Satellite provider recommendation 4 FT

[2cAmerica]

About to switch to Usung Satellite system. We have joined the FT Community and planning full mobility (East to West and South to North). We are interested about who are the providers of satellite HDTV service. We have two HD tv's. Appreciate any feedback and/or experience.

Regards,
:@

[CWDoc115]

We switched from Direct TV to dish when we went full timing. No major complaints. :B

[Cauffield65]

We have Dish.I first removed my single TV box from the house and set it up in the Motorhome. That worked till the Grandchildren came over and I had to remove it and bring it back in the house. I called Dish and purchased a control box from them for $ 99.00 that stays in the MH.
I also have it setup to have it turned on and off when the weather is bad and we can't travel. This only done monthly not weekly! I have a Wineguard in motion dish which tracs the satellite as we travel.
Sometimes my wife like to watch her shows as we travel. It works very well, keep in mind that mine is not HD. If you have NFL Redzone at home you can view it in the MH. Dish also lets you view it on your phone or tablet free. The box I bought from Dish costs me $ 7.00 per month for service.

Lex

[2cAmerica]

Appreciate the feedback. Very helpful! Enjoy a wonderful week to all.REGARDS,

DIC

[rk911]

2cAmerica wrote:
About to switch to Usung Satellite system. We have joined the FT Community and planning full mobility (East to West and South to North). We are interested about who are the providers of satellite HDTV service. We have two HD tv's. Appreciate any feedback and/or experience.

Regards,
:@

we chose dish for their pay-as-you-go service.

[ljr]

bluwtr49 wrote:

ljr wrote:
I have a Winegard Trav'ler and Dish. I like both but not together. If you go with a Trav'ler, get Direct. The Trav'ler has limitations with the Dish satellites. Depending on your travel and viewing habits you may not care but since you're starting from scratch you might as well just avoid the whole issue.

What are the limitations with Dish you spoke of?? Granted sometimes 129 can be difficult but that only means no HD on some channels.

Long complicated explanation but the short version is that it can't get all the Eastern Arc satellites at once. If if you don't care about local channels via satellite and major networks (ABC, NBC, CBS & FOX) then it doesn't matter. If you don't spend much time in the east then it also doesn't matter. In AZ it isn't an issue.

If your starting from scratch, might as well get Direct and avoid having to figure out what all that means.

[bluwtr49]

ljr wrote:
I have a Winegard Trav'ler and Dish. I like both but not together. If you go with a Trav'ler, get Direct. The Trav'ler has limitations with the Dish satellites. Depending on your travel and viewing habits you may not care but since you're starting from scratch you might as well just avoid the whole issue.

What are the limitations with Dish you spoke of?? Granted sometimes 129 can be difficult but that only means no HD on some channels.

[ljr]

I have a Winegard Trav'ler and Dish. I like both but not together. If you go with a Trav'ler, get Direct. The Trav'ler has limitations with the Dish satellites. Depending on your travel and viewing habits you may not care but since you're starting from scratch you might as well just avoid the whole issue.

[chuckftboy]

I use Dish service and have 2 Tailgators. One is permanently mounted on the roof and one is portable for those times when we are under a tree canopy. I have used as much as 100 feet of coax but have never been without signal. I simply take 2 receivers from the house when we travel. When the sky is clear, I connect each Tailgator to separate receivers and the wife and I can each watch what we want

[DSDP_Don]

Everyone uses what works best for them. When we bought our Diplomat in 2005, I added a KVH dome which was state of the art at the time. It was easy, just push a button and it did it's thing. Next came the Winegard Traveler. We like HD TV and having a DVR. Not so much for the recording, but the ability to pause, rewind, etc. The Winegard satellite usually finds and locks on in about 6-7 minutes.

We have the newest generation Winegard Traveler on our current coach and it rarely fades in inclement weather and does a better job getting a signal, even when there is some blockage by trees.

Some people don't watch TV, some will watch some free over the air channels and some like having full satellite service. You need to decide what you like, not what works for others. We like full satellite service with a DVR, just like we get at home.

Here is a little tip, we record movies we like, when they offer them on free weekends, and I store them in my DVR. On rare occasion when we don't get a signal, you can still turn on the DVR and watch the movies you have saved.

[Dale_Traveling]

As posted two subscription service providers available for US residences Dish and Direct. Very similar station line ups, packages deals and monthly cost. You'll need to research both to see which supports your the channels you want.

Antennas are bit more complicated. Start with the dome antennas, roof or portable. Simple and relatively moderate cost. Portable antennas are a bit more flexible to ensure you have a clear line of sight but take up storage space when not in use. Roof mount gives you the push button set up or even the capability for you passengers to watch TV while going down the road. The draw back is a clear view to the satellites can be a problem for a roof mount. The second down check is no HD with Direct. Third problem is you might have problems supporting two TV's with a dome antenna. Small dome antennas can only receive from one satellite at a time and not all channels are on one satellite. As you change channels the antenna will slew to a second or even third satellite as necessary. This can limit the channels for the second TV.

Next up the Traveler series. Pretty much the same as what you might have at home but fully automatic. Push button set up like a roof dome antenna. HD from both providers and multiple satellite viewing on multiple TVs. Roof mounted so obstructions can be a problem. Can't use while in motion. Much high cost than a dome antenna.

Last is a ground manual aim antenna. More or less the same antennas you see on a home. Very low cost, as in less than $100, but you can find them at garage sales and such for much less. Aiming can be a problem and is one of those skills that could be described as an art. All channels on all satellites on all TVs. No worries about obstructions since you can move around to find a clear view.

Don't discount the local free over the air TV, park cable, Red Box rentals and internet streaming as alternatives.

[Dutch_12078]

The major advantage of a portable dish of course, is the aiming flexibility on sites with trees. Our tripod mounted Dish 1000.4 dish for instance will work fine connected to the 200 feet of coax we carry if needed. We also have the option of using either the Dish eastern or western arc satellites, giving us even more flexibility. To date, we have never been on a site where we couldn't get satellite service from one arc or the other. A few weeks ago, our only option was the eastern arc birds, and where we are now, the western arc birds are readily accessible from our site, while the eastern arc birds would require rolling out a bunch of wire. Another advantage of the tripod mounted dish over the domes is the size of the dish. We had a fairly heavy rainstorm most of yesterday afternoon, and while the 8" dish Tailgater folks were crying about the long loss of signal, our nominally 24" dia. dish never missed a beat. The larger dish Winegard domes did better, but still had some loss judging by the stories we heard at breakfast this morning. We do see storm signal loss on occasion, but rarely for more than a few minutes. The roof mounted Winegard Trav'ler dishes, when they have a good view, are nearly as large as our dish and also usually fare pretty well in storms. Unfortunately, the Trav'ler Dish version is only capable of automatically finding the western arc sats, with some manual aiming capability for just one of the eastern arc sats I believe.

[Goldencrazy]

Directv is great with the Traveler for automatic satellite connection. I have the sum system as that is what I have in home but if full-time and only sat I would use genie I think. Directv allows me to change locations whenever I wish to get local channels. Internet based TV like Hulu and Neflix are not an RV option as for the most part you will not have access to the huge amount of data to stream.

[bluwtr49]

We use Dish,a Winguard traveler. a Hopper and a Joey. Easy to use, works great, and while not cheap we're OK with the cost. Especially love the DVR capability for the rare times we don't put up the antennae. No drama, no stringing cable....just push a button.

As always to each their own.

[DutchmenSport]

Everyone has their own preference, but we've been through the gauntlet with paid television programming. We lived in town and were able to have cable. But camping we used only over-the-air.

Later, we moved to the country and there is absolutely no cable where we are. That left us with the satellite options. We tried DirectTV first, since the previous owner of this house had DirectTV. This worked quite well for a few years, but we had a constant battle with DirectTV to keep our prices at an affordable level. They constantly raised prices, and it seems the programming was just the same re-run after re-run.

We ended up switch to DishTV. Was great at first. We also bought another stand alone dish for the camper and used one of the receivers in the house for the camper. We just moved it back and forth. Later, we got the Tailgater dish, which sets itself. This was GREAT! No manual point the dish on a tripod any longer and getting hit-and-miss. But it also meant, no parking under trees. About 1/2 of the camp grounds we went to, had trees and found out DishTV in the camper simply would not work. We reverted back to over-the-air in those situations. Still, when we had clear SW skies, it worked great! So we had the best, for both house and camper.

Move forward a bit. Same thing happened with DishTV. After a while, prices started creeping up again! and up, and up, and up! And the programming as re-run after re-run after re-run. Even at home, we found ourselves watching over-the-air television more than DishTV. We finally had the Ah-Ha moment, that we no longer needed DishTV.

I had to some new re-routing of wires in the house, and ended up getting a 50 year old antenna put up on my house that pulls in every conceivable HD signal in my area now (with no boosters), and in the camper we use just over-the-air.

Since the switch, we've saved a considerable amount of money, over $100 a month, over $1200 a year, over $12000 in 10 years! And we don't miss the re-run programming. We also found Netflix and HULU carry the same re-runs for all those paid programs. And since we've not seen the latest shows, the programming on Netflix and HULU are all new for us now! It might be 2 years old, but new for us!

We will probably never go back to paid television.

There again, each one does it their own way. But those are the two major contenders: DirectTV and DishTV vs Over-the-air.