Satelite TV?

mmachale · 06-16-2018, 06:30 PM

Do any of you have suggestions on how to get Satellite TV installed on our redwood? We have direct tv at home, would we call them?

thanks,
Michelle

RV4us2 · 06-17-2018, 06:07 PM

Michelle,
Oh boy, some of us could write a book to answer your question. I started out when we purchased our 2015 GK by having a Winegard Travl'r installed. I originally had DirecTV service and used our home equipment when traveling. I have since changed over to DISH and used just a Wally receiver. Hoping to install our home equipment, Hopper 3 with two Joeys in the near future and we are just about to begin FT'ing.
My suggestion would be to decide if you want a portable dish or a roof mounted, such as the Travl'r. Also, decide now if you want to stick with Directv. It's not cheap to change down the road. The big advantage to DISH service is in the HD reception ability. I was not terribly unsatisfied with the Directv reception, but they totally upset me a couple years ago with their pricing and tech service, so I changed. Unless you are installing yourself, talk with an RV dealer you trust (hmmm...not sure I know any like this personally) and talk through your use and desires for RV / TV use for now and future. Portable dishes have their advantage in getting signal around obstructions, like trees, but are a bit more troublesome to set up depending on which system you get.
And, yes, talk with Directv about your options. And, search this forum...there's a lot of info here.
Best of luck.

Jim & Mary · 06-17-2018, 06:42 PM

Take a look at this fellows site, it helped me a lot to get our Hopper 3 to work with out rooftop Winegard Travel'r. There's loads of RV/Sat info for your reading.

https://rvseniormoments.com/tech-docs/

brad chilton · 06-17-2018, 07:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mmachale

Do any of you have suggestions on how to get Satellite TV installed on our redwood? We have direct tv at home, would we call them?

thanks,
Michelle

HI Michelle
I have been a long long time user of directv ..we recently went full time and wanted to continue our DTv service..We had the Wingard traveler installed as i want hd on all sets ..i have a genie in the living room and and the small satellite genies in the bedroom and basement ...picture quality is excellent !!! You just have to ask your self , what you want in terms of ease of set up, how much you want to spend,,,Traveller is about $1500 on Amazon and I spent another
$400 on install... But all I do is push a button upon campsite arrival, and the dish sets itself up and locals in on all satellites... i cant speak to dish as I’ve never been a fan of theirs ... let me know if yo have any questions ...I doubt DIRECTV reps know anything more than what’s on their websites....

Karen · 06-27-2018, 01:49 AM

We just upgraded our TV to a Samsung U Smart TV from Costco. It has built in wi-fi. We discovered that our older cell phone (Verizon service) allows us to go wi-fi to the TV and stream all our recorded programs from home Dish TV. We now have unlimited data plan (again) with Verizon and it's covered in the "stream away" included coverage. It just needs a phone and can "mirror" to TV and no more need for the satellite on roof. Of course it only brings in whatever you can get from home, for $7 a month to have a connection on the go it's the best of all the options we have found. This is great for NO internet at a park, and no need to pay extra for wired.

Karen · 06-27-2018, 01:57 AM

I cut a piece of the foil bubble (white on one side) to fit the opening and glued 4 magnets to the corners. I glued 4 attracting magnets to the 4 corners of the shower skylight. When it's hot I stick the 4 magnets together and it holds the foil in place and blocks the sun without completely blocking the light. When not in use I fold it in half so it lets all the light in. Hope this makes sense. Even a light piece like what I use really makes a world of difference in temperature.

Jim & Mary · 06-27-2018, 02:04 AM

I will be surprised if your "unlimited" plan is really that........you may find they will throttle you after a certain data usage point. Good luck to you!

Karen · 06-27-2018, 04:11 AM

First I'm sorry that the bubble idea for over shower dome got in wrong place. My bad!
As for Verizon, they do have an Unlimited Plan now/again. It does throttle IF you reach 20 GB on hotspot per line but we haven't reached that so don't know what it is like. Verizon says they don't throttle unless it's high peak use and they have to. It's not automatic. My phone won't "cast" or "mirror" to wifi TV. Husband's older Samsung phone does it not turning on mobile data, just the wi-fi on phone.

jabird56 · 06-28-2018, 10:05 PM

Since we had (and still do) DirecTV in the house, we went with DirecTV on our 5th wheel also using the WINEGARD Trav'ler dish on the roof. We have the Genie system in the house, but we went with just the HD receivers in the camper. With two boxes on the camper, they're just additional boxes on our home account and are identified as RV L RM and RV BD RM. The only thing we lose are the local home channels when we go past a 500 mile radius (I think) from home. We had our RV dealer install the sat dish and made sure that the TV's were box ready.

The one thing to keep in mind is that if your camper sits for more that a month without you using the system, your DirecTV black boxes will go dormant as they need to "phone home" at least once a month. If that happens, you just need to go online into your account and look at your equipment. Under the boxes on your camper will be a highlighted BLUE statement "refresh receiver", push that. Wait five minutes and do the next box if you have one.

DirecTV also has a Traveler's plan that hooks you up with either the East satellites or the West satellites, depending where you at with your camper. We didn't go with this plan as it requires a separate account (higher cost), compared to paying $40 for the two camper boxes on our home account. With the Travelers Plan you will still get the National networks, just not the local channels (Such as local news/weather).

https://www.directv.com/DTVAPP/conte...elers/overview

mhs4771 · 06-30-2018, 01:50 AM

As far as I know, DirecTV only has one group of Satellites, Dish on the other hand does have and East and West Feed.
We have the Travelers Plan and yes do pay extra for the National Networks. We get the New York City channels anywhere we can get DirecTV reception. When at our Home Base in Western New York, I use their Chat Feature and get the Local Channels added, while still keeping the New York channels for when we travel out of range of the locals. When we move South for the Winter, will have Locals changed to that location. Now with all the things AT&T are doing this could all change overnite.

mmachale · 07-01-2018, 04:25 PM

Thanks everyone for your responses. We ended up taking our Redwood to Camping World in Golden, CO, where they installed the roof mounted direct TV satellite, sold us a receiver, but we have not yet been successful in getting Directtv to hook us up. We've gone through about 20 calls to Direct tv and I think because of the AT&T merge, they are all robots, or act like robots, no answers. We were told it would just take minutes for them to activate our receiver but AT&T/Direct TV doesn't know what that means evidently. We are now waiting for someone to come out and give us a new receiver, since they now say that they cannot activate a purchased receiver, we hope that it will work, as we have a long trip planned in July.

Thanks again for your answers, they have been very helpful in understanding all of this.

atom ant · 07-02-2018, 04:13 PM

Very odd that they cannot activate a purchased receiver.

Garyl53 · 07-02-2018, 07:16 PM

His doesn’t sound correct. I would call them again. They can certainly authorize a purchased receiver.

mhs4771 · 07-02-2018, 10:20 PM

I wouldn't be so sure, seem AT&T have hired a group of Grade Schoolers or maybe Pre-Schoolers. Our Friends tried to get the local channels switched and things got so messed up that DirecTV shut off their service and they haven't been able to get it back. They even tried working with a local AT&T person at a local Kiosk and after about an hour on the phone she gave up talking to the idiots on the phone and advised our fiends to switch to Dish.

NewRW Owner · 07-04-2018, 07:06 AM

It seems like whoever installed your satellite should have been able to get you connected. We have directv too. We have a Winegard portable so that we can move it to get a signal. The receiver we use was in our house, but found a permanent home in our RW. It takes no time at all to be up and running wherever we are. Customer service isn't what it was in the past. We left Dish after being a customer for years due to lack of customer service. Pretty much and most of the time we've been happy with Directv, even while RVing.

johnboytoo · 07-04-2018, 07:14 PM

I think the root cause is your installer didn't get it connected, it's part of his job !
I can hear a mechanic telling me I can put your car engine in, but you have to go somewhere else to get it started

We've had directv at the house every since dish raped us with a large rate increase ONCE about 10 years ago! Our 4k service at home is perfect and about 3 or 4 rv's ago we had a travl'r installed and got a dvr for the front and receiver for the Bedroom... that travl'r has moved from a 5'er to the redwood and now onto the coach... $14 per month for the rv units...

atom ant · 07-06-2018, 06:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mmachale

Thanks everyone for your responses. We ended up taking our Redwood to Camping World in Golden, CO, where they installed the roof mounted direct TV satellite, sold us a receiver, but we have not yet been successful in getting Directtv to hook us up. We've gone through about 20 calls to Direct tv and I think because of the AT&T merge, they are all robots, or act like robots, no answers. We were told it would just take minutes for them to activate our receiver but AT&T/Direct TV doesn't know what that means evidently. We are now waiting for someone to come out and give us a new receiver, since they now say that they cannot activate a purchased receiver, we hope that it will work, as we have a long trip planned in July.

Thanks again for your answers, they have been very helpful in understanding all of this.

Curious how this came out??

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