DirecTV Question

If you want HD then you need the exact same kind of antenna on your house. You will mount it to a tripod and point it to the satellite manually each time you move. If you don't move often this is no big deal.
If you don't care about HD then you can buy a small portable dish like shown above (it has been replaced by the Winegard MP1), a small dish on a tripod or platform or any number of semi-automatic to automatic dome system that you either mount on the roof or set on the ground at each new location.

yes, yes

In our case we bring a second receiver if we plan to view on more than one tv. We did purchase the same Directv HD sat dish we have at home on Ebay and mounted it on a portable stand. There are automated roof-mounted dishes that are capable of delivering Directv HD content, but we didn't want to spend the nearly $2K for the installed system.

We have been setting up the standard definition Directv round sat dish for many years anyway and found setting up the HD sat dish to be just as easy, plus we camp among the trees often and need to be able to move our sat dish around to get a signal through the tree cover. We carry 150' of coax although 50' usually is sufficient.

We use bedroom HD receivers and since we use the same dish we have at home, pointing the dish is really all we have to do as there is no need to go through set-up routine on receiver. Obtaining a signal is not difficult once you master the routine, but if you have little experience there are some devices available at Camping World that can help. There are some videos on-line that can get you acquainted with some of the parameters involved.

We never travel without our satellite dish as we can set it up usually in 10 minutes, less sometimes if there is open sky to the south and ground is level. Even when RV park provides cable or OTA is readily accessible, we still set-up satellite as nothing compares to what sat tv can provide. We have the routine down to an art and easily enjoy every channel we have at home, including locals if within NM, with very little effort or issue.

When I was doing this back before the NATIONAL BROADCAST TV channels went DIGITAL I brought along a portable DirecTV dish that had two output ports on it. I always sit this on the bed of my truck so it would remind me to put it away when we left the area for things...


I ran RG cable from the two ports- one going to the living room area HDTV and the other RG cable going to the bedroom area HDTV. In one of the RG legs I used the SAT LOCATION METER like this one shown to find the DIRECTV SAT Signal.


In each location I hooked up the RG cable to the SAT RCVR ANT port I brought with me from home. I then hooked up the VIDEO OUT from each SAT RCVR to the VIDEO INPUT on the HDTVs. Don't forget to bring along your SAT TV ACCOUNT info and 800 phone number with you. Seems like everytime I disconnected my SAT RCVRS from the house I would have to get DIRECTV to turn them back on for me. This is all legal to do moving your SAT TV equipment between the house and the RV so don't worry about that. You will however lose your local TV channels when you get outside your zip code area so be aware of that. Larn how to pick up the local station off your BATWING OTA antenna to watch the national broadcast channels on your trips.

This worked out pretty good picking up the standard SAT TV programs but I was always afraid the portable SAT DISH was going to grow feet and wander off on me.

When the NATL BROADCAST came out a few years back we quit bringing along the SAT TV stuff and just use our OTA BATWING antenna to pick up local HIGH DEF HDTV signals from the local towns now. They are all transmitted now in HDTV full screen high def TV mode - much better quality than standard SAT TV signals.

Roy Ken

No one rec. feeding through the Video selector box will feed both TV's. But both will carry same program.

An old round dual LNB will work. But NO HDTV.
You can run 2 cables from dish to REC. Than you can record while watching another program live, or record 2 programs at same time.

I have the Wingard Traveler on our MH.