So, you’re taking a leap and making the switch from satellite to over-the-air TV and probably some type of streaming service. I’m seriously so excited for you. It’s not a tough process and you can save tons of money but cutting the cord. You can read how we saved $1400 a year but cutting cable and still get live sports and TV plus tons of on-demand shows and movies. It’s the best move we’ve made in a long time! Part of what made the switch so easy was utilizing our existing satellite dish mount and grounded coax cable to instantly wire the whole house for our new OTA (over-the-air) antenna for local channels. It was cheap, quick, and we didn’t need to fill holes or drill more holes in our roof or run wiring through our whole house. Awesome. Here’s how to mount HDTV antenna to satellite dish in less than 30 minutes with no house wiring required!
How to Mount HDTV Antenna to Satellite Dish
When we were working out how to cut cable, one of the main questions was how we would get TV to all the TVs in our house without rewiring the whole place. I was trying to find ways to DIY the whole ditching cable process so hiring someone to rewire our house was not ideal. Then It occurred to me, the house is currently wired for the dish on the roof so if we use that coax cable for the OTA antenna, we wouldn’t need to rewire anything. Bingo. Best option right there.
I started digging into how we could possibly make that happen ideally it would have been awesome to use the actual satellite dish for the antenna and not have to do much modification at all.
Can a satellite dish be used as an antenna?
Can a satellite dish be used as an antenna? Well, technically no. BUT you can get FREE TV using your existing dish mount and wiring by ordering an inexpensive OTA antenna. Let me walk you through how to convert satellite dish to TV antenna.
How to Convert Satellite Dish to TV Antenna in Less Than 30 Minutes
I really didn’t want to poke more holes in our roof and I didn’t want to have multiple, ugly, TV-related items on the roof, but I also didn’t want to remove the old dish and have to fill those holes. So the best solution was to figure out a way to mount OTA antenna on satellite dish itself. It turns out this is pretty easy.
Mount OTA Antenna on Satellite Dish
It must be said, it’s best to only perform work you are comfortable with. We suggest you contact a licensed professional for installation on a roof or somewhere out of your reach. Factual Fairytale is not liable for any incident occurring while mounting your OTA antenna.
Step 1: Determine TV Tower Range and Purchase OTA Antenna
First off, you need to visit this website to determine how far away your TV towers are from your home. Then you’ll need to purchase an OTA antenna with a range greater than your farthest TV tower. Ours were about 30 miles away so we ordered this antenna with a range of 50 miles. It took about 5 minutes max to put it together.
Step 2: Remove Cap from Arm of Satellite Dish to Expose Coax Cable
There’s probably just 1 bolt holding the end cap on the arm of the dish. Unscrew that and pull the end cap off. Inside you’ll see the coax cable screwed into the dish arm. Unscrew the cable and pull it out of the dish arm. Hang onto the cable, you’ll need it again in step 4 to mount HDTV antenna to satellite dish pole.
Step 3: Remove Dish from Mount Pole
Next, you can remove the actual dish portion from the pole it’s mounted on. Ours had 3 bolts holding it in place. Loosen these and lift the dish off the pole. You’re done with the dish so set it out of the way. My husband happily tossed it off our 2 story roof.
Step 4: Attach Coax Cable to Antenna
Take the coax cable that was attached to the satellite dish and screw it into the new antenna. Simple as that. Now every cable outlet that was wired for your dish is now wired for your antenna. and, because everything that runs through your outdoor electrical box is already grounded, there’s no extra work to do. No rewiring, no running cables, no need to ground a new antenna. So easy, so awesome.
Step 5: Mount HDTV Antenna to Satellite Dish Pole
Now, to mount the OTA antenna on satellite dish, slide the antenna mounting bracket over the mounting pole and tighten the bolts that came with your antenna.
If for some reason your antenna does not fit on the dish mount pole, you can get a fitting from your local hardware store to adjust the pole larger or smaller. Make sure to measure the diameter of mount pole and the diameter of the antenna mount opening so you know what size fitting you need.
Step 6: Point Antenna in the Direction of Local TV Towers
Remember that website you used to find the location of your local TV towers? It also tells you the direction you need to point your antenna for best reception. Using a compass or compass app on a smartphone, point the antenna to the correct degree mark for your local TV towers. Most should be in similar locations within a downtown area.
To use the antenna app on your smartphone, download and open the app. Then, keeping your phone flat or parallel to the ground, with the top of the phone pointing away from you, rotate your phone until it is indicating the correct degree location of your TV towers (example 270 degrees) that you found using the website above. Point your antenna in the same direction as your phone.
Step 7: Search for Channels on All Connected TV’s
Search for the channels on your TV to make sure it’s pulling in everything within range. You may need to slightly adjust your antenna direction to get all the channels you want.
**Factual Tip: It helps to have 1 person checking channels inside and 1 person adjusting the antenna while communicating via phone so you don’t have to be running back and forth. Also, for some reason, our TVs all picked up several more channels after being hooked up for a few days.
Congrats! You’ve Successfully Mounted an OTA TV Antenna on a Satellite Dish!
And that’s it. You now have FREE TV!! Crazy simple right?! No running wires, no exposed coax cable through the house, it just takes an inexpensive OTA TV antenna and a little manual labor.
If you want to add in streaming to your TV watching experience, check out my blog on how we saved $1400 a year by cutting cable and still get live sports and TV shows plus on-demand TV and movies. It’s super simple and it’s going to save you a ton of money!
Questions on how to mount HDTV antenna to satellite dish?
Share your questions on how to mount HDTV antenna to satellite dish in the comments below and we’ll gladly help you out!
Until Next Time,
XO,
Meg
my dish has a switch outside on the house. The second tv is connected to that switch. my antenna has an amplifier that I was going to plug the amp into the coax coming into the house from the Dish. Will the amp power back out side to the switch and under the house back to the TV in the bedroom, just like the Dish did?
We are doing just like you cut the cord can not get Denver News anyway they think I am a New Mexican and only let me know what is going on in ABQ. I hope it all works out we just were able to get faster internet for a reasonable price so made the jump.
Thank you, very informative
Thank you, very informative
I had Directv and hooked my OTA antenna to cable going to the box mounted to outside of my house. I mounted the antenna to satellite mount but didn’t remove dish. It has a 4-way splitter for my four TVs but I can’t get any signal to any tv. Does Directv block the signals somehow?
Hi Dave, there should be a cable going to your dish. That coax cable needs to be unscrewed from the dish and attached to your OTA antenna. Have you tried that? Best of luck!
Our dish had to cables coming out of it. I wish i could take pics.
My problem is similar to Dave’s I didn’t remove dish, added antenna, no channels. Tried cable from dish, then bought extra cable, to go from antenna to lang box still no channels. Is the dish causing interference. Is the lang box the problem. The cable that came from end of sat had two cables. Help dont know what’s wrong.
Great idea to attach antenna to the dish mount, my question is that the mount is on the roof in back and dish is pointed parallel to the roof line toward the front of the house which would be the same direction I would need to point the New antenna. The mount is at base of roof and I have a high peak, so would I point the antenna towards the sky like the dish is. I would think I would need to have the antenna in front of the house.
Our mount sounds like it is situated in the same way yours is. The antenna doesn’t point towards the sky and still picks up all of our local channels with no problem. If your roof is much higher than the antenna you may get some interference so I would error on the side of buying a higher range antenna just in case.
Thanks for stopping by!
Meg
you are right about the connections,but I only can get reception in one room.I had two tvs .My main tv had a receiver with pause,reverse and forward,guide and all. could this be the difference? Do you think the wiring might be connected in another way?
Hi Roy, If both TVs were connected to a coax cable wall outlet then that shouldn’t be an issue. If you’re replacing the dish with an antenna and using the existing outside wiring, nothing should need to change in the house other than doing a channel scan on your TV. Not all my TV’s get every channel. Our oldest/smallest TV gets fewer channels than our new TVs.
Thanks for stopping by!
Meg
my dish antenae has 4 coaxial going in to it i dont know which is antenae ?? can you help ?
Just put in ota and can’t figure out why I don’t get signal. Can someone help. Did check all connections.
Did you solve the problem?
I have to return my receiver.Doesn’t that create a break in the coax going to my 2 tvs? do I just get a coax splice and put the two female cables together?(one coax cable came into the receiver and one going out)
I hooked up antenna to old dish roof mounted post. Hooked up to existing satellite dish wiring, and ran a search for channels. No channels are available, but we know there are several available. So, now what do I do?
I hooked up antenna to old dish roof mounted post. Hooked up to existing satellite dish wiring, and ran a search for channels. No channels are available, but we know there are several available. So, now what do I do?
I’ve been on antennas for several years.
Due to storms I’ve had to change antennas a couple of times.
One I bought had the cable (way too thin) hooked up inside the rotator on the antenna. The other end is attached to an inline amplifier. That connector plug is not a normal cable fitting, it’s like an RCA male plug. The out feed is a regular F connector.
In that case I couldn’t use the existing cable from the dish but I did jump the out feed cord from the amplifier to a splitter which feeds the outlets in the house.
Some antennas have the amplifier built into the antenna others use an inside the house amplifier. Be sure how your choice of antenna is setup before you buy. Most likely you can get all the documents from the manufacturer’s or seller’s website. Might save you from returning the antenna.
Also there’s no difference in an antenna that makes it an HD OR DIGITAL antenna. All signals are received by all antennas. It’s not like the analog/digital problem with older TVs. Outdoor antenna work better than indoor but at your location an indoor might be your only option, check any rules for where you live. In some cases an indoor antenna works as good as an outdoor one.
If you try to use multiple antennas to point to different directions it requires a unit called a “combiner” a splitter will NOT work correctly. The slight difference in the signal from 2 antennas will be out of sync and cause interference to each other. You might get a “ghosting” signal or even lose some channels because the out of sync signal can’t be resolved by the TV.
Don’t believe the exorbitant claims of miles from an antenna manufacturer. Signal is affected by the height of the antenna, yours and the broadcasting antenna, mountain ridges, buildings, trees and the curvature of the earth. Some reflection of the signal can increase distance to pickup a signal but around 80 miles is pushing it.
At my location I can move my antenna to different locations and get different channels. I get more at my house than friends near me can. You might have to move yours to a different place on your home.
I have a cheap meter that hooks to the antenna and I can move it and see if that makes a difference. I can’t tell the channels or anything but the signal strength.
I’ll give you an example. My antenna was at the left rear corner of my house. I moved it 18 feet to the right rear corner and lost all my channels. I was trying to keep from buying more cable.
The more connectors you have the more signal loss you have, the best cable makes a difference, look it up on the web, I don’t remember the “RG” size of the best cable.
Always make sure your antenna is grounded properly, it’s a big old lightening rod up there.
Best of luck.
I hook yagy antenna to my cband dish 6 ft.bigger I conect to the center of the focus and I aim to WSW and get beautiful 80 chanels only I got to much interference on chanel 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5.maybe I aim to wrong spot any clue please??? Thanks
I am mounting to a direct tv pole on ground I am using cable but will be hooking poll to poll with a 10 ft to 15 ft mast to pole
what about the 4 waysplitter dish had to feed my 4 television sets do you think it will work or should i get
a powered 4 way splitter. thanks for your help . jack obrien
Good info, but will this work on antenna/ rotor combo
I am gearing up to make the leap and really appreciate your description of how you DIY’s the conversion from DISH to a regular antennae. Can’t wait to join the club of cable-cutters! Thanks for posting this.
What do you mean connected tvs? Do I still have to have my DirecTV box?
If my Directv had an outside splitter for 3 TVs to watch different programs will the antenna work the same way or will all tvs have to watch the same thing?
I live on farmhouse to town is 25 miles and other town about 40 miles other town about 50 miles I want to have tv local I don’t need directv or dish so I hope I get your information how to get free channel how many can I get free channel