Opinions on Dish Tailgater?

Poppy's 5th Wheel wrote:

Arcamper wrote:

We have the tailgater with a 211k receiver that works well if you have a clear path to the south. Just bought a Wally but have not hooked it up yet in place of the 211k to get the RF remote. I have talked to several people who have the Pathway X2 and they like it better but I hate to spend another $400 for another dish when ours works ok.

What is a "Wally"?

We have the Pathway X2 and it works well. We also have the 211Z receiver and I'm not so crazy about that. 10 year old technology. I added an external HD so we could record programming but you can't watch something and record something else. Almost a "what's the point" issue for me but we got into the habit of reviewing overnight programming or daytime programming and set some things (1 show at a time) to record. Why they can't offer a real modern DVR I certainly don't know.

The Wally is their newest receiver that is suppose to replace the 211k and z at some point according to Dish. Look on the Dish website and you can learn all about it.

Arcamper wrote:

The Wally is their newest receiver that is suppose to replace the 211k and z at some point according to Dish. Look on the Dish website and you can learn all about it.

Thanks for the info. I did some research and it seems it still isn't a DVR and, although you can still add an external HD, you still can't watch 1 show while recording another.

What is so freakin' difficult about this?

Anyway, thanks for the info.

Big Katuna wrote:
I am going with a Winegard Pathway X2. It has a bigger dish and works better in the rain, it gets DISH eastern AND western arc so better chances of getting a signal and it supports two boxes.

We have the Winegard Pathway X2 and it works great. I think the Tailgater is also a good system but the Winegard now seems to be the way to go with it's improved features.

Early on there were some complaints about the technicians not knowing how to set you up when you moved positions, but that now seems to be a thing of the past. The techs now quickly set you up with no problems.

When we had DishTV the Tailgaters was great. Loved it over an actual tripod style. Finally canceled Dish,completely because of rising costs.

I have had the Tailgater for I think going on four years now. It seems to work very well, given the small size of the dish. We were on Prince Edward Island this summer, and we were still able to get some channels. It seems surprisingly durable, since I have knocked it around in the truck and the camper quite a bit, and it hasn't affected its performance. The technology may be getting dated by now.

Remember that to watch one show and record another requires a two tuner receiver, and the 211 (which works with the Tailgater) only has one. You can easily hook an external hard drive to the 211 to record shows when you are not watching; however, and this works very well.

a year ago when I was shopping I ended up with a Winegard Carryout G2. It will get Dish, DirectTV or Bell. even though I've had Dish at home for about 3 years I didn't want to lock in the RV to just one provider.

stickdog wrote:
We've had the Tailgator for 2 1/2 years works fine our problem has been the Dish customer service when changing location and receiving local channels takes at least 2 calls to get them.

I usually had good luck with the techs when changing locations and wanting the new local channels but sometimes not, so I started just using the 'chat' feature on their site. The easy way is to write up all the boilerplate info in 'Word' (account number, etc) and have it ready to go, then add in your new location when you move and do a Paste into the chat box. Putting it in print also pretty much insures the Dish POC will get you the right locals. Done in about a minute and 15 minutes later you have the new locals. Easy-Peasy. I don't think you even need to log in to use the Chat feature.

And for the record, I've been fulltiming for 3 years now with a Winegard Pathway X2 and love it. Has a larger dish then the Tailgater, can access either the eastern or western sets of satellites, and has two cable outputs so you can hook up to two TVs and watch different channels as long as they come off the same satellite.

To the OP - You might do a search as this subject gets discussed every week.

tlemon wrote:
Has anyone had experience with Dish tailgater and would you recommend it? If not what is another option?

I wouldn't get ANYTHING to do with dish

jsum wrote:

tlemon wrote:
Has anyone had experience with Dish tailgater and would you recommend it? If not what is another option?

I wouldn't get ANYTHING to do with dish

OK, so what is your suggestion ?

GoPackGo wrote:

jsum wrote:

tlemon wrote:
Has anyone had experience with Dish tailgater and would you recommend it? If not what is another option?

I wouldn't get ANYTHING to do with dish

OK, so what is your suggestion ?

Direct, if using a tripod, and satellite dish. Dish is very difficult at times to get reception. , but we are talking automatic, so I can't see why Dish is any worse then Direct.