The wife & I are planning our first trip in our 1999 Winnebago Adventurer later this month. We are currently stocking the coach With whatever we think it needs. So in a spare moment of time I find a roof mounted satellite dish offered in Camping World...My question is how prevalent is satellite TV offered in campgrounds? Do I spend the money on this or not? Thanks for your insight on this. TomB

TomB. wrote:The wife & I are planning our first trip in our 1999 Winnebago Adventurer later this month. We are currently stocking the coach With whatever we think it needs. So in a spare moment of time I find a roof mounted satellite dish offered in Camping World...My question is how prevalent is satellite TV offered in campgrounds? Do I spend the money on this or not? Thanks for your insight on this. TomBWe find that cable is common but still Sat. service is our preference. We went many years with only park cable but the station selection can be a bit iffy.

Can't always rely on campground connections.If you have satellite at your house, get a portable automatic dish that is compatible with the receiver.We have an early Winegard carry out. The newer version of their automatic is smaller and would fit in a compartment. Ours does not so I carry in in toad. A portable allows you to work around trees and the like to get signal. An automatic makes it nicer to setup.

Some campgrounds have cable but it is often pretty minimal. I would recommend you get an external dish and not mount one on the roof. We find that we have trees blocking the roof mounted dish a considerable amount of the time. We purchased the Pathway X2 and the stand. So far, it is working very well. We purchased a 50 foot low loss cable and we can add another 50 foot if needed.

TomB. wrote:my question is how prevalent is satellite TV offered in campgrounds?Cable, yes. Satellite, no.

I though about the mounted one but brought the winegard carry out.Glad I did some campground the trees can mess up the signal.So with longer cable I can move it.By being auto matic that makes it much easier.

Thinking about a mounted satellite dish | Good Sam Community

cpoo
Explorer
Dec 10, 2014
I used vucube for many years. I had a ladder mount for carrying it and it did not need to be removed if we had a view of southern sky. If not we could remove it. Much less expensive, flexible but not HD and only one TV.
jgallego
Explorer
Dec 08, 2014
We have the roof mounted that the family can watch even while you are driving. It works great.

Jaime
lanerd
Explorer II
Dec 08, 2014
rgatijnet1 wrote:
lanerd wrote:
TomB. wrote:
So in a spare moment of time I find a roof mounted satellite dish offered in Camping World...
My question is how prevalent is satellite TV offered in campgrounds? Do I spend the money on this or not? Thanks for your insight on this. TomB

Tom, the way I read this is that you are asking if the campgrounds offer satellite tv. The answer to that is "NO", they don't. Some offer cable tv through their own cable service, which in turn has its own antenna.....but the campgrounds do not offer satellite tv. If this is the case, I don't think you has a good grasp on the whole concept.

Ron

Occasionally RV parks do offer satellite service. R&D Family Campground in Milford, Virginia is one of them. They have various DirecTV dish antennas permanently mounted around the park and you just plug in to one of them. If you have your own DirecTV box, you are good to go. If you do not, you can rent theirs to use during your stay. I have not seen a lot of parks set up this way but some do offer satellite service.

You know, in all my years of rv'ing and all the rv parks I've stayed at, I've never heard of this being available. This has gotta be a heavy investment by the rv park.

So if this indeed the case, I retract my post above.

Ron
lanerd
Explorer II
Dec 08, 2014
Especially the availability of getting HD with portable antennas and fixed dome antennas. We've had DISH for it seems like forever and we've always been very satisfied with it. Now with the capability to change our service address merely by going on-line, just enhances our like of DISH.

To each his own, I suppose.

Ron
ncrowley
Explorer II
Dec 08, 2014
DSDP Don wrote:
Yes, I'll correct my statement......Dish can get HD in a Tailgator and a roof top dome, but the majority of the country uses DirecTv. It didn't come to mind because I personally wouldn't use Dish unless DirecTv went out of business.

I have used both Dish and Direct TV and I like Dish much better for a number of reasons. Each to his or her own.
DSDP_Don
Explorer
Dec 07, 2014
Yes, I'll correct my statement......Dish can get HD in a Tailgator and a roof top dome, but the majority of the country uses DirecTv. It didn't come to mind because I personally wouldn't use Dish unless DirecTv went out of business.
lanerd
Explorer II
Dec 07, 2014
lanerd wrote:
TechWriter wrote:
DSDP Don wrote:

Remember, NONE of your "carry out" sat dishes get HD TV, they only get SD TV. If HD isn't important, then you have more choices.

For DISH they do.

DISH Tailgator gets HD....See it HERE.

Ron
lanerd
Explorer II
Dec 07, 2014
TechWriter wrote:
DSDP Don wrote:

Remember, NONE of your "carry out" sat dishes get HD TV, they only get SD TV. If HD isn't important, then you have more choices.

For DISH they do.

DISH Tailgator gets HD....

Ron
TechWriter
Explorer
Dec 07, 2014
DSDP Don wrote:

Remember, NONE of your "carry out" sat dishes get HD TV, they only get SD TV. If HD isn't important, then you have more choices.

For DISH they do.
bluwtr49
Explorer II
Dec 07, 2014
DSDP Don wrote:
It's all about convenience. We've had a roof mounted Winegard Travlr Sat dish for over 8 years. I can only think of about 5 times in over a hundred trips where I couldn't get reception. I'm pretty good at guessing where I need to be situated in a site to get reception and will often jockey the coach back or forth a few feet to get it.

Remember, NONE of your "carry out" sat dishes get HD TV, they only get SD TV. If HD isn't important, then you have more choices.

Side Note: At the beginning of this year I installed the newest version of the Winegard Travlr and I believe it has either a better software package or electronics than the older version. We were just at Yosemite (Upper Pines) in the same site we've been in for years. Just for the heck of it, I turned on the sat and it locked in right away.

Yep, that's my feeling. We used a Carryout with our TT's for several years and it was OK but did take up more space than I liked and the single LNB limited our options but it was fine for what we used it for.

Now we have the Traveler, Hopper, Joey and enjoy much more versatility with the recordings and viewing options. So far we have not been in a Park where we didn't get adequate reception but we do ask for sites with sat reception. If we ever do have an issue we usually have 50 recorded programs to select from.

Nothing against the portables but the roof mounted one is just so nice...push a button and kick back. And yes, at this age it's all about comfort or we wouldn't have this MH.

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