DTV vs DISH using Carryout

[Hunter11]

I have a question I am hoping the group can help me with. We currently full time using a Carryout GM-1518 dome with SD DTV. I was going to call and have them send us upgraded SD receivers since ours are over 10 years old but my wife just paid our bill and said they had gone up $7.50 on our monthly cost plus something called "Regional Sports Fee". Now we have been with DTV for over 15 years but this got me to thinking maybe I should look into Dish a little more.

It appears we can get about the same channel package we have now for $39.99 a month for the first 12 months then it will go to $74.99 for the last 12 months but we could get two HD receivers and HD service free for life according to their web site. I understand with a couple of switch settings our Carryout will get HD from Dish. Now we do not record shows so really no need for a DVR but whatever works. My real question is I understand that the problem would be that if we are both watching TV on separate receiver's that there could be some channels that one would get that the other would not. This is not an issue with our current setup. Is there a chart out there somewhere that shows what channels are affected by this before we go and switch to Dish then find out we can't both watch what we want to on two separate TV's in the trailer?

I know this is a bit long winded but I am trying to see if it is worth the savings to switch to Dish. The SD we have now does not bother us but HD would be nice. I had thought about upgrading our DTV receivers to HD and have them install a HD dish at our site to use while we are there and then just have SD when we travel but then with DTV it would add another $20 per month to our bill for the HD. Thanks for any help and guidance.

[dahkota]

We have dish set up with two receivers. We have found that most HD channels are on one satellite (129) so the main TV will stick to those so the secondary TV can pick them up. Typically though, if we are watching different things, one is on terrestrial tv, the other is on satellite.

One advantage to Dish is that it has two sets of satellites - SE arc and SW arc. If we can't tune into one, we can usually find a spot that gets the other.

[Sandia_Man]

Both satellite service providers have pretty much the same content and are pretty close in price once promotions timeout, we have had both and have switched back and forth a few times. We do a lot of camping where we often find obstructions to the southern sky and have found that a dish mounted on a tripod works best for us. We carry 150' of coax although it's rare we have to use that much to acquire a satisfactory signal.

We have HD at home and choose to go this route when RVing, not an issue as these HD dishes are readily available and take the same amount of time to point as an SD dish if you are familiar with the process. Since this method allows acquisition of all satellites at the same time we can watch different HD channels on different HDTVs within our rig without issue. Dish HD channels can be acquired by some portable/dome automatic sat finders, but none can get Directv HD content which requires an automated roof-mounted dish system.

[WyoTraveler]

I set up manually and if I am getting only 1 sat (110), it will say not all channels received. The same happens on (119). However, those channels don't appear to be in any particular order. The 3rd sat is for HD which we don't have.

If you google Dish service centers and get in contact with an installer nearby he probably could give you more info than just talking to the dummies at Dish. JMHO.

[dan-nickie]

Hunter11 wrote:
My real question is I understand that the problem would be that if we are both watching TV on separate receiver's that there could be some channels that one would get that the other would not.

Yes that is true.
Dish works of off at least 2, sometimes 3 differnt sats.
The Carry-out moves between the sats depending on what channel is tuned.

I have looked up some Dish channel/sat lists in the past but could never get and accurate list. And they are subject to change from time to time.

We do have Dish and deal with the sat swapping issue, but we typically watch the TV together so not a big deal for us. If we watched difffernt TVs it would be a problem,