Need to sign up with a satalite company for my new MH.

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an RV or an interest in RVing!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

Gasser

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 21, 2006
Posts
173
Location
Ada, Oklahoma
What do I actually need to sign up for?  Is the service I buy any different than my home?  Different box etc...  I have an automatic dish on the roof and just need the box to hook it to.  I am really not familiar with Sat.

I am interested in getting High def broadcasts.  Is this possible with the dish I have or does it take a special dish?  Any experience with getting HD in the MH?

Thanks

Jeff
 
First, there are only a few "National" TV stations (New York, Chicago, Los Angles and I forget, that is if you are with Dish Network, I'm not sure what 4 cities Direc choose)  Your "Home" receiver is not authorized to receive them unless you are, in one of those cities.  The rest of the local stations are on "Spot" beams, and though here on the West side of Michigan I can SOMETIMES see my local (East side of Michigan) stations, I'm on the very edge of the spot here and they are iffy... Chicago stations are good.  By declaring RV (and paying a few dollars more per month) you get one of the national beams (CONUS beams if you want to know the technical term)

Second,,, You can search on "Free to Air" for some other options. I have not (yet) gotten my FTA receiver to work, (Looking more and more like the dish I use with it has a bad LNB) but time will fix it.

I had no end of problems till we got my account straightened out, which required faxing them a copy of my registration along with a signed declaration of RV use and a copy of my driver's license.  Office Depot is great, For a very small fee they printed the form, so I could sign it, and faxed it to DN
 
go with Direct and forget Dish.  3 different satillites to deal with and should you have to cancel  big bucks to do so.  3 dealings with Dish and 3 major problems  I wouldn't give them the time of day.
 
Gasser,

We have an automatic dish on our motorhome too.? We have Direct TV at home.? So we went to Circut City and bought a receiver (less than a $100, if my memory is correct)? Came home and connected the wires from the satellite dish to the receiver.? More than likely there is a cabinet in the front of your coach that will have the wires labeled (hopefully).? There should also be an electrical outlet nearby to plug the receiver into.? Next you call direct TV and tell them you have a motor home and want to use it as a second receiver.? It cost us $4.95 per month to add the second receiver (motorhome) to our home bill.? Take a cell phone or a portable phone into the motorhome when you call them and they will "zap" the new receiver and voila` you will have tv.?

NOw if you don't already have direct TV, you do the same thing, call them and tell them you are using it in a motorhome.? LIke John said, you will have to fill out a form that says you are using it in a motor home and will be traveling.? Since we are not full-timing; we didn't go that route.

We have the "king-dome" satellite receiver, what is yours?

Marsha~

[br]Date Posted: May 11, 2006, 12:08:50 AMGasser,

 
Shayne said:
go with Direct and forget Dish.  3 different satillites to deal with and should you have to cancel  big bucks to do so.  3 dealings with Dish and 3 major problems  I wouldn't give them the time of day.

Though it is not working at all today (Heavy Rain Faid) I do Dish with just Sattalite 110, And the default is 2 sats (110 and 119) not 3, though some folks do add a 3rd for still more programming,  Depends on what you want

The Lyngsat site tells you what is on each sattalite if anyone is interested.  This includes Free To Air

http://www.lyngsat.com/

Lyngsat is mostly for Free to Air folks. but they list all the channels on all the transponders on all the birds
 
We have DirecTV at home and I just pull one of the receivers and plug it in the MH.  Walmart or Radio Shack has some adapters that convert the screw on Coax connectors to push on.  I put those and some color coded tapes on the wires and the receiver to make hook up or un hook a 30 second job!  I've had no problems at all.  The only restriction is that we don't get local channels if we are more than about 150 miles from home.  We find we can usually get most news on the cable news channels and if we have withdrawal from the evening garbage on the networks, we can usually find local channels on the off the air antenna every once in a while.  When we return home, we simply return the receiver to the home TV with the same 30 second hookup!  Works for us with no extra cost.
 
I would strongly urge you to NOT use the push on connectors.  They will eventually loosen up and cause problems.  The few extra seconds you save by not using the screw on connectors isn't worth the headache you'll get trying to track down a problem caused by the push ons.
 
I concur with Ned.  Use of push on connectors will cause you problems just a matter of when.  I also very strongly recommend NOT using push on connectors.
 
The comments about the push on connectors are correct. When I was working and found them I always replaced them immediately before doing any trouble shooting as they are just too unreliable.

And Dish Net is a good service. We have had it for fulltime RV life for six years now. Two satellites means that you have to set skew as well as elevation and azimuth, but any reasonably competent person can do that no problem. We now have gone to Starband dish internet and we use the "Bird on a Wire" to add the Dish Net to the Starband dish. I just set up the dish and lock into the internet and the TV just takes care of it's self. Now we have good TV and fast internet and only one dish to fool around with.
 

Members online

Forum statistics

Threads
131,753
Posts
1,384,359
Members
137,524
Latest member
freetoroam
Back
Top Bottom