Satellite Service

[PunkZTT]

I figured I would ask here being that a lot of you have Satellite reception in your Airstreams.
Is it possible to have one satellite account and be able to access satellite TV across the country from your house with a different dish than the one that is mounted on your house. The receiver would be on the same account as the other one, the only thing different would be the dish.

-Are dishes tied to your account anyways?
-If you did have two receivers on the same account being used 1000 miles away, would Dish know about it?

I am moving to Wyoming for the summer and will have roomates back at my house that want to use satellite while I am gone. I don't want to pay another monthly account fee in order to watch TV up in WY. THus, it makes sense to just buy a dish/tripod setup off of eBay and then just take my bedroom receiver with me while I am gone.

Does anyone know if this will work or will it pose any problems?
Thanks
-James

[Minnie's Mate]

The dish is not tied to your account. Most people who use satellite while camping do exactly as you plan. The card in your receiver and the receiver itself are tied together. You can take your receiver from home and a different dish for use on the road. Do a search on this site for info on signal meters, etc. to get advise on positioning your dish to find your satellite while on the road. If you have any other concerns, call your satellite provider for additional info.

[gryphon]

we take a dish and a receiver with us each summer and other than finding the satellite we have no problems using it. We do pay a fee to dish around 5 bucks per month and for that we get both east coast and west coast feeds. which comes in handy if there is a show coming on at 9est we can see it using west coast feed at 11pm. That is when we have time for tv while camping!!! The people at home can watch with no probs as well.

gryphon

[PunkZTT]

Awesome, thanks guys!

The lady at Dish Network said I would need two accounts but I had a feeling she was fibbing

Now I just need another dish!

[Silvertwinkie]

Make sure that if you do not take the LNB unit off your old dish and go the route of getting a complete seperate dish (including LNB), make sure the LNB is compatible with your existing hardware.

[Melody Ranch]

Go check the recent discussion on Yahoo Airstream list. More info than you will want to know.....a lot of BS too....Its a great place.

[PunkZTT]

Does the LNB off the new dish have to be compatible with the receiver only? Or the service in general? I am looking at the Campingworld website and they have a dish w/ dual LNB for $50. It says it is for home use but I think that is only because it doesn't have a tripod. I just have the basic Dishnetwork system...so I am sure it will work. I'll drive over there today and check it out.

[rebel beck]

We just ran into this the last time we used our dish. We have direct tv here at the house. I bought a dish last Christmas for the hubby it was compatible with our Direct tv reciever. So we used it and it worked great the only thing we could not pick up local channels CBS, NBC, etc. When we got home we contacted Direct tv, we were told we would have to pay an extra $140.00 a year but we would be getting CBS,NBC, etc from the west coast time frame.
Not our local network we decided against it. Anybody else had this problem.

We get cartoon network for the child (so it's cool)

[Tarheel]

I wanted 3 recievers and two accounts, but that was just too hard for dish net. I have one reciever in the Airstream and one in the house, just because its too much of a chore, for me, to move them from house to trailer. I have had very few problems on the road and the few that I have had were quickly corrected by dish net. My second reciever costs me $5 per month

[Pick]

With the new HD DirecTV receivers you can get digital off air signals in most areas. Nice digital picture, like off the sat. We use the bedroom receiver for Airstream usage, no problems.

[flyfisher]

We have Dish 500 at our home, with several receivers, and we take one of them with us when we spend most of the sumemr in Montana and other parts of the northwest.

As I understand it, one of the receivers must be permanently hooked up to a telephone, or Dish charges something like an additional $5.00 if it is not hooked up. So, one of our home receivers is always hooked up to a phone line, and the one we take with us isn't.

We get a half dozen or so local stations when we're at home (which is included in our normal monthly rate) and we've just applied for an RV waiver (another $5.00 per month, which we can cancel after our 3-4 months of summer travel) which will give us a choice of the major networks from one of a half dozen different US cities - we selected Denver to get these stations from, since that will be in the same time zone for us most of the time where we'll be.) We loose our reception for our normal local channels when we travel more that (what?) 100 miles or so from home.

Last year we bought a portable dish stand and and 18" satellite dish that has a single LNB, and we learned from experience that some DISH network stations come over one satellite, and the rest come over a second satellite. So, we were only able to get part of the stations that we had in our Dish network plan. I believe the Dish 500 with 2 LNB's is a 20" dish. So far I haven't decided whether or not I want to make the additional investment in a new dish and tripod, or just live with what we have. The one we have now folds up nice and compact, and has a nice carrying case - the Dish 500 would take more room and won't be as easy to take apart I'm afraid.

John

[jcanavera]

Note that you can also find Dish LNB's on ebay. When I upgraded my receiver a couple of years ago, I needed a quad LNB. I found a brand new one for about $25 which included shipping.

I know Dish is pilly about the dial in of their receivers. I moved my old receiver to a spare bedroom and 3 months later Dish started billing me an additional $5 a month. When I called them they said that was the charge for not being hooked up to a phone line. They waived the first charge and I installed a phone line for that receiver.

Quite honestly for normal trips it shouldn't be an issue, but if your receiver is going to be in your trailer long term, you might see a charge eventually assessed to your account if the receiver doesn't occasionally show up on your phone line.

I talked to one other person who never had this happen even though his receiver is full time in his trailer. I don't know what the criteria is that allows some to escape this charge, and others get hung with it.

Jack

[gryphon]

A lot of us have experieced different things with our satellite service on the road. I don't understand why. My nephew installed our service and got the satellite dish for the camper. Like i said when on the road I do receive all the channels I get at home. East and west coast feed. Local stations from atlanta and Los Angeles. I do not have my phone line attached to the receiver. Never had a problem with that. I had thought that was to get some pay per view channels. And you can call them to order those. The first summer we traveled one of my son's (ex) friends ordered about 200 bucks of porn, that was with no phone connection, so obviously you don't need a phone connection. (dish took that off the bill as many of the programs overlapped each other and my explaination seemed pausible)
Everything works just the way my nephew said it would.

Oh i don't plug the phone into the receiver because living in an area where there are a lot of electric storms I am afraid lightning will run through the phone line and destroy the receiver. Lightning coming thru the phone line will also destroy a computer. I just don't trust surge protectors.
gryphon

[Pimprnel]

Anybody have any feedback? I want to have a permanent mount and I am not sure if the Dome will be too large? New auto crank from Winegard looks interesting also. Curious to hear what people have or seen.

[Pick]

Pimprnel, those permanent mount dishes are around $250. The main problem with a mounted dish are obstructions, such as trees and buildings. With one mounted to a wooden block or tripod, you can move it around more to get around or through those obstructions.

I got my extra dish for the A/S out of someones's trash. Lot's of folks down here switch to Dish from DirecTV, because Dish has locals and DirecTV does not, so you see a lot of DTV dishes at the dump or on the side of the road on trash day.

[firefly007]

I am a Dishnetwork Dealer so this is what I know to be correct.
Older receivers are called Legacy. They require a Legacy LNBF. It usually looks like 2 horns instead of a combined unit. Newer units are called Dishpro. This includes the Dish 500 series. Dishpro units can use either Legacy LNBFs or Dishpro LNBFs. There is an adapter that lets you use Dishpro on a Legacy but it is costly.
As far as how Dishnetwork feels about RVs? Up until a year ago they tolerated a tag along unit in an RV. However with recent changes in Federal Laws they will tell that you need a seperate account for an RV unit. The receiver will work wherever it is located but technically they are right in asking for more money if it is mobile.
Hope this helps.
Steve

[Stream 1529]

Originally Posted by Pimprnel

Anybody have any feedback? I want to have a permanent mount and I am not sure if the Dome will be too large? New auto crank from Winegard looks interesting also. Curious to hear what people have or seen.

I've used both roof mounted systems. The manual roof system worked fine. Campingworld installed it just in front of the refirgerator vent. When we ordered the 34' we had JC install a Dome King automatic system. It's installed just forward of the center bath, and works great.

You will not get reception is trees are in the way, but I only encounter that problem every now and then when traveling cross country. When off for just a weekend we know the campgrounds and select the site with the best clearance.

The manual system was a Dish product. Having to use two satellites for reception became a burden when we wanted to watch a station that was on the other satellite. Of course now you can get the dual system that is supposed to acquire both satellites at the same time.

The Dome King has the Direct reception, and we have never had any problem with it. We can have trees in the area, just not South of us. It acquires the signal in less than two minutes while we are finishing setting up.

_________Tom

[Minnie's Mate]

Tom, how much was the dome king installed, if you don't mind me asking?

[Stream 1529]

Originally Posted by Minnie's Mate

Tom, how much was the dome king installed, if you don't mind me asking?

I think it was around $800. This was after I told them I didn't want their $500 receiver.

The hardest part of it all was getting the dealership and the regional sales guy to beieve that JC coud do it. I talked with a design engineer up there, and he said "Why Not". So, I put them in touch with the guy and voila, I have a factory installed Dome King.

__________Tom

[Minnie's Mate]

That's not too bad for one that finds the satellite on its own. I installed our system on our house and I think you got a good deal.