Dish Network and local channels

A pay as you go Dish system is simple and cheap IF you have a home Dish Account. If that's the case, go buy a rig like a Tailgater portable automatic antenna and portable Dish Network receiver that's compatible with the Tailgater When you want to travel, call Dish to activate your portable. Your monthly bill will increase by about $7 for those months that the added receiver is active. When you're off the road, call. To deactivate and your bill goes back to normal. I get my entire home line up while on the road with this system, including the HD. I have not tried PPV.
Local channels no problem. Just need to keep updating your temporary locations and wait a few minutes.
If you don't have Dish at home, pay as you go is available but not cheap or simple.
If you go with any Dish system, and you have a smart phone or tablet, I recommend you spend a couple $ for an app like " Dish for my RV". It uses your device camera lens and screen to "see" the 3 dish sats in the sky. It really helps when you're trying to place your antenna among trees etc. the Tailgater will self find the sats, but it needs to have a clear view between its location and the sats. It's generally to the SSW to SW but that's not good enough in many places. Once the Tailgater is plugged into its own 50' co ax cable that is also connected to the receiver that has a HDMI cable connection to the tv and is plugged into 115vac, with a clear view of the sats, you will have tv in about 15 minutes. If you call Dish while you're waiting, you'll have the locals a few minutes after the other channels come on.
I find that the Tailgater is a bit fussy about the connecting cable and connections. Adding things like easy- slip-on connectors, different coax, additional lengths of coax or older types of coax will usually lead to issues. The Tailgater needs only what little power is available thru coax cable and connections not intended for much current carrying. The receiver is also sensitive to power surges, lightening strikes etc. After replacing a few receivers, I find it best to unplug the receiver from 115v before making connections, during raging storms and before connecting, disconnecting or switching from shore power to/from gen set power
Check prices on line. Camping World carries these and other options but so do others incl some Dish dealers.

Last summer I had PAYG and was required to fax a copy of my RV registration to Dish to be able to change locals. The way I understood Pay-as-you-go is to pay when you use it, don't pay when you don't. I used MyDish to generally manage the account.
Last fall I stopped paying for service and this spring when I tried to log in to my account on MyDish I was informed the account didn't exist. Calling Dish customer service they said when I quit paying on the account they did away with it. How do I resume service? By jumping through more hoops.
I wasn't going to fight it. OTA works fine for us anyway.

Was setting the account up again a severe issue? Only you can determine the number of hoops you want to go through, but PAYG is just that. When you are done "going" you need to begin again.

It is simple for me. I can do everything on lomne except change service address and a once a year reconnect.

Just to follow up, I got the Tailgater/211z bundle and set up the pay as you go account. Plugged everything in and phoned Dish. I told the customer service guy that I wanted to change service address. I told him I was in an RV and he agreed that all he needed was the zip code. Within 2 hours, I was watching the network news.

I've been full timing since January, have a Winegard X2 and Dish. I also had heard the stories that Dish could be difficult when you called and wanted a location change, but my experience has been just the opposite. I have Dish on speed dial and call them every time I move more then about 100 miles, tell them I'm in an RV, give them the new address and zip code and they make the switch. I usually have the new local channels within a half hour.

* I also use the 'Dish for my RV' smart phone app and find that it helps a great deal, especially with the X2, which allows me to choose either the western arc or the eastern arc sats, whichever are in view.

Tim

Now I know this has been mentioned before, but what exact phone number do you call? I just want to make sure the last two posters are calling the same number to get such quick results with no hassle. :C

800-333-3474. You want 'tech support'.

The first words out of my mouth are always that I have Dish in my RV and I've just moved it to a new location and would like to get the local channels.

Us out West wrote:
As others have said it's very easy to change service location so you can get 'locals' where you are. This will get you the major networks.

DVD's won't do that. :R

Exactly.

I don't knbow how many folk are like us but we rarely watch DVDs. I prefer to watch real life as it happens - news, current events, current entertainment, etc. We don't have kids camping with us do no need for DVD babysitting.

For us, we prefer to use the antenna for the local stuff (kinda neat to see what is going on in the locations we are camping in) and the satellite for the other channels we like (CNN, Discovery, Travel, etc.)

We have DirecTV at home and take one of the boxes on the road. That works for us. Don't know why the OP had a problem with DirecTV at home leading to him dropping them, but whether it is DirecTV or Dish - I would need to have something other than stock OTA programming to satisfy my viewing needs, which incidentally rarely includes movies.

Just my 2 cents.

DOTLDaddy wrote:
Now I know this has been mentioned before, but what exact phone number do you call? I just want to make sure the last two posters are calling the same number to get such quick results with no hassle. :C

For Service Address changes. - 800-333-3474