Extending the Remote Antenna - Anybody Seen This?

[8bitbytes]

A co-worker upgraded his Dish account last weekend. His install was not the most helpful or informative so he was asking me about what he found when the installer took off.

He has a 722 hooked up in dual mode to use with a regular tv in another room upstairs. The primary TV is in the basement and works fine. The UHF remote was behaving somewhat spotty upstairs so looked at the setup and then looked in his manual and things didn't look right. He said he didn't seem to have the remote antenna hooked up and didn't have one left behind by the installer. He contacted Dish and got an antenna in the mail. When he went to go hook it up, what he did notice was that a wire was hooked to the connection so he tracked that around the room to the remote antenna hooked to the end of this wire. He moved the antenna/wire to another location and now the UHF remote for TV2 works fine.

Has anyone seen or heard of this being necessary?

My receiver picks up the UHF remote from anywhere in my house and I thought the antenna was so sensitive you sometimes picked up neighbor remotes on the same frequency.

He is fine with the wire/extension since it works but I would think it is attenuating the signal or at least completely unnecessary.

Is there a need for an antenna extension?

 

[RandallA]

I do that on a 625 and the 722 receivers. You can find more info here:

http://www.satelliteguys.us/dish-network-technical-discussions/98221-extending-uhf-range.html

 

[8bitbytes]

I do that on a 625 and the 722 receivers. You can find more info here:

http://www.satelliteguys.us/dish-network-technical-discussions/98221-extending-uhf-range.html

Thanks for the link.

This is not what he has though. He says the antenna is on a thin wire all by itself and there is no attenuator.

 

[RandallA]

You can add an jumper cable to the the splitter and connect the UHF antenna to it. You can then move it wherever you get better reception.

Could the thin wire be just an RG59 cable? You can use RG59 for the antenna.

 

[8bitbytes]

There is no splitter - only the wire coming out of the remote antenna connector.

He is going to take some pictures but if it's no big deal...

Would you need this where you have two receivers using UHF remotes?

 

[lakebum431]

No, because they would be on different addresses.

It may be that the little antenna didn't get a strong enough signal so the installer tried something different. If it works and he doesn't mind it no reason to mess with it.

 

[Go Sox!!]

Probably just a coaxial cable connecting the receiver to the antenna. I needed to do this as I was having trouble with my TV in the basement. Have it wired up the wall behind TV. Works Fantastic!!

 

[8bitbytes]

Thanks guys!

 

[Bradtothebone]

I actually have two remote antennas hooked up to my 622 in the basement. I come out of the 622 to a splitter (combiner) and then run to an antenna in the ceiling of the theater (for one end of the house) and to another above the ceiling in another part of the basement (for the other end of the house). No problems from any part of the house. Probably overkill, but control was spotty before.

Brad

 

[tastim]

A lot of techs do that all the time. Dish claims the Antenna will work up to 150 feet (or 100, I forget), but with how some homes are constructed and considering where receivers are usually placed (inside an entertainment center stuffed with other components), I have had problems getting a TV2 remote to work from less than 30 feet before.

The other way to do this is using 2, 2-way splitters. Take the cable that is plugged into the "Home Distribution" (TV2) port on the back of the receiver and plug it into the IN port on the splitter, then run a coaxial jumper to the TV2 port, and another to the Antenna port and plug those into the OUT ports on the splitter.

On TV2, take the line from the wall and plug it into the IN port on that splitter, screw the antenna into one leg of the OUTs on the splitter, and the other leg gets a jumper that plugs into the TV. Now your remote Antenna is in the same room as TV2 and will have no problems working properly.

NOTE: If your home's coax is in bad shape, this can make the TV2 picture fuzzy because you will be losing a few dB by adding splitters.

 

[kstuart]

The other quick fix for recent TV2 remotes (blue UHF Pro) is to remove the battery cover and move the switch to "B".

This usually gives signifcantly improved range.

PS You need to change the receiver also to match, see the manual for details.

 

[staywalt]

I had this problem with my remote. I ran another rg6 cable from the receiver through the wall into my garage and through the ceiling into the return air duct in the hall outside the room the second tv was in. Then attached the antenna ti the end of the wire. Still do stupd stuff like point the remote at the Tv.

 

[BobaBird]

Another resource at EKB: UHF Remote Range Extenders