some tin foil into one of the coax ends in your hands which will cause a short as far as the multi-meter is concerned. Now you can go to all the exterior coax connections (roof, wet bay, storage compartment) and test each coax connection until you find a short. To confirm you have the right cable you can pull the alum. foil off and test the coax again. Now, it should not show a short. Work your way through all the cables and you will know exactly what goes where.
Now, since technology has changed so much recently, just getting things connected the way the coach was built might not solve your problems. ONLY HD OTA TV and possibly HD cable can be sent via those coax cables. If you want HD satellite TV or HD DVD/BluRay connections you are going to need to run new cables.

[Goldencrazy]

Yup, the previous owner took the box that was used to switch those inputs to outputs so you have roughly half in and other half out.

[-Gramps-]

I suspect you have more than two coax cables going to your roof..one for antenna to and at least two to a sat dish position for more than one LNB. I have four coax cables going to my roof where a dish would mount, one to the TV antenna, two to the back TV, one to the basement TV outlet, two to the power bay which includes one for ext sat dish and one for cable input. One short coax from switcher out to TV up front as well as another short cable from the antenna pre-amp to the input of the switcher.

[dougrainer]

You have an older motorhome that had a Winegard type COAX video switch box which had up to 12 coax inputs and outputs on the back of the switch box
The VCR had 2 coax cables from this box---2
You had a Coax from the outside cable input--1
Coax from roof antenna --1
output to TV1 --1
output to TV2 --1
output to AUX(TV3) --1
some had a RF built in modulator for DVD coax out --1
There was a SAT input coax ---1
Then they had a AUX Coax input ---1
total so far 10 coax cables
Doug

[wa8yxm]

Looks about right to me.. And at least they are labeled.. Makes it much easier.

[MaverickBBD]

Hopefully you will find the Rosetta Stone of the numbering code. Yes I have a cabinet that I consider bad but nowhere near that mess. Good luck.