Can I take my satellite TV dish and receiver on the road with me???

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ladybug

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Oct 21, 2006
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???  We stay in a lot of campgrounds with no t.v. connection available and our T.V. antenna just does not to the trick!  Can we take our satellite dish and receiver from home with us and how do we get it to work on the road since we will not have a land line phone to set it up? Will there be an additional monthly charge, will I receive the local programming, etc.? I have seen people in campgrounds with their satellite dish on tripods, but have never asked questions. How do you actually set up a "portable" satellite and connect to your camper/tv?  Any info will be greatly appreciated.  Ladybug
 
Many of us have been watching satellite TV from our RVs for years.  You can either get a portable dish antenna that you set on the ground or mount on a tripod, or get one of the many roof mounted antennas.  The roof mounts can be either manually aimed from inside the RV or motorized and completely automatic.  The only difference is price.  Your receiver will work in the RV just as it does in your house, but without a phone line, some features may not be available, like PPV.  Also, if you get more than 200 or so miles from home you will lose the local programming which is spot beamed.

What model receiver and what service (Dish or DirecTV) do you have?
 
You can notify them that you are setting up in a RV, but you have to provide registration and a bunch of info. If you just take it with you, and use it without notification it will work fine...except for the stuff that requires phone hook up. I'd just take it with you and use it. We did that for years and retained our local networks ;) We used a tripod mount from radio shack and a piece of PVC pipe to hold the antenna. Sometimes it is easier to buy another antenna for RV use............
 
What model receiver?

There is no reason to register the receiver as located in an RV unless you're going to fulltime in the RV.  Then you are eligible for the national network stations.
 
The answer is somewhat simple and somewhat complex.

The basic answer is Yes, you can take it with you.

The complex answer however has to do with Network Television (ABC, NBC, UPN, FOX, and so on)

Where you are you very likely subscribe to your local stations,  They are "Spot Beamed" to your general area, For example, I"m in Detroit, MI. The Spot beam includes Detroit, Flint, Mi, Jackson, Mi and flakes out long about Kalamazoo Mi.

So if I'm in Southern Lower Michigan and west of Battle Creek... Odds are it works fine

But if I'm in Chicago, Il, or Dayton, Oh.  No joy on watching WXYZ tv.

Exactly how far from home yours will work. I don't know (For one thing I have dish) But that's the problem

Now, if you sign the RV waiver and quite possibly pay a few dollars per month more then you can get one of the "Super Cities" those are on what is called a CONUS  beam, What is a CONUS beam? CONtential United States,  In short, it works, and it works all over. You still get your local stations if you are close enough to home, but you get the super stations no matter where you are.
 
You can only apply for the distant network stations waiver if the receiver is permanently installed in the RV and you will then lose the local spot beamed stations.  For the non-fulltime RVer, DNS is irrelevant and can only confuse people.
 
You can use a regular antenna and get local networks where ever you are.......we like to get the local news for the areas we are staying at. Picture quality is usually not the best, but at least you can get local news and weather.............FYI
 
We have direct as well, we did send in a copy of reg.  to get the locals, no big deal at all.  We have both the east & west locals, yes we pay a few bucks more a month but no that much and we have choice as to when we want to watch network programs.
Use of the direct dish off roof allows you to move it dish around to get inbetween trees, some roof mounts end up losing service at some camp grounds due to trees.
We ahve had no problems with ours and we moved it back into the house for about a month while selling the house then back to the rv.
cheryl
 
We have directv and did the waiver we are not full time, we had no problems getting this and only for a few dollars more. We get locals, east/west and we get our home locals so far as far as 150 to 200 miles from home, we have not traveled farther then this yet since we got the directv. We have 3 receivers and we can watch all 3 tvs at one time each on a differnt channel. The third tv is outside.

We choose directv from recommendations from other RV'ers we have meet that had Dish and they hated the Dish network.
We have a roof mount satelite and have had no problems with tree's so far but I am sure there will be some places that trees will be an interfernece but that can also happen with a satelite on a tripod.

You can take your home set up with you it might be a hassel with the satelite moving it all the time. I would do the wavier for traveling you will have no problems with Directv with it.

Good Luck

Colleen
 

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