Winegard Trav'ler

[arcticman1957]

Adam Ant with my dish 500 can use a Hopper?

[atom ant]

I don't think it will - I believe you need the Dish 1000. If it does work, I think you will limited to what you can get on 1 satellite.

[JerryL]

Originally Posted by atom ant

So other than local HD channels, our Trav'lers are good to go no matter where in the US? (this arc talk confuses me )

Yes, atom ant. I am on eastern arc(77, 72, 61.5) at my house, through Dish. When I hook up my dish on the road I usually have to aim at western arc satellites, 110 119, 129. All I do when I switch between arcs in my RV is do a "Check switch" in the setup on my Dish menu. Once you aim to whichever satellites, on whichever arc, just do the check switch option in setup, and your receiver should pick them up. Like said above, if you are normally on eastern arc, and receive your locals in HD, once in western arc, your local channels will be in non HD. For the record, no matter where I go, nationwide, in whichever arc, I still get the same locals that I receive at my home, which I like. If I want to receive local channels from where my RV is, I usually just try to pick them up on the antenna.

[atom ant]

Thanks Jerry! I had to educate myself a bit on the arcs. It looks like you eastern folks use a completely different LNB on fixed dish than we do.

So as I understand, the winegard Trav'ler only see's 110, 119, 129, so when traveling east 129 is always available and 110 - 119, will drop up in the north east corner of the country.

The portable winegard "carryout" antenna can find the eastern arc satellites if you change the dip swithches, but it is limited to seeing 1 or 2 satellites at a time.

Sound close?

[arcticman1957]

Yes the eastern arch is a different LBN, I had to have dish come change mine out because I could not see the eastern sky where I am now. The dish 500 picks up all three satellites and is seamless when switching. The two automatic systems I had the ANSER and the 2X you were limited to one satellite at a time. I am back to old school and plan on staying this way. As it truly support two TV's on two satellites at one time.

This why I was wondering if the Hopper would work my 612VIP is getting some years on it and from previous experience the hard drive is due to go. If I am going to have to up grade I thought if I could I would go to the Hopper, I will have to do some research.

Right now on the 500 I have 110, 119 and 129.

[atom ant]

Ah OK. On our stick house, they originally had to add a wing antenna to get 129 because our Dish 500 couldn't get all three. When we went to Hopper, they had to change all of it out to the 1000 because the Hopper wouldn't accept the wing antenna switch. You may be OK if you already have all three coming in, but I'm no expert.

Wonder if you could borrow a Hopper and try it?

[arcticman1957]

Atom, now there a thought. Like I said I will do some more research, was not trying to put you on the spot just thought I might get the easy answer. Thanks for sharing what you know.

It is like I tell them at work I don't know a lot, but I am willing to share what I do know.

[JerryL]

Originally Posted by atom ant

I don't think it will - I believe you need the Dish 1000. If it does work, I think you will limited to what you can get on 1 satellite.

Although I don't use Hopper, I have the Dish 1000 in my RV. There is a way to tell which arc your 1000 has to use. Western arc 1000's have 3 evenly spaced LNB's. Eastern arc 1000's have 3 Lnb's, but 2 are close together, and 1 is spaced farther away. This is the reason I have to use 110,119,129 in my RV, my 1000 is a western arc dish. Come to think of it, I might have been partially wrong in my last post. My RV dish might not be able to receive eastern arc sats. I had 500's before, and the sat guy that came to my RV last year, when I moved into this sight I am presently staying in, traded out and gave me a new sat dish. I'm not sure if it's a 1000, as I am at my stick house today, and don't know the number of the dish at my RV site.

[arcticman1957]

Well DISH left the LBN he took off so I marked it and now if I have to use the eastern arc I will just swap out LBN's.

[atom ant]

Very cool! That makes it easy

[Radio_Flyer]

Thank to Atom Ant's pictures and a PM, I was able to get my Trav'ler installed in about 1.5 hours. Really not that bad of an install. Hardest part was trying to fish the control wire out of the holes on the roof. Ended up pulled the coax cables out of their plugs and using the Wingard block off plate. It found the satellites in less than 30 secs once it was powered up. Wanted to say thank you to Atom Ant again.

[atom ant]

Awesome install! Nice work!

[ksaltman]

Looks like a great install. Well done!

Wondering where you installed the Solo Node??????

Couple other question regarding the Hopper if anyone has the time.

Regarding the Hopper's use of the internet.... My Hopper in the S&B house seems to rely more on the Internet then did my previous 722VIP. Any issues with that in the RV? What features might be limited if I don't have an internet connection when traveling?

Comparing the Trav'ler install w/ what I have at my S&B house I see that besides content from 110, 119 & 129 I'm also getting stuff from the 118 satellite (check switch blah blah blah). That could be because of some international programs I get, perhaps. Not sure why I am able to receive it in my S&B house, I also have a Dish 1000 with the DPP44 switch and corresponding power injector. Any ideas if I should be able to get it using the Trav'ler?????

In that same train of thought, I routinely do a site to site VPN connection when I travel back to my home network. I use it internationally to make it look like I am in the states so I can use things like HBOGO, Amazon Prime, etc etc.

I've heard that with 2 Hoppers on the same network, (given enough network bandwidth), can share recordings between the Hoppers but I've never tried it. Any real world experience with that or the Sling Box features of the Hopper. I've used the Sling feature to my iPad and have been very impressed even over a cell LTE connection. No need to warn about the poor WiFi coverage in campgrounds. I understand this is very dependent on good connectivity, but has anyone used the Hopper to Hopper feature?

TIA

[atom ant]

My hopper does like to be connected to the internet to download movies to watch later, not the pay per view. I end up downloading a bunch while parked in front of the house using my house wifi, or sometimes I get lucky and the campground can support it.

The 2 Hoppers at the house pass information between themselves, the house PCs, the Joeys, and even any of our tablets, cell phones. Virtually anything on the home network. What I did was put the Redwood Hopper on a separate RV account, and I have found one downside is that it cannot pass information with the house hoppers because it is on a different account. I can't even use a hard drive between the two accounts.

[ksaltman]

Why did you put the RW Hopper on a separate account rather than just paying the $12 Hopper fee?

I did test transferring a recording from the house Hopper to the RV Hopper using a hard drive and it worked OK just a little slow on the copy side. I think the USB ports on the Hopper are USB 2.0 so even using a USB 3.0 drive the copy is slow.

[lwg]

I use the Hopper and one Joey in our unit. I also have the wifi ranger for a whole RV Internet connection. As Atom mentioned the Hopper mainly uses Internet for streaming of some on demand stuff. For movies I, like Atom, order them through either the hopper interface of the web and they come down over the satellite signal.

As for satellite, I only use and setup 110, 119 & 129. I currently still use a manual dish at this point.

[atom ant]

Originally Posted by ksaltman

Why did you put the RW Hopper on a separate account rather than just paying the $12 Hopper fee?

I didn't want to take time out to physically transfer them and set them up each time - always trying to trim down on the hassle, and Dish was not thrilled about having 3 hoppers and 10 joeys on one account.

With 1 hopper and 2 joeys in the RV, its little closer to $25 a month more if I had added it my account at home.

They put me on an RV account and it only costs for the days I use it, about $3.50 a day. (theoretically, they tend to have difficulty remember how RV accounts work when I call) The jury is still out on how convenient this second account will be.

[Radio_Flyer]

As a follow up to anyone doing the install on the Winegard, got a reply back from Crossroads about the short control wire and coax cables. Good to know that they are continually improving.

"Skip:
It appears your suggestion has been already addressed. The production manager from Redwood advised that we now use a 10’ longer harness.

Input from customers and dealers enables us to implement continued improvement in our products.

Thank you for the input and your feedback on our product."

[atom ant]

Awesome! Thanks for letting them know!

[Radio_Flyer]

Your idea :-)
Now to see if anyone with a newer rig has a problem with the wiring.
They have been good about fixing things on future runs.