Portable sattelite and or antennas

[pa_traveler]

For those of you familiar with accessing tv on a boat,wondering if you can use your carryout on boat or will rocking affect it? Will be using it docked in protected harbor.Maybee set it on dock? Or is there an antenna that can be used on boat to get a few local stations? Just heard about Sling Box with hotspot you can get your local cable anywhere ,anyone use this? Open to any ideas,first time trying to get tv on a boat. Boat will be in Ithaca Allen Threman marina. Thanks.

[valhalla360]

pa traveler wrote:
Thanks for ideas its a 23ft C-Dory venture

You are probably stuck mounting it on the dock. That's small enough every time someone moves, the boat will rock enough that it will lose the signal until the rocking stops.

You are probably looking at something around 30' to be stable enough to make a fixed dish on a boat work at dock (beam is actually probably more important than length).

A small stand secured on the dock with a few ropes should do the trick nicely or just a couple of band clamps to attach it to a post and you could set something up in 10-15min.

[GoPackGo]

Many folks will mount a sat antenna at their dock and then just run the cord to the boat when they are in the slip.

KVH and Raymarine both market antenna systems to be permanently mounted to a mast. But you will still need to subscribe to a TV service. You generally see these mounted on larger boats that don't bounce around too much .

[TechWriter]

pa traveler wrote:
Just heard about Sling Box with hotspot you can get your local cable anywhere,anyone use this?

I have a DISH Hopper with Sling and use DISH Anywhere so I can get whatever is on my Hopper on my iPad or iPhone.

The Slingbox M1 works the same way . . . except it works with any cable box.

However, if the Slingbox M1 (or Hopper w/Sling) and your iPad are on different WiFi networks (which will be likely on a boat), then you will probably burn up a lot of broadband data.

[dahkota]

pa traveler wrote:
Thanks for ideas its a 23ft C-Dory venture

Nice boat! We had a C-Dory 22. Spending all our weekends and vacations on it is what got us into camping and then fulltiming. When we get tired of driving around, we will probably go back to a C-Dory.

When we had ours, we had a little 12" portable tv with built in digital antenna. We were usually able to get in local channels. An advantage of local channels over a dish is, when anchored out, you don't lose signal when the wind blows or a boat passes by.

Enjoy your boat!

[Dog_Folks]

When we volunteered at Bahia Honda State Park in the keys, we often saw potable dishes hooked up to boats on the marina.

The dishes were always on the dock.

[pa_traveler]

Thanks for ideas its a 23ft C-Dory venture

[mpierce]

I think a carryout will have problems, unless really stable.

[valhalla360]

How big of a boat are we talking about?

We have a dish mounted on the stern of our 34' boat and it works fine at dock.

If you are talking about a 25' boat, people moving around in the boat may cause enough movement that the signal will come in and out. In that case, setting it on the dock should work if you have a clear view.

If you want to pick up local stations, any antenna should do just as well on a boat.

[aslakson]

Slingbox requires a good internet connection with a lot of bandwidth. It's generally not a viable option unless you have a solid land-line internet. And, it needs to be installed at a stationary location with an equally solid internet connection to have a signal source - your local cable or antenna.

It's the internet connection that's the choke point - you'll be using a LOT of bandwidth to stream video - HD stuff is around 1gb per hour. SD is less, but still a lot. We have 30gb a month on our wireless plan, and we have to keep a close eye on it to avoid overages. Not a lot of youtube in our daily regimen.

al

[Russell_Clifton]

I am not sure what a carryout is. Maybe a satellite dish you set up and then manually dial in to a satellite in the sky? If so, that should work on the boat but would need to be placed on the dock like you said. We sold our boat last year that we lived on. It had a satellite dish that was mounted inside a fiberglass dome. The dish was mounted on a gimble,(we used Direct TV for our service) and when powered up would search the skies for the correct satellite. Once it found it, it would lock onto it so no matter direction the boat turned, the dish was still locked on the satellite. This is the type of setup you want if you are at anchor or want the TV on while under way. There are several manufactures of these systems and sizes for all boats. The one we had was made by KVH, a very popular brand, work well, and expensive.