Dish Tailgater Connections

[mrnoyb]

I'm thinking about buying the Dish Tailgater and have a question concerning the equipment connections.

Is is possible to connect the receiver to my motor home exterior cable TV jack rather than directly to my wall mounted TV?

Thank you.

[mrnoyb]

I purchased the dish tailgater antenna & receiver bundle from amazon. I was impressed with how easy it was to install and activate. It really does operate right out of the box. All the reviews claiming how well it works were accurate. 15 minutes to connect & 20 minutes with dish network to open a pay-as-you-go account. That’s all it took to begin watching HD TV at the campsite. Amazing.

I’ve been unable to connect the antenna using the external cable jack. I can’t locate the coax cable inside the coach. It appears to run out a cabinet directly to the TV. I’ll keep searching. Meanwhile, I’ll either watch TV outside or run the antenna cable through a small window over the kitchen sink. Either setup works fine.

[Bobbo]

The answer is a definite maybe. If the cable is a straight run, then yes. If they put a splitter in there to feed another TV, then no.

[GASA765]

We just drilled a hole in the cable input plate and ran a piece of coax cable through the slideout frame tubes and used a plastic slip tie to secure it. I now connect the tailgater to the outside coax instead of having to run it out through the slideout seal or window.

[wa8yxm]

It is possible to "Re-task" the park cable in most RV's Depending on your video selector I will tell you how to do it.

Box of many buttons: Disconnect the cable connected to the jack marked CABLE on the back of the box. this is it. Connect this cable to teh LNB jack on your VIP-211.

Wall plate. On the back side there should be 3 cables. it's the one in the middle,, Connect RF out from the sat receiver to the jack you disconnect the cable from.

Now: Why you SHOULD NOT do this, 2 reasons

You may,, Find yourself under heavy tree cover in a park with cable and wish to use the cable instead.. But you have disabled that feature.

But even more important.. On my rig that cable is over fifty feet of RG-59.. Or, in Sat antenna terms over 200 electrical loss feet long, POssibly longer.

(My RV is wired with low bidder RG-59, Average RG-59 has about 4x the loss per foot of Average RG-6 which is the cable SPECIFIED for sat antenna use... Quality RG-6 is even better, and lowest bidder.. (both types) not as good.

TOP quality RG-59 is about the same as bargain barrel RG-6 but trust me. You don't have top quality RG-59

Source. Belden Cable via ARRL handbook.

[Bill_Satellite]

By default, the outside connection meant for use to connect to the campground cable signal CANNOT be used without modification. If that same cable does not go to a video control center or a wall mounted plate that you use to switch between OTA and cable then it's likely it can't be used at all.
If it does go to one of those devices then the cable coax would need to be removed and either run directly to the satellite receiver or to an A/B switch to allow you to select whether you want the incoming signal to go to satellite or cable.

[AllegroD]

It can connect to the external port as long as you do have an A/B switch inside.

[BB_TX]

Yes. That is what I did until installed a second external connector specifically for the sat input. Just a matter of figuring out which of the two connectors is the right one.

[mrnoyb]

I think my interior TV wiring has the coax jumper. I think this means I can run the coax from the Tailgater antenna to the RV, disconnect the coax jumper and connect the receiver to the antenna in and connect the receiver out to the TV in. Does that make sense?

[BB_TX]

The coax from the Tailgater must connect directly to the Dish satellite receiver box. Now to qualify that a little. It can go thru the RV internal coax wiring as long as it does not go thru any intermediate devices such as the antenna switch box or amplifier. So the answer is probably not unless you can redirect the internal coax directly to the sat box. And you do have to have a Dish 211 type sat receiver box. You can't just connect directly to the TV.
On some RVs there is a dual coax connector wall plate with a short coax jumper between the two, maybe near/behind the TV. You may be able to remove the jumper and connect a coax from the incoming coax to the sat box. That is how mine was wired before I added a new external coax connector specifically for the Tailgater.