Satelite TV Questions

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dnash333

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Jun 8, 2006
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14
Ok, I have just purchased a 1999 Coachmen Santara 3600MBS. It has a Winegard crank up satelite antenna on it, and I assume it works although the people who sold me the rig didn't use it and couldn't confirm.

I have three questions. First, I already have Directv and have 4 receivers. I have a 3 LNB dish on my house ( I think ) that gets local channels and High Def.

First question, will one of the receivers from my kids rooms ( no Tivo or DVR ) work in the RV?

Second, will the receiver with TIVO ( not the high def receiver ) work?

Third, what will I need to do to get High Def to work?

 
dnash333 said:
Ok, I have just purchased a 1999 Coachmen Santara 3600MBS. It has a Winegard crank up satelite antenna on it, and I assume it works although the people who sold me the rig didn't use it and couldn't confirm.

I have three questions. First, I already have Directv and have 4 receivers. I have a 3 LNB dish on my house ( I think ) that gets local channels and High Def.

First question, will one of the receivers from my kids rooms ( no Tivo or DVR ) work in the RV?

Yes.  As long as it isn't a high def receiver.

Second, will the receiver with TIVO ( not the high def receiver ) work?

Yes, I use DTV Tivo all the time in our Eagle.  You will get nag messages the Tivo hasn't called home if not connected to a phone line for more than 14 days  but that does not stop it from working.  Ours hasn't called home for several months.

Third, what will I need to do to get High Def to work?

You will need to install a dish that can be rotated to adjust the skew with 3 LNBs like your one at home.


 
dnash333 said:
Ok, I have just purchased a 1999 Coachmen Santara 3600MBS. It has a Winegard crank up satelite antenna on it, and I assume it works although the people who sold me the rig didn't use it and couldn't confirm.

I have three questions. First, I already have Directv and have 4 receivers. I have a 3 LNB dish on my house ( I think ) that gets local channels and High Def.

First question, will one of the receivers from my kids rooms ( no Tivo or DVR ) work in the RV?

Yes, just plug the sat and the TV cables into it. I would suggest purchasing a signal meter and going to Wineguard for instructions on finding the sat the first time. It is not difficult once you have done it a couple of times.

Second, will the receiver with TIVO ( not the high def receiver ) work?

We use TIVO (DVR) You will need to add a new 2 cable LNB and run a second cable to the TIVO to have full capability. With the single cable from the LNB that comes with a manual Winguard you will have to change the setup of the TIVO for one able and will not be able to view one channel while recording a second. Installing the second cable involves drilling a hole in the roof but is not very complicated.

Third, what will I need to do to get High Def to work?

HD requires adjusting the skew, (rotating) the sat antenna that cannot be done on the Winguard. You would need to use a portable dish on a tripod or find an newer automatic dish that is capable of receiving the two sats simultaneously (If there is such an  animal).
 
Thanks, Ron. So, if I wanted to upgrade the dish to be able to do High Def, is that pretty much a start from scratch proposition. In other words just as expensive as if I didn't already have one?
 
dnash333 said:
Thanks, Ron. So, if I wanted to upgrade the dish to be able to do High Def, is that pretty much a start from scratch proposition. In other words just as expensive as if I didn't already have one?

I am not aware of any manual crank up satellite antenna that has a skew adjustment jut elevation and azimuth like you have.  Motosat does make a automatic dish that will work but I have no idea what the cost would be.  Guessing it would be the same as or higher than what a high def TV would cost for the MH.
 
Thanks again... Guess I will ust have to struggle through with regular Directv...

As an aside, I see your tag line and from reading soe other posts I am curious if you or someone you know would be interested in my DW6000 set up. I have had a local guy decide to build a tower on my hill and provide wireless internet in my area ( paying me to do so as well ) so I need to sell my DW6000. What is it worth and would you know soeone who would want it?
 
Guess I could. But we won't be on the road that much and it is $60 a month for service... Think we'll just try to stick to wifi campgrounds which seem to be more and more of them...
 
Not sure if this is the right thread to ask this question but what the heck here goes.

I should preface this by saying that I know next to nothing about satellite TV. I have been a cable customer since Moses was a teenager.

We are purchasing DirecTV service for the house and RV.  So far so good...until I checked into getting one of the portable satellite dishes such as VuCube and the Winegard Carryout. We didn't want to go with the permanent roof mounted antennas because of cost/access/blockage issues, etc.

But now I find out that the VuCube and the Carryout are apparently not compatible with DirecTV HD programming - but they are compatible with DishNetwork HD programming.  Or that is my understanding anyway.

Should I have gone with DishNetwork instead or am I way off base here?

Confused in Western WA,

Mike
 
Direct TV uses KA band for their HD broadcasting and that limits your portable dish options right now. I think you're correct, neither of those two options will work, and I don't know of any domes that will work either. I'm sure they're working on it and eventually something will come out, but right now options are limited. If you can live without HD you could use either option. However, right now your only options for a portable HD setup are a portable dish and tripod or Dish Network. 
 
MotoSat makes a roof mounted HD TV Sat receiver that works with either Direct or Dish. I believe Winegard also sells one for Direct.
 
Thanks for the replies.  I read somewhere that VuCube is working on updating their units to receive the HD programming sometime down the road.

Mike

 
RetiredLE said:
But now I find out that the VuCube and the Carryout are apparently not compatible with DirecTV HD programming - but they are compatible with DishNetwork HD programming.  Or that is my understanding anyway.

For over a year now I've been saying what you found.  (I won't go into detalis as others have)

You are not confused, you have it straight.. What you should do is decline HD on your DirecTV account, stick with what I call "SD"  (The old format) and tell 'em why you are doing that.  (You don't like hte KA band) there is more to this. 

DirecTV (Standard) one bird, every antenna made works with it far as I know (Well, every KU band antenna, C band don't')

Dish Standard, 2 birds, you need to either re-point (Some domes can do this) when changing channels or use a TWIN antenna (two lnb's) NOTE if using an automatic dome that repoints you are limited to a SINGLE receiver

Dish HD, 3 birds.. See Dish standard for comments.  Same considerations, smaller number of domes that can triple-bird, and it's a Triple LNB antenna for multiple receivers

DirecHDTV: dual band, NO DOME, only special dish type antennas work with DirecHDTV see http://www.motosat.com for some examples
 
Hello;

What about dishnet?  Anyone have experience with them.  Currently have dishnet at home. Two receivers. One in the living room and other in the spare bedroom.

Have checked the direct tv and dishnet web sites.  It appears that directtv is ok with taking out one receiver and putting it into the rv without an extra charge.  I was unable to find anything with this regards to dishnet other than separate programming for RV.

I was thinking about getting a portable dish that is on sale at Camping world for $99. 

Any comments would be appreciated.

Pete
 
You can take one of your Dish Network receivers with you in the RV. Just make sure you get the right dish for your receiver. Dish Network uses different dishes depending on your programing package and receiver, and to make things easier, you should try to get the same dish that you use at home. Here's what I use.
 
As of today, we are now officially DirecTV customers. The two year obligation says so?.

Anyway, we had the system installed at the house and it works great.  We got two receivers (one for the coach) and now the next problem appears.

We have a spot on the left side of the television that appears to be pre-wired for the satellite receiver.

My question is this:  How do you hook the darn thing up?  There is a 110 outlet in the cupboard as well as two cable hookups: one labeled ?To Satellite Receiver? and ?Input? and ?Output?.

Also, I don?t see a way to hook up the video/audio cables.  There is no hole in the cupboard that you would feed them through.  Am I going to have to pull out that darn heavy television and drill holes???

Pics attached for illustration purposes.
 

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My guess would be that you connect a cable from the "input" to the cable in on the receiver and a cable from the TV out on the receiver to the "output". With this setup there would be no audio/video cables. If your receiver is HD it might not have a TV out coax connection and then you would have to drill. 
 
aromaspete said:
Hello;

What about dishnet?  Anyone have experience with them.  Currently have dishnet at home. Two receivers. One in the living room and other in the spare bedroom.

I covered Dishnetwork in my last post.

Dishnetwork Standard (NTSC or 4x3 only) needs to see TWO satellites, the portable dishes from Camping World et-al are single or dual LNB (means one satellite, one or two coax fittings) you need a TWIN, (Two LNB's Two coax outs, even if you only use one)

An automatic pointing antenna such as a dome, MAY (Depending on the model of the controller) be able to re-point from 110-119 fast enough to keep a Dish 311 happy, but if you have a 625 (DVR) or if you have two 311's Or their equivalent in all cases you need to see both birds at one time

Dishnet HDTV used 3 birds, 110/119/127  Change the model numbers in the previous paragraph to HD models, and the same statements apply
 
bross said:
If your receiver is HD it might not have a TV out coax connection and then you would have to drill. 

You are correct.  My receiver only has one coax connection that says Sat In.  So, is there an adapter that I can connect to the video/audio ports that allows connection to a coax fitting?
 

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