If you have a satellite dish and you would like to get your local stations too then you may have the option of paying extra to receive them over your dish. This may not always be true and most likely you won’t be able to receive all of the stations that a regular antenna can pick up. Additionally you won’t be able to pick up TV broadcasts from more than one market. So if the Dish Provider gives you ABC NBC CBS and FOX and they are playing a two different baseball games on Fox Stations that are within regular TV reception range you will only receive one of these stations and you might even have a blackout of that station based on agreements to rebroadcast the game.
The way to get around this is to install your own antenna and connect it to the cable that your satellite dish is connected on. Unfortunately you can’t simply connect it with any device you need to use something that will accept both signal ranges.
If you have wired a home cable TV or television system with coax cable then you have probably come across the small cable connectors called splitters. Splitters are devices that let you take the signal from one cable and split it to two or more cables. This lets you run wires to all the rooms in your home off of the primary line coming into your home.
The opposite of a Splitter is a Combiner. A combiner allows you to take two different tv signals and merge them into one cable. They are used primarily when you are installing two TV antennas pointing in opposite directions and you want to merge the two signals for all of your televisions.
The third type of device that looks like a splitter or combiner is called a Diplexer. This type of connector is a little bit smarter than the first two cable connectors because it will accept two signals of different strengths or wavelengths and merge them into one cable.
A Diplexer is what you need if you want to connect your TV Antenna to your Dish Cable Feeds and get all of the signals at once.
The Diplexer will have 3 connectors. The first is for a feed to all of the TVs in your home. This line may be connected directly to your existing Dish so you will need to remove it and connected to the diplexer then add another short line to your dish.
The Dish line is connected on the Diplexer’s High Port because Satellite Dish signals are above 900mhz.
The TV Antenna is connected to the Diplexer’s Low Port and signals from your Antenna will be below 900mhz.
By using the diplexer you can have two different signals exist on the same line.
Hopefully there will not be any signal confusion known as crossover. This is when the signals from one device interfere with signal ranges from another device. You will need to check with your manufacturer and Dish Provider to make sure that a Diplexer is the correct way to go for your exact system. However this is normally how you would connect a regular TV Antenna to the cables that feed signal to all your TVs.
When wiring Cable TV, Dish or Antennas it is important that you use good equipment.
Always use RG6 Cable Wire that you can purchase either in bulk lengths or with pre made connectors already installed. If you need to make your own cable then opt for the best connectors you can get. You do not want the type that you simply slip on and don’t crimp and you don’t want the type that you crimp and it crushes the cable .. You want a professional Crimp Connector which requires a special Crimp Tool.
See our How To on RG6 wire for more information. And checkout our guides on TV antennas, Media Players and other devices that can help you design a great home entertainment solution for very little money.