Satellite vs. Cable

I was using SAT at home back then and it was a win-win to just pull a SAT RCVR from the bedroom and take on trips. This was all before HIGH DEF TV so all of the TV signals were the same whether on CABLE or SAT TV.

Then the digital high def NATL BROADCAST came on the scene with good high def signals from the local towns. After seeing the quality of this I stopped bringing along my SAT TV stuff from the house.

We get pretty good high DEF TV signals here on the East side of the USA just about everywhere we go. Even when we hookup at a camp ground we would really rather use the OTA BATWING antenna to pick up the local NATL BROADCAST station from the local town as they were always in high def mode. HDTV better to watch than standard Tv for us.

For those cable stations like CNN TWC and the bunch of movie channels we like to still watch we will downstream them from the internet. Most of our TV is NATL TV BROADCAST stations however from the local towns...

Of course downstreaming from the internet requires alot of GB DATAPLAN with your internet provider.

For us the NATL BROADCAST using the oTA BATWING antenna ended up being the way was the way to go and it is free to the public...

Getting HIGH DEF TV signals from the SAT folks seemed pretty expensive for us on our budget. We also found out real quick having the SAT DISH portable allowed you to park under the shade trees in the camp grounds and place the SAT DISH outside with a clear view of the southern skies.

Roy Ken

If you already have sattelite tv at home, I'd just go with sattelite. You can get the "roaming sat dome" that zeros in automatically, or just bring a dish with tripod and do it manually, it's really easy, I use Directtv and the menu on the screen gets you there. Of course wind, or an errant dog WILL knock over or move your dish and you have to start over.

You are in CA, if you are close to Devore, you can have one of my extra direct tv dishes if you want.

If you enjoy having TV when you travel, you need a satellite system. Like others have said, there are many parks with cable TV, ranging from exceptional to the only channels available are the 24 hour snowstorm channel. The easiest setup will be a carryout satellite antenna and some coax cable. Use your receiver from home and the only thing you will be missing are network channels when you are outside the spotbeam. You can upgrade that to an RV package that will get you east and west coast feeds for the networks. Something else to consider is eventually many of the cable TV companies are migrating all their services to scrambled, digital feeds. This will require the RV parks that provide cable TV to either spend a lot of money upgrading their system to decode the signals and then mix and re-broadcast them, or have a system where you will need to check out a cable box and return it when you leave. If they chose the first option, fine. The Cable box method can be a PITA.

We have dish at home, we love the TV portion hate the broad band internet. we use a tailgater and one of the satellite receivers from home to receive satellite while on the road. works pretty good, and will self align.

I have Dish Network.

But if I'm making a short stay (1 or 2 nights) at an RV Park with cable - I'll hook up to the cable and see if it is worthwile. I don't bother to get the satellite antenna out and set it up. I'll also see what I can pick up with the OTA (over the air antenna).

In a stay that short - the main thing I'm looking for is local weather and any traffic news.

I have Direct TV at home and have an extra receiver from when my daughter was at home. I put the extra receiver in the RV and bought a dish off of Craigslist for $20. Takes me 10-15 minutes align it each time I move but it works like a charm.

Suggest you take several trips to see if over the air TV and rv park cable (when available) is OK for you. It may depend on how TV addicted you are. In six years with trips up to 8 weeks we haven't had a desire for satellite.

Welcome to the Grand Design family. Check out the Owners Forum

Many of the private parks offer cable. Some good. Some terrible. Many places TV antenna service is almost no existance, and seem to coinside with the parks that have poor cable service. If you watch TV a lot satellite is best.

I'm still waiting for the question.

satellite will go anywhere you go you can only get cable in parks that provide it which is usually private parks