SEIKI TV"s

[SquareDancingGranny]

Hello,
I have a used 2016 Spirit Siesta that has 3 SEIKI TV's. I have a cable to hook up to campground cable tv, but it doesn't work. What am I doing wrong? Or is it the tv's? Would a satellite dish be better?

[paulwadley]

You should have a box inside the cabinet above the refrigerator. On the exterior of that box is a tiny push button. It is hard to see but it switches from over the air t v signal to cable box signal. Mine is a dark brown or black box that has a little green led light that indicates which mode it is in. Also you have to change your t v setting on the tv to cable.

Paul

[16ACE27]

2016 was the time period where not all SEIKI TVs had QAM tuners for unencrypted digital cable TV tuning,

To use park cable the OTA antenna booster power switch must be off and you have to use the TV settings to select CABLE INPUT and then scan for channels.

[SquareDancingGranny]

Originally Posted by paulwadley

You should have a box inside the cabinet above the refrigerator. On the exterior of that box is a tiny push button. It is hard to see but it switches from over the air t v signal to cable box signal. Mine is a dark brown or black box that has a little green led light that indicates which mode it is in. Also you have to change your t v setting on the tv to cable.

Paul

Thank you.

[bevedfelker]

Ok let's step through this.

1. If you are going to hook up to the RV park cable TV system, you MUST turn off the antenna booster as Paul Wadley noted above. If the antenna booster (used for using the roof top antenna) is on while you are trying to use the park cable system, the cable system feed will not go to the TVs.

2. Next, after you have turned off the antenna booster, you have to scan the TVs to find all the channels. You have to go to menu in the remote and scan. You have to change from AIR to CABLE before you scan so the tuner in the TV will find the channels.

3. Here is where the Seiki TV enters the picture. Most (but not all) of the Seikis used in Thor RVs do not contain a QAM tuner. I won't go into what that is and how it affects scanning the channels, but basically the QAM tuner will decode cabe systems that are encoded. That is not all cable systems, but some. So here is what happens -- my Seikis do not have QAM tuners. I have scanned Cable systems in MANY RV parks and the TVs scan and find the cable channels fine. But if I scan for cable channels when we are at Disney's Fort Wilderness we get "buttkiss" on the channels because their Cable system is encoded and the Seikis won't decode.

Like I said, this does not happen everywhere -- but you are bound to experience it. If you try scanning CASLE and you don't get any channels -- switch back to AIR, put up your antenna, turn on the antenna booster and then scan in AIR mode. You should be able to pick up some channels.

Side note: On my 2015 Axis 24.1, the TV in the living area and on the exterior are both Seikis and what I described above always occurs. But we also have a TV in the sleeping area. It's not a Seiki (it's a Sanyo with built in CD disk reader). Apparently that Sanyo has a QAM tuner because that will scan and find cable channels at Fort Wilderness or any other place where we encountered encoded cable systems.

[16ACE27]

Originally Posted by bevedfelker

Ok let's step through this.

1. If you are going to hook up to the RV park cable TV system, you MUST turn off the antenna booster as Paul Wadley noted above. If the antenna booster (used for using the roof top antenna) is on while you are trying to use the park cable system, the cable system feed will not go to the TVs.

2. Next, after you have turned off the antenna booster, you have to scan the TVs to find all the channels. You have to go to menu in the remote and scan. You have to change from AIR to CABLE before you scan so the tuner in the TV will find the channels.

3. Here is where the Seiki TV enters the picture. Most (but not all) of the Seikis used in Thor RVs do not contain a QAM tuner. I won't go into what that is and how it affects scanning the channels, but basically the QAM tuner will decode cabe systems that are encoded. That is not all cable systems, but some. So here is what happens -- my Seikis do not have QAM tuners. I have scanned Cable systems in MANY RV parks and the TVs scan and find the cable channels fine. But if I scan for cable channels when we are at Disney's Fort Wilderness we get "buttkiss" on the channels because their Cable system is encoded and the Seikis won't decode.

Like I said, this does not happen everywhere -- but you are bound to experience it. If you try scanning CASLE and you don't get any channels -- switch back to AIR, put up your antenna, turn on the antenna booster and then scan in AIR mode. You should be able to pick up some channels.

Side note: On my 2015 Axis 24.1, the TV in the living area and on the exterior are both Seikis and what I described above always occurs. But we also have a TV in the sleeping area. It's not a Seiki (it's a Sanyo with built in CD disk reader). Apparently that Sanyo has a QAM tuner because that will scan and find cable channels at Fort Wilderness or any other place where we encountered encoded cable systems.

Just to correct one thing on Ed's post above:
A QAM tuner is a digital tuner - it is used to tune unencoded/unencrypted digital cable signals. It is basically the same as your ATSC OTA tuner for receiving digital OTA (Over The Air) TV but for the Cable spectrum.

Most cable companies are transitioning to encoded/encrypted cable signals and this transition has made it to a few parks. To receive those signals you must have either a cable company's receiver box or your TV must have the ability to insert a Cablecard which handles the decoding/decryption.