Winegard Dish Playmaker

Well, this is crazy cool. This is Winegard's DISH Playmaker, and it's going to work in conjunction with this receiver, with Wally. What we've got going here is an antenna that will receive DISH signals off of satellite. So it's going to give you DISH high definition television, really, wherever you are. Wally is going to get set up inside the camper.

Gonna run a coaxial to the outside of the camper. That's going to allow it to connect to the antenna wherever you are and give you that DISH HD television, wherever you are. It's an easy install. Let's get going on this. When it comes to install on this whole Playmaker system, don't worry about the antenna.

There's no install on the camper involved with it. What happens is once you get where you're going, you take this out, set it outside, connect a coax to it here. And we're going to talk more about locating this outside the camper when we're done. But there's no install. This does not get fastened to the camper.

Inside the camper here, we've got this cabinet which is set up to receive the receiver. The way it's going to work is Wally is going to live right in there and what Wally needs is input. And that input has to come from outside the camper. So coax cable, is going to go in the back of the cabinet and that's going to terminate at Wally, at the receiver. On this end what I'll end up doing is drilling a hole here.

That's going to get me to the outside of the camper so that the coax can run outside. The way this works, this is cool. Is this box, this connection, is going to end up on the outside on the camper wall and the coax is going to come in on the back of it and when you're not using this, you snap that closed and that's what makes it weathertight, that's how that can live outside. Then when you're ready to connect to it, you open it up, hook the coax up that then connects to the antenna. And that's how the signal comes back inside.

Where that leaves me now is I gotta run and get a drill and then punch that hole through from inside to outside so we can thread the coax to the outside. It's always really, really difficult, nearly impossible on the outside of the camper to locate where you are relative to the inside. It's easier to just work from the inside out. This drill bit is not the right size for this coax. Easier to start small and then I'm going to come back in from the outside with the larger bit and that just gives me way better control over what's going on here.

So this part, at the risk of jinxing myself. is relatively simple, which is just locate where I'm going to be, drill through. Now outside, in. Now it's kind of like second verse same as the first, except I'm outside going in with a larger diameter bit. Easy peasy.

I brought the coax out and here's, don't you slip back in! There's a way this goes. There's that junction that I showed you, that outdoor box that I showed you inside the camper. So that's going to simply connect here. Then, when I locate this, get it straight and screws are going to go right here.

And in order to do that, I like to punch those with a scratch awl first. And it just makes it easier for the screws to start so that when they hit that aluminum they don't end up slipping all over the place, and in a spot that I'm not happy with. And then som RV caulk behind here. Now here's the way this opens. This whole system comes together.

This is the coax that's going to feed to the antenna. So we would do this. But instead of connecting that and then having this drape, what I did is I picked up that 90 degree connector. So, now this can go like this. And then this will be able to go like this once you're on site at the campground or wherever.

So then it just makes life a little bit easier on that coax so it's not sticking out like this and then hanging by gravity down towards the ground. A 90 degree is going to make that a lot simpler. Additionally, I've got one of these 90s on the back of Wally, so that instead of the coax coming out of the back of the receiver and turning in order to get here. The 90 is in place in order to facilitate that, just to make it easier on the coax. So that takes care of this install portion here on the outside of the camper.

Well, that was an easy and successful installation. Here's how the system all comes together. Once you get to where you're going, you're going to take the antenna outside and position it, more on that in a second. You're going to connect the coax here and this coax of course comes into that weathertight box that's on the outside of the camper. Now positioning that?

Here's what's really cool. You can get an app on your phone and that's going to help you locate potential obstructions so that once that satellite or once that antenna is in its spot, you can look and see, is that a good spot? And you can move it accordingly. So that's going to really simplify the process of making sure that this is talking to the satellite. This in turn then talks to our internal components.

'Cause we've got the coax cable that's coming through the cabinet. Here's Wally, Wally has got a remote so we can use that to control the receiver. And then while he's got outputs and here they are. And that's what's going to let us connect to Wally here inside the camper. So a really simple addition in order to allow you to connect to DISH television via satellite, wiring your camper.