RV ANTENNA or DISH TV

[Larry-P]

Since we're having down time in our stick house & the 5er is parked for the winter, I have a question concerning TV reception.
I'm wondering how many of you just enjoy the quietness of RV'ing & take whatever television receiption is available at any given time from the coach antenna in the area your parked at.
Verses, those of you who pay the monthly charges for Dish-TV or some other such service.
We have cable TV at the stick house so it would be an added charge for us to have dish in the 5er. My opinion is that cable is much better than dish & also includes the internet. We do not want to change our setup at home.
We found that for the most part, local receiption is fairly good in most paeks we stopped at. Is this normal ??
Just a topic to talk about here.

[drsmart]

Our only long stay camping is snowbirding and the parks usually have cable service included. For short stays or parks that don't have cable, we use the batwing. I may check ahead with this web site to get some idea of what channels are available: http://www.tvfool.com/index.php?opti...pper&Itemid=29 We haven't bothered to bring a portable dish and receiver yet but maybe someday we'll consider it.

[mainer]

We did have cable TV in our stick house but when we started to travel more decided to change to DirecTV. This way we do not have an added expense, just take our DirecTV box with us. My husband enjoys sports and Fox News.

The only problem with DirecTV is your local stations when you are on the road. I believe Dish TV might be better when it comes to local stations.

This is what works for us.

[H. John Kohl]

When we started traveling I set up our communications and entertainment so it was mobile and would work at the house or in the trailer.
Phone - cell phone Verizon home connect.
Internet - Verizon Air Card (MIFI)
TV - DirecTV satellite.

[sola123]

we just take whatever we can get...don't watch much tv...read alot, hike some, just fiddle around, visit with other campers, smoke dinner, etc

[wingerphil]

Here is what works for us. We are fulltime so no sticks/bricks house. We just started traveling after living in the Montana for 2 1/2 years at the same park waiting to retire. That park provided cable TV with our monthly lot rent.
We are currently working as gate guards at an oil well in Southern Texas. We are 16 miles from the nearest little town so get nothing on the antenna. Before we arrived here we purchased the automatic antenna offered by Dish, the Tailgater and signed up for the pay as you go TV pkg. We did have to purchase a mdl 211K receiver and it is the only one that will work with the tailgater. The dish will only work on 1 TV so I put in another cable type plug into the entertainment center slide out. This way I can hook up the dish and not disturb the existing cable/antenna connections.
We get HD and have a DVR set up using an external hard drive hooked to the receiver.
So far we are very pleased with the system.
When we leave here we can discontinue the service since our summer work camping job includes cable TV and then turn it back on when we leave there.
There is no contract and we do get the network channels (ABC,NBC,CBS and FOX), both East and West coast feeds. No local channels though.

Phil

[BB_TX]

We stay at an RV park in southern Colorado for 2 1/2 to 3 weeks each summer. No cable and no antenna reception. Since we have Dish at home, I signed up for the RV adder for $6/mo. Of course, I had to buy the receiver and dish. Most, but not all, other parks we stay at have cable hookup or antenna reception.
I don't watch TV much except for news, weather, and sometimes the History channel, Discovery channel, RFD-TV, and military channel. But I do like to keep up with the news. The RV park only gets newspapers on Sunday.

[DQDick]

We don't have TV in our stick house so while we looked at dishes we probably are not going to add one to the Monty when we go full time. Internet is another story since I follow sports and we both follow the news on the internet.

[snfexpress]

For us, continuity is comforting. So, we have Dish TV with DNS feeds from NY and SF. This way, no matter where we are, we can watch, and record, the programs we enjoy without having to decipher the local TV schedule. Yes, we pay for it, and we supplement our Dish channels with OTA from the BatWing, but for us, it works because we are fulltimers.

[Waynem]

If you spend a time at the stick house and only need services when you travel, then the Dish Pay As You Go system may be the one for you. For those months (30 days at a time) you do not use it, you turn it off and do not pay.

As Mike and Kat stated, supplementing the DISH services with OTA from the batwing is easy. If the receiver has the capability for an antenna input, just plug the antenna from the batwing into the jack on the satellite receiver and now you have a program guide for OTA and Dish services. I use a splitter that feeds both the entertainment center switch, and the satellite receiver.

I did not want to put a hole in the SOB, so I purchased the Winegard CarryOut. It does a simple job of supplying one satellite of the three dish satellites ONE AT A TIME. So you cannot watch different stations at the same time, or use the PIP unless it is on the same satellite. Dish provides HD if you subscribe to it, whereas DirecTV does not provide HD for any DOME type antenna, at the present time. There are no DOME type antennas on the market that will received DirecTV HD. You would have to go to a tripod mount for that service.

Happy trails.

[patbarton]

I've done OK watching over-the-air TV and DVDs when I travel; Tvfool.com tells me where to point the antenna and tvlistings.aol.com shows me all the local programming. Thought about getting a second dish on a tripod and bringing the Dish receiver with me, but when I'm "out" I spend more time reading than anything else. My Kindle has done more to kill my television watching than anything else; I just looooove P.G. Wodehouse.

[scattershot]

We have dish at home, and bought another receiver and dish for reception on the road, but we don't use it. If we're in a campground they have cable, and if we're in the woods we just enjoy the peace and quiet. More trouble than it's worth, for us, anyway.

[Art-n-Marge]

We have Dish at home (used to have DirecTV). We take a receiver and have a portable dish and we use this since we are paying for it. I'm getting pretty fast about setting it up.

No cable or OTA necessary. We don't modify the local channels so we always know what's going on at home. Either that, or we watch DVDs. That's about it - Dish or DVDs, period.

[CasaDelSol]

We have cable and internet at the stick house. We suspend all for the 5 months we travel. We have DirecTV at the Monty for the 5 months and then susupend that service when we get back to the stick house. It is a wash in terms of money. We use Verizon Wireless MiFi for the internet while on the road and we also suspend that when we get back to the stick. We tried living with just what the antennae gave us and it worked when we went out for a couple weeks at a time, but feel having stable reception is worth it. DirecTV provided everything, dish, receiver and all the cables. Good luck with your decision.

[richfaa]

We travel a lot all over the country. There are many places one can get little or no antenna Tv reception. There are many Campgrounds both short and long term that do not have cable service. When overnighting on the road we use what is available at the C.G's. For short term stays of a week or less we again use what is available.

we use directv at home and take 1 or 2 receivers with us for long term stays. we also have a tripod a extra antenna that goes with us.

Here in Florida we are using the sat antenna a 2 receivers even tho Orland has @ 60 HD Tv channels.

With the proper equipment we can have the sat set up in 5 mins. Usually is find the Az, EL, Tilt, point, fine adjustment and it is set up.

Would like the roof sat antenna but there are to many places one can not use it and most folks carry a tripod and extra dish anyway. The portable ones do not receive directv HD.

[H. John Kohl]

I have no connection to the dealer I mention in this post. I ordered this antenna and paid $50 for it with shipping, but not from this company. I assembled it and have installed it inside my work shop with great signal reception results. The rotate option is faulty even on mine. I assume the fault part on these "two for one" ($10 plus shipping) is the rotate mechanism. I think this would be a good deal for anyone needing a better local TV signal if they are parked for a while. It would need a pole and some way to rotate it. I believe its size allows it to go through the door and could stay on the bed when in transport mode.