SATELLITE DISH

[Gary RV_Wizard]

Good info, Tom. Thanks for making the effort to verify it with Dish.

 

[bucks2]

Thanks Tom.

Ken

 

[Mavarick]

We also have the Winegard roof mount using Dish network. I have dish at home and simply got an extra receiver that I transfer into the MH when we travel. I don?t stop or start any service because we only have one which is listed as home. I have no problems calling them to change the service address, as described above, to get local channels and I only ever pay for one service. The roof top dish is a pain sometimes so I have considered getting the tailgater dish that sets on the ground as an alternative. I might do this if/when the roof mount dish goes bad, maybe sooner. Either way it is just an antenna, no reason to start another service or start/stop as we use the MH. I would not use dish if I had to pay for separate tv in the MH. I don't understand how the double bills came into play with MH use, maybe I just unintentionally got lucky when I switched to Dish from cable.

 

[Tom Hoffman]

When we started,  I never thought about taking our receiver from home and just using a standard dish.  We were naive and were counting on Camp Grounds to have cable available.  We were wrong!!!

So in order to have TV we got the Tailgater that our first neighbor in our very first Camp Ground had.  Even if I had taken our receiver with us, it would not have worked with the Tailgater.

The billing is pretty simple.  When one acct is on suspension,  they (dish) charge around $5.50 per month.  There is not charge or activation costs to turn one off and turn the other on.  Do they get it screwed up occasionally,  YES but when you call them on it they make right.

My biggest irritation is the endless menu options you have to go through to talk to a person and then it is a crap shoot whether or not you got one that knows the difference between schid and shinola.

I guess that customer service now days is almost an intro job and almost an un trained job as well with a few exceptions.

It's like the old statement  "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you!" ;D

Have a good one.

Tom...

 

[Larry N.]

...so I have considered getting the tailgater dish that sets on the ground as an alternative.

Given the limitations of the Tailgater, you might consider the Winegard Carryout -- I've got one, and it works well, plus you're not limited to a single type of Dish receiver -- set a dip switch and you can also use it with Direct, plus it should work with most any Dish receiver, not just the one that comes with the Tailgater.

I bought my Carryout for the Dish pay-as-you-go plan and it worked well. But now that I have Direct, I'll use it when my rooftop antenna is blocked by the trees.

 

[Smith556]

Well this is along a line of interest for me so here goes. I too am looking at Dish systems, maybe a tailgater or winegard. My Heartland pioneer has a outside jack with 1 input for the Dish, but my camper has a living room TV, a kids room TV with a single output receptacle and a outdoor kitchen TV receptacle w/1 output. It does have the antenna and a button to boost signal. My question is if I hook the satellite up outside and the receiver in the living room to those jacks, how do the other TVs get signal?

 

[sueperdave]

As far as the dish goes...I have an older kingdom and LOVE it.  It works flawless.  I am always amazed at how well it pulls a signal through the trees.
Works with any style receiver IIRC.

 

[bucks2]

Well this is along a line of interest for me so here goes. I too am looking at Dish systems, maybe a tailgater or winegard. My Heartland pioneer has a outside jack with 1 input for the Dish, but my camper has a living room TV, a kids room TV with a single output receptacle and a outdoor kitchen TV receptacle w/1 output. It does have the antenna and a button to boost signal. My question is if I hook the satellite up outside and the receiver in the living room to those jacks, how do the other TVs get signal?

The satellite dish (tailgator or travler) provides the signal to the RV. How it's split from there is however the RV maker did it, OR however someone else re-wired it. So, sometimes it takes a little detective work to track down exactly how your particular unit is wired.

The signal from the satellite antenna is decoded by the special receiver box for whichever system (Dish or Direct) and then goes to the TV set for watching. Often the bedroom and outside tv's are wired to get whatever channel is on the main tv. Most boxes, like the commonly recommended 211 and 311 Dish Network boxes will only allow one channel per box. So, all three tv's can watch the same channel OR you can have 2 or 3 boxes and watch 2 or 3 channels.

When I changed my RV to a Travler antenna with Dish Network I opted to wire it so I could use one of my Hopper/Joey sets from home in my MH. This allows each TV to watch its own channel, record shows as needed, etc.

Ken

 

[Larry N.]

My question is if I hook the satellite up outside and the receiver in the living room to those jacks, how do the other TVs get signal?

It depends on how your rig is wired, but many satellite antennas have more than one output, thus can feed more than one TV. Yours might be wired for only a single TV from the satellite, or there may be a second (not usually more) wired from there, as well. Note, though, that once you have the signal into a satellite receiver it's possible to feed the output of that to most any TV, though all TVs it feeds are stuck with the same signal. By the same token, it's possible to split the incoming signal and feed another satellite receiver, though you may have to have both either on the same channel or perhaps be limited to only those channels on the currently received satellite.

But for either Dish or Direct you do need one receiver per TV (the Genie gets more complicated), and antenna(s) with enough total outputs to feed each TV.

It's not like off-the-air where you can just use a splitter to feed every TV.

 

[NY_Dutch]

But for either Dish or Direct you do need one receiver per TV (the Genie gets more complicated), and antenna(s) with enough total outputs to feed each TV.

It's not like off-the-air where you can just use a splitter to feed every TV.

Dish does have single receivers that will feed more than one TV from multiple tuners, such as the VIP622 & 722 DVR units. They come with two different remotes, an infrared one for the "local" TV, and an RF one for the "remote" TV in another room. Most functions are independent for each TV. A limitation though, is that only the local TV gets fed HD, the remote TV is fed SD.

 

[Smith556]

The satellite dish (tailgator or travler) provides the signal to the RV. How it's split from there is however the RV maker did it, OR however someone else re-wired it. So, sometimes it takes a little detective work to track down exactly how your particular unit is wired.

The signal from the satellite antenna is decoded by the special receiver box for whichever system (Dish or Direct) and then goes to the TV set for watching. Often the bedroom and outside tv's are wired to get whatever channel is on the main tv. Most boxes, like the commonly recommended 211 and 311 Dish Network boxes will only allow one channel per box. So, all three tv's can watch the same channel OR you can have 2 or 3 boxes and watch 2 or 3 channels.

When I changed my RV to a Travler antenna with Dish Network I opted to wire it so I could use one of my Hopper/Joey sets from home in my MH. This allows each TV to watch its own channel, record shows as needed, etc

Ken

I guess that is more of my question. Is wondering if the satellite feed that hooks up to the travel trailer (a single input BTW) would feed all 3 places in the camper. Then just hook up separate receivers at each area, then everyone could watch what they want or everyone has to watch what is on the primary living room TV (if only one receiver is purchased) where a single receiver would be. If that is the case I know the living room TV would run off of video cables but how does the signal get back into the system so that the other TVs are watching what the living room is?

 

[cpaulsen]

I have a tv in the living room and another in the bedroom and use the one receiver for both tv's and get HD on both.

 

[John From Detroit]

The Tailgator from DISH, is designed to work with just one Receiver at a time and what's more there are only one or two models that it works with.  The VIP 211K Is the one I know works with it.. I'm not sure there is another. and one antenna per receiver.

Now.. with multiple TV's if you have a box of many buttons.. Great. If you have the wall plate. Not so great but doable.

Some RV's have seperate SAT and park cable in.. This is good. if not many re-task the park cable jack for Sat in.. This is not good in my opinion. but it is doable

On the wall plate: Looking at the back, with cables runnign DOWN (12 volt outlet at top) the connectors are ANT (rooftop) CABLE, TV 2 and optioanlly TV3

Remove the cable lead and extend it to the LNB in on the sat
Run the TV-OUT from the Sat receiver back to Cable on the antenna switch.

Job done. .... Unless you ever want to use park cable again.

IF you have TWO jacks, one for park cable one for sat. and again you have the wall plate.

Find the other end of the SAT cable and use it for LNB in on the receiver.

Remove the park cable jack to the A (For Analog) input on an A/B switch  Run the SAT receiver;'s TV out to the "B" (For Binary, as in Digital) input on the switch.

Run the common (Switched) lead, back to the wall plate cable input.

Now. your new truth table

With the antenna off, the A/B switch chooses SAT or CABLE. WIth the antenna switch ON rooftop antenna is the choice.

- - -

Part 2. Which is better,  Dish or Direc.. At one time it was Direc if you wished to use a dome because a dual-output DOME could feed multiple receivers. But today, no dome can do DirecHDTV.. DISH type antennas still can however.

With DISHnetwork a dome can see one sat at a time, they use 3, so a dome can work well, both with SD and HD,  But... if you want multiple receivers your dome will cause conflicts.  A DISH type antenna however, can feed up to eight (normally) receivers, and still more in some cases, with the proper adapters. .

 

[bucks2]

I guess that is more of my question. Is wondering if the satellite feed that hooks up to the travel trailer (a single input BTW) would feed all 3 places in the camper. Then just hook up separate receivers at each area, then everyone could watch what they want or everyone has to watch what is on the primary living room TV (if only one receiver is purchased) where a single receiver would be. If that is the case I know the living room TV would run off of video cables but how does the signal get back into the system so that the other TVs are watching what the living room is?

In my MH the "satellite in" cable from the satellite receiver, and the cables for the basement, living room and bedroom tv's all meet in the A/V cabinet. They were connected with splitters to send the signals as desired to the different locations.

When my MH was set up all tv's to run off one cable box, the raw signal went to the Dish 311 reciever box and then came out and went to a 1/3 splitter which sent the decoded signal to all the tvs with whichever channel the box was set on.

When I installed the Travler, the satellite reciever sends the raw signal to a propriatary splitter (which I located in the A/V cabinet) which sends the raw satellite feed to the main Hopper box and to each Joey. The Hopper and each Joey sit next to it's individual tv then it decodes the signal and connects to each tv with a short cable.

Ken

 

[Smith556]

Thanks all I now have a better understanding of it. One of the things that oddly was confusing to me was the difference between the VIP211z and 211k. All of the criteria I was reading on the 211z showed that it did not have coaxial outs like the 211k. To my understanding per the helpful advice above is that raw signal is fed from the outside hookup to the wall connection at the living Rm station. From there I hook up to a VIP211k Dish receiver and use the coaxial out of that receiver to a splitter which is located somewhere in the living room station (I would say that it has to be since this is where the antenna booster button is and the roof antenna is located on the roof above it) then feed the other bedroom and outside kitchen from the splitter. Granted all the stations have to watch the same thing, but that doesn't matter to me at all. Now if something is wrong in my hypothesis please point it out. Thanks guys for the tips.

 

[NY_Dutch]

For my low cost satellite system, I used a VIP211k with the HDMI output connected to the front TV, and the RF coax output fed to the bedroom TV, eliminating any need for a splitter. I also installed A/B switches that control which TV gets fed the OTA antenna/cable input, making it possible to watch a satellite station on one TV, and and an OTA/cable station on the other. The OTA antenna is also fed to the VIP211k, making it possible to watch a satellite station while recording an OTA station, or vice-versa, using the 211's optional DVR feature. Oh, and I use a Dish 1000.4 satellite dish mounted on a modified low cost tripod for Dish eastern or western arc reception as needed by switching LNBF's.

 

[NY_Dutch]

deleted

 

[Larry N.]

The topic I was posting to got moved to Tech Talk while I was composing my post, so it somehow got entered here instead. So I've deleted that info here and reposted to the original topic I intended to answer. I think the same thing happened to Dutch above.