Hooking up the DISH - Montana Owners Club

MARK A · 03-20-2016, 01:50 PM

Well, purchased a Tailgater and HD receiver today. I'll be hooking it up soon and was wondering about a few things before I am on the phone with "Kevin from Nebraska" LOL

Will the Sat hookup light up both Televisions? My gut is telling me these coaches are likely all wired different depending on the day.

Thanks in advance
Mark

brenkco · 03-20-2016, 02:30 PM

Mark,
It depends on a few things:
If you have a coax out on your 211 receiver, you can feed the 2nd tv via the coax cable in the rig. You will only get SD and you will only be able to watch the same channel as the main TV.

If your Tailgater has 2 outputs, you can run the 2nd output directly to the bedroom TV. Your limitation is that the tailgater doesn't get all three satellites at once. Therefore the bedroom TV will be limited to whatever satellite the main TV is focused on. Note, that you will need a direct coax run from the tailgater to a second receiver for this configuration.

Hope that helps.

Ken

tooth ferry · 03-20-2016, 02:39 PM

I have the cube for Direct. I run the input to the cable inlet in the convenience center, from the cable outlet behind the TV in the living room to the Direct box, from the box to the ant.in on the TV. It only controls the TV it is connected to.

Fire5er · 03-20-2016, 02:53 PM

I could never get a good signal from the Tailgater to the DISH receiver when I tried to use the OEM trailer's RG6 coax cable. So like I did in our 2007 3400RL, I installed my own RG6 cable directly into the entertainment slide to the DISH Vip211k receiver on the BS382RL. Then when I set up the Tailgater I plug directly into this coax that goes right to the DISH receiver. It works great and we have beautiful HD TV. But when I tried to connect the bedroom with the OEM trailer installed coax in the entertainment center to the DISH receiver it was snowy. So This year I am installing HDMI cable from the bedroom to the entertainment center and splitting it to the outside TV as well.

MARK A · 03-20-2016, 05:36 PM

Quote:

quote:Originally posted by Fire5er

I could never get a good signal from the Tailgater to the DISH receiver when I tried to use the OEM trailer's RG6 coax cable. So like I did in our 2007 3400RL, I installed my own RG6 cable directly into the entertainment slide to the DISH Vip211k receiver on the BS382RL. Then when I set up the Tailgater I plug directly into this coax that goes right to the DISH receiver. It works great and we have beautiful HD TV. But when I tried to connect the bedroom with the OEM trailer installed coax in the entertainment center to the DISH receiver it was snowy. So This year I am installing HDMI cable from the bedroom to the entertainment center and splitting it to the outside TV as well.

Not that I know ANYTHING about this yet, but I did read tonight that you have to turn off the "air antenna booster" or it will degrade the satellite signal?

Mark

MARK A · 03-20-2016, 05:38 PM

Thanks everyone!

Mark

Joe in Texas · 03-20-2016, 05:38 PM

It was said; "If you have a coax out on your 211 receiver, you can feed the 2nd tv via the coax cable in the rig. You will only get SD and you will only be able to watch the same channel as the main TV.'

?I have not tried this - do I need two receivers to do this?

Dam Worker · 03-20-2016, 05:39 PM

Mark I thought that only affected the cable. On my 3160 there are two different sets of coaxial wiring. I do know that I have to have it off if I am hooked to cable. I thought it was still on while using the new Dish Travler.

Tom Marty

Joe in Texas · 03-20-2016, 05:42 PM

Had to bring Tailgator coax thru window direct to tv.
the convenience center coax would not work - did some checking and found if I plugged it into the 'satelite' connection with worked.

Found that at the wall connection below the TV the cables were reversed by factory install.

MARK A · 03-20-2016, 06:43 PM

Tom, I'm not sure, you're probably right. It amazes me at the variation in 'like coaches' and the lack of regulation in the construction of these, it's just not like the Govt. to miss an opportunity like this.

Mark

Simpson9508 · 03-21-2016, 04:27 AM

I use tailgater on Dish network. I hook tailgater to main tv satellite in convenience center. I ran a coax from out connector on my 211 receiver to behind main tv lift area. I found the cable coax that feeds the bedroom tv from Behind the main tv in the tv lift area. I put a splitter on that line and connected the coax from 211 out to the splitter. This sends the 211 out signal to the bedroom via the cable coax feed. I tune the bedroom tv to channel 3 and am able to watch whatever dish channel is being watched on main tv. I also added wireless remote (purchased from dish dealer) that controls the 211 remotely. With this I can change the Chanel's from the the bedroom.

BB_TX · 03-21-2016, 04:34 AM

Quote:

quote:Originally posted by Joe in Texas

It was said; "If you have a coax out on your 211 receiver, you can feed the 2nd tv via the coax cable in the rig. You will only get SD and you will only be able to watch the same channel as the main TV.'

?I have not tried this - do I need two receivers to do this?

This does work IF you have a vip211k. The 211k has a coax output in addition to the HDMI output. On my mine, I only had a single external coax connection, but it came into the cabinet under the TV to a dual coax wall plate with a short coax jumper cable between the two coax connectors. I could remove the jumper, add a new short coax cable from one of the wall plate connectors to the vip211k for sat input, connect another short coax cable from the vip211k coax output to the other wall plate connector, and that would send the TV signal from the sat box to the bedroom TV. The bedroom TV would only show what was on the living room TV, and it would be in SD, but still worked fine. We would do that to watch the 10 pm news/weather while in the bedroom. Newer Montes have a different internal coax wiring arrangement, so don't know if that would be doable or not.

I later installed a new dedicated external coax input for the sat connection to eliminate having to mess with the coax jumper. If I wanted to use park cable, I would have to disconnect the sat box and reinstall the jumper on the wall plate.

If you have a vip211z, it does not have the coax output. It does have an RCA type output that could be used for a second TV, but it would require running an RCA cable to it.

MARK A · 03-21-2016, 07:35 AM

>>If you have a vip211z, it does not have the coax output. It does have an RCA type output that could be used for a second TV, but it would require running an RCA cable to it.

Fire5er · 03-21-2016, 08:49 AM

MARK A as I indicated this Big Sky is not my first Montana and I know about having to have the antenna booster off to have a good signal on coax...that is not the problem trust me. I wish it was that easy.

RKassl · 03-21-2016, 11:08 AM

What I can tell you regarding the Dish Tailgater and our 2015 3440RL is that the coaxial inputs in the convenience center are totally independent. If you have the older style Dish Tailgater that has only one cable connection, you power one receiver, either front or back TV.

Virginia Young · 03-21-2016, 04:13 PM

Fire5er - We have the same Big Sky. Our cable never worked thru the convenience center. The signal was too weak. We could, however, hook the cable up thru the satellite connection in the convenience center and it worked fine. While the factory service center had out camper last summer, one of the things on the list was to fix the cable problem. When we got it back, we purchased the Tailgater and receiver for Dish and discovered that, not only did the cable not work, the satellite connection was not longer working. We have to hook our tailgater up by running the cable thru the window and hooking it directly to the back of the receiver. We will be adding the connector to the outside of the entertainment slide. I don't understand how the factory can make the cable/satellite wiring so difficult. Nobody knows where splitters are installed. I guess it would have been too simple to run ONE cable from the entertainment center to each of the televisions for cable and one to each for satellite. The only splitters should have been right behind the convenience center for easy access.

richfaa · 03-22-2016, 04:15 AM

Learning from our 06 3400 and checking the input connections on this 13 3402 we just took out the handy dandy drill and drilled two inputs to the entertainment center and one to the bedroom and ran the sat cables directly to the receivers. Never a problem and no need to worry about if the Tv antenna booster is on or off. The OEM connections did not work on the 06 3400 or the 13 3402 so they made no progress in 7 years.

MARK A · 03-22-2016, 04:33 PM

I finally got it working this afternoon, I am hooked in through the convenience center running the living room TV. The difficulties were mostly DISH/Tailgater issues. All solved now. Thanks everyone!!

Mark

BB_TX · 03-22-2016, 04:51 PM

Yeah, that Tailgater and Dish receiver can be temperamental sometimes. I did buy a new high quality quad shielded coax cable for connecting the Tailgater to the trailer outside coax connection, a new short quad shielded cable from that outside coax connection to the inside connection, and another new short quad shielded cable from the inside connection to the receiver. Seems to be easier and quicker to get the system set up now due, I think, to a stronger signal (i.e. less loss) between the two.

bubbagulf · 11-24-2018, 07:50 AM

Hooking up Dish. We bought a Wineguard Carryout (gen 1) many years ago. It requires its own separate 12 volt power supply. Used it for several years with a SOB 5er. In our ignorance in 2014 we bought a Montana 3625, attached our 211 receiver in the living room to the wall satellite connection, hooked the wineguard 75 foot coax to the convenience center living room sat connection, powered up the Wineguard, set the 211 to find Sats and then watch Dish Network programming. We must have the only Montana that came from the factory wired correctly. We dread the day when we have to replace GEN 1 with the NEW and IMPROVED generation of portable automatic dishes.

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