campgrounds with cable boxes

[cpoo]

A new thing to me is the growing number of campgrounds that now use a cable box instead of the old analog where the box was not necessary. In the old days I connected the cable to the coach and all Tv's after a scan had cable channels. Now with the box I must run a coax through the window and hook up to main tv and only that tv has cable. Are there options I am missing? With satellite I am only trying to get local channels. I can use my antenna and get locals in many places so cable is not needed but some places are out of range and the only option for networks is the cable.

[cpoo]

OldDoggy wrote:
Just got home from a 6 week crss country adventure. Most of the RV parks offering cable, my new Vizio didn't like. Some had crystal clear TV but most were full of "noise" resulting in a snowy picture or worse. I chaulk it up to bad connections or lack of maintenance of their system. Just Another Old Doggy, Don

Are you sure your antenna amplifier was off. Sounds exactly like symptoms I have had when I forgot to turn it off and was using cable. The fact this happened in so many places alerted me.

[Mr_Mark1]

When we were in Asheville, NC, this past summer at an RV park high up on a mountain top, they gave us a box and a remote. This was with our old coach and the system did not work with our '08 motorhome. My brother with is new 2014 Tiffin, it worked.

The campground host came by to check things out as he brought a TV and connected it at the post and it worked. He blamed our coach. Since I'm not a techie person, we just used the antenna as we received a few channels (if I remember correctly).

After reading this thread, I now see what the future holds (irritating). I've only connected cable once to the new coach in Las Cruces, NM, at the Hacienda RV Resort and it worked fine there with just connecting to our cable connection in the bay.

I'm really ready to change to an attic antenna at the house and dump cable as we seem to only watch the major networks. Paying for cable is a waste if you don't use it.

MM.

[OldDoggy]

Just got home from a 6 week crss country adventure. Most of the RV parks offering cable, my new Vizio didn't like. Some had crystal clear TV but most were full of "noise" resulting in a snowy picture or worse. I chaulk it up to bad connections or lack of maintenance of their system. Just Another Old Doggy, Don

[belfert]

There is a fix campgrounds can do, but it is very expensive. They can have the cable company install a system at the campground that converts the encrypted digital signal back to analog cable service that a cable ready TV can use. I don't know if HD will work with this or not.

My employer had Comcast do this, but it was like $10,000 to install.

[xctraveler]

I actually would prefer the ethernet even if it not elegant. I used to carry a wifi router so I could take the ethernet and have my own wifi net in the coach. Now just use hot spot on my phone with unlimited data (very old grandfathered account).

Will not use cg cable. If satellite is blocked and OTA is no good I still have books and sat radio for news. And if sat radio is blocked and I am out of Verizon data range, I guess I will read my books and tlk to my neighbors who will be in the same fix! Oh right that is what we used to do before all the modern connected stuff came along.

[cpoo]

The cable boxes must be new at Disney. Did not have them last year for TV. The ethernet for internet has been that way for a long time. They promise wifi coming soon every year. Don't know if any pods have it.

[holstein13]

At Fort Wilderness in Disney World, they handed us two boxes, one for cable TV and one for the Internet (ethernet only, no WIFI). Both had to be hooked up to the same coax and both had to be inside the motorhome to stay out of the rain.

I couldn't figure out how to get these hooked up elegantly so I opted to only hook up the internet to my internal router. I watched my network shows on the Internet and put up the antenna for live programming.

[et2]

In our case we were use to having cable at the particular campground for years and then the conversion. We were very disappointed in the now needed setup as it didn't work for us. To me stating you have cable is one thing, not being able to use it anymore is another and needless to say very disappointing from the consumers point of view. The fact they just blew us off because we were one of the few who couldn't use the setup, then refusing an adjustment in our daily rate sealed the deal for us in never returning. Of course all this was told to us after they ran our credit card. This was the KOA in Petoskey MI.

Perhaps letting people know about needing this converter box and possibly it might not work for some would be appropriate on your web site letting people know what they can expect. Just blaming the cable company is too easy. At least tell people before you take their money.

[kalynzoo]

I too believe it is the cable company and not the campground that has changed the game. In my home, TimeWarner now requires a digital box on every TV not just those receiving upgraded service. The box is free until Jan 2016, but then who knows...get you hooked then up the charge, just like the street drug industry. It this becomes a problem for campers they may have to add a short splice cable between the TV's and the signal line, this can then be used to insert the campground box if needed. But before you go and change things remember the industry is changing almost daily...WiFi feeds, internet feed, lets see who wins the war of the airways.

[DSDP_Don]

Yes.....This is going to cost the RV parks more if they want to offer cable or sat TV. It's not unlike the integration of internet into campgrounds. Some have terrible internet and some upgrade their systems to "just like at home" performance. It's expensive.

Yes, rates will have to go up, but so does everything else. I understand the pleas from campgrounds and that they're not all getting rich. With that said, have you tried to get reservations lately at a popular park....very difficult. The baby boomers are out and spending their money. If you want mine, you better spend it on your park or I won't be back.

Lastly, the addition of these last generation cable boxes are very difficult to integrate into newer coaches where the TV's are hard to access and use HDMI connections. It's like going backward in technology. We have DirecTV as our primary TV source, then campground cable and if there is nothing, we watch movies.

Side Note: We have a DirecTv DVR in our motor home and when they offer free movies, I record the ones I like. For those who may not be aware, you can watch the saved movies on your DVR even when you don't get satellite.

[tropical36]

Pogoil wrote:

tropical36 wrote:
Firstly, what a CG might call cable, could be a dish network, but having said that, here is something else, that might be going on. In our area, for example, Comcast Cable Company has now encrypted their TV service, no matter how basic, so a box is needed in all cases, no matter what you have for a TV. What's worse, it blocks out the HD on the newer TV's that are so equipped, so to get that back, it's a digital charge and then a monthly charge for every HD converter box and we have about 10 TV's.
Since we're satisfied with basic TV channels, which include all the major networks, ME, CW, PBS and many others, which are also in Spanish, we have installed an antenna in the attic, which does a wonderful job. We now enjoy, crisp clear HDTV, with no boxes, cable charges, or other hassles and arguments with the cable company over billing and whatnot.
No, what to do about broadband internet service?

You understand and like you many RV. parks have had to make a decision.

Pogoil.

I should have also added that we're pretty much satisfied with the bat wing antenna's signal in the coach and seldom have to go without. If and when that happens, we have plenty of movies for keeping one occupied after dark. We've also done better with it than many of the RV Park systems and sometimes don't even bother with hooking it up and especially when near a major city.

[Pogoil]

tropical36 wrote:
Firstly, what a CG might call cable, could be a dish network, but having said that, here is something else, that might be going on. In our area, for example, Comcast Cable Company has now encrypted their TV service, no matter how basic, so a box is needed in all cases, no matter what you have for a TV. What's worse, it blocks out the HD on the newer TV's that are so equipped, so to get that back, it's a digital charge and then a monthly charge for every HD converter box and we have about 10 TV's.
Since we're satisfied with basic TV channels, which include all the major networks, ME, CW, PBS and many others, which are also in Spanish, we have installed an antenna in the attic, which does a wonderful job. We now enjoy, crisp clear HDTV, with no boxes, cable charges, or other hassles and arguments with the cable company over billing and whatnot.
No, what to do about broadband internet service?

You understand and like you many RV. parks have had to make a decision.

Pogoil.

[okgc]

westernrvparkowner wrote:
Yes, it is encryption by the cable company that makes the converter box necessary. They have done this for several reasons. The most obvious is to prevent theft of service. Who hasn't known or at least heard of someone who tapped into the cable company's system and got their service for free?
However, the biggest reason is by having a system that requires a set-top box the cable company can then tap into the video on demand market, which is where they make their big bucks. The converter box you get at check-in is usually a special "budget commercial box" that doesn't allow two way communications, but every subscriber's home boxes will allow you to get all that juicy pay per view content.
The alternative for the park is to set up their own private cable system with head end units, converters, amplifiers and the like. They will still pay a per site fee to the cable company, but the hookups for the guests will remain as they were in the past just hookup, scan for channels and you are good to go. The downsides to the park are such systems are very expensive to purchase (10s of thousands of dollars), the cable company may decide to not allow the park the use of the current wiring, requiring another multiple tens of thousands of dollars or upgrades by the park. Plus, such systems require an individual converter for each channel the park broadcasts and there is a fee for each channel. Thus it is really only practical to have a few dozen channels at most. Kind of hard for a park to justify a few hundred dollars for a converter and a recurring monthly charge to offer a channel only one or two people would ever want to watch, so the parks are left to decide what is a popular channel to include and what channels should just be left off (and there are certain channels that carry a high premium to include, I.E. ESPN at over $6.00 per month per site, a very high price for a seasonal park to pay ($7200 year for a 100 site park only open 6 months a year since you have to pay for the services on an annual contract with many cable companies and with parks like mine, ESPN doesn't really have a lot of customer valuable content in the summer, since it is really only golf, tennis and baseball where the big draw to ESPN is football, basketball and hockey seasons).
So to make the long story short, when the cable company goes to encryption there are only three bad options for the parks. 1. the converter box 2. Big investments in a private cable system 3. Stop offering cable.
(for the record, we chose #2, sans ESPN)

GREAT response.
AND Encryption on the cable system is a real PIA for many newer MH with multiple TVs.

[westernrvparkow]

Yes, it is encryption by the cable company that makes the converter box necessary. They have done this for several reasons. The most obvious is to prevent theft of service. Who hasn't known or at least heard of someone who tapped into the cable company's system and got their service for free?
However, the biggest reason is by having a system that requires a set-top box the cable company can then tap into the video on demand market, which is where they make their big bucks. The converter box you get at check-in is usually a special "budget commercial box" that doesn't allow two way communications, but every subscriber's home boxes will allow you to get all that juicy pay per view content.
The alternative for the park is to set up their own private cable system with head end units, converters, amplifiers and the like. They will still pay a per site fee to the cable company, but the hookups for the guests will remain as they were in the past just hookup, scan for channels and you are good to go. The downsides to the park are such systems are very expensive to purchase (10s of thousands of dollars), the cable company may decide to not allow the park the use of the current wiring, requiring another multiple tens of thousands of dollars or upgrades by the park. Plus, such systems require an individual converter for each channel the park broadcasts and there is a fee for each channel. Thus it is really only practical to have a few dozen channels at most. Kind of hard for a park to justify a few hundred dollars for a converter and a recurring monthly charge to offer a channel only one or two people would ever want to watch, so the parks are left to decide what is a popular channel to include and what channels should just be left off (and there are certain channels that carry a high premium to include, I.E. ESPN at over $6.00 per month per site, a very high price for a seasonal park to pay ($7200 year for a 100 site park only open 6 months a year since you have to pay for the services on an annual contract with many cable companies and with parks like mine, ESPN doesn't really have a lot of customer valuable content in the summer, since it is really only golf, tennis and baseball where the big draw to ESPN is football, basketball and hockey seasons).
So to make the long story short, when the cable company goes to encryption there are only three bad options for the parks. 1. the converter box 2. Big investments in a private cable system 3. Stop offering cable.
(for the record, we chose #2, sans ESPN)